Germany admits carbon neutrality targets not possible without hybrids, reverses EV goals

• Germany's original target aims for 15 million EVs on the road by 2030
• Progress as of December-2021, only 670,000 EVs are on the road
• Original goal is unrealistic considering the battery supply shortage, hybrids to now be included in revised target

Germany’s Transport Minister Volker Wissing has confirmed that Germany is redefining its electric vehicle (EV) goals to now include hybrids (HEVs), reports Reuters. Previously, Germany had set a goal of putting out 15 million battery electric vehicles (BEVs) on the road by 2030.

Depending which side of the EV divide you sit on, the subject of hybrids is a controversial one.

On one side, Elon Musk worshippers will insist that hybrids are a distraction, and is part of a conspiracy by legacy car makers like Toyota to extend the life of combustion engines.

They argue that the sooner the world embrace 100 percent electric powertrains, the better it is for everyone. The way to achieve carbon neutrality is to accelerate investments in renewable energy, public charging infrastructure, and battery manufacturing capacity, not delaying the transition with hybrids.

And they are not wrong. They do have a point.

However, the other side of the camp, which as you would expect, is populated mostly by traditional automakers, is counter-arguing that the problem is not about a lacking of want or money, but a very basic issue of supply and available capacity to produce enough batteries to meet the European politicians' lofty targets.

The problem is less about cost of batteries, which is coming down (generally speaking, temporary spikes aside), but securing enough minerals and building enough gigafactories to make enough high voltage batteries.

Also, many of the world’s mines supplying nickel, cobalt, and lithium – all key ingredients for batteries – use very energy intensive, environmentally damaging mining methods, some even worse than drilling for oil.

These suppliers won’t meet their company’s audit processes for ESG (Environment, Sustainability, Governance), which makes the task of sourcing enough raw materials to support these EV ambitions a very tall order.

Even Geely Group, which owns the electric-only Zeekr and Polestar brand, has said that the biggest problem to accelerating EV is not a technical one, not even infrastructural, but one of logistics and supply.

Johan Hellsing is the Principal Expert for Motion and Energy Geely’s China Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) centre in Gothenburg, Sweden once told WapCar.my, “My clear opinion, which I have said many times, is that the bottleneck to electrification is access to batteries (total available supply),”

Because hybrids use smaller batteries, you can use the same number of raw materials but spread it out over a much greater number of vehicles, thus scaling up the carbon reduction effect.

Toyota's own numbers (which will of course be rejected by Tesla fans, objective discussions are nearly impossible) say that the batteries used in the equivalent of 260,000 BEVs have been used to make 18.1 million hybrids (cumulative Toyota and Lexus hybrids on the road), delivering CO2 reductions equivalent to 5.5 million BEVs. In other words, 1 full-hybrid alone can produce the effect of 3 BEVs.

How does the math work out? Well producing BEVs emit a lot more CO2, so a BEV needs to drive around 70,000 to 90,000 zero emission kilometres (depending on source of electricity supply) before it can even catch up to a hybrid.

Also read: Ignore hybrids to focus on BEVs? This is what Geely’s EV expert thinks

Now, it seems that Germany has finally accepted this viewpoint, although critics will definitely say that this is a result of lobbying by Germany’s car industry.

"We want electrically powered vehicles. Of course, hybrids also make a contribution to this," said Germany Transport Minister Volker Wissing.

The comment is quite different from the government’s previous stance, which have resisted hybrids to be part of Germany’s carbon neutral goals.

However, friction within the German coalition government is showing, as the Green Party, which insists on a 100 percent BEV-only future, is not too happy about the reversal.

Green Party MP MP Stefan Gelbhaar told Reuters, "We agreed on a clear goal in the coalition agreement of at least 15 million fully-electric passenger vehicles by 2030.”

“I am confident that Transport Minister Volker Wissing will make clear and swift progress here,” he added.

The situation is still fluid. Carbon neutrality targets, along with topics on migration policies, are a political hot potato in Germany, so don't assume this to be the end yet.