Just subsidising electric cars is not enough

The German government has passed a "National Development Plan for Electric Mobility" according to which one million electric cars should be driving on German roads by 2020. The conservative daily Die Welt comments: "It would be sheer negligence on the part of the German government to just sit back and watch as the US and China pump billions into similar programmes. Hefty investments in education, research and the infrastructure are called for - areas which businesses cannot fully develop on their own. But it's not enough to just sign a check and wave it before the cameras. Despite the ambitious goals we must not lose sight of the efficiency of the plan, nor of the mistakes recently made in the area of renewable energies. Extrapolating from there you could soon have millions of electric cars travelling on Germany's roads at public expense - equipped with batteries produced for the most part in China."

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