Tag Archives: Automobiles

Electric Cars Have Already Reached A Whopping 0.01 Percent Of All Registered Cars In Germany

October 4, 2012 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That’s some, uh, 4,600 vehicles. At this rate, the German government’s plan to have 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020 will be reached easily.

Or maybe not. Because those pesky German consumers still haven’t got the message and think that these babies are too expensive and don’t have a long enough range to make them attractive as, you know, as cars.

So that’s why the German government, flexible as it is, has now said that their goal of 1 million electric cars by 2020 (set last year) has now become a goal of 600,000 electric cars by 2020. I can’t wait to see what next year’s goal for 2020 will be like.

Damn. I’m impressed. This German Energiewende (energy turnaround) is getting easier and easier to reach all the time.

“If we don’t create incentives, then the whole thing is going to fail,” the Green party said in a statement.

Size Matters

August 21, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

There appears to be only one thing that Germans love more than being greener than green and concerned about saving the environment (and having to pay soaring fuel prices all the damned time in the process).

And that’s buying big honking high-horsepower cars with ever bigger engines all the freakin’ time. Vroom! Vroom!

In the first seven months of 2012, the average horsepower of the engines of new cars sold in Germany stood at 138 hp, up from a previous record of 135 hp seen in 2011 and 130 hp in 2010.

Die Deutschen lieben immer stärkere Autos – im Schnitt hat jeder Wagen um drei PS zugelegt.

Dumb Americans buying big cars again

February 2, 2011 By in Heconomy, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

But some of them aren’t all that dumb because they are the ones buying the big German ones. That’s the essence of the article anyway.

Inexplicable, really. German intellectuals everywhere are aghast at the United States failing to do what it is supposed to do yet again. Despite Der Spiegel‘s recent pronouncemnt of the end of US-Amerika as we know it (in black and white and color too), US-Amerikaner are suddenly buying big fat politically correct automobiles as if there were no tomorrow.

Or maybe that is the explanation. Perhaps this is our last collective gasp as a nation before the whole culture (excuse me, I meant lack of culture) implodes with a tremendous groan and rolls over to die, I dunno, in Nevada or someplace. Everybody must sense instinctively that this will be our last chance to drive off into the sunset of our American oblivion in our monstrous ‘merican automobiles in hyper-heroic, High Noon style.

Or maybe… Maybe the experts at Der Spiegel (and experts in general) are just too stupid to poor piss out of a boot.

Der Autoabsatz in den USA boomt.

Speaking of German cars…

June 3, 2010 By in Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Americans sure like buying them – again. Germans aren’t all that interested in them anymore, though (no more cash-for-clunkers).

Orders abroad are up 22 percent in May compared to a year earlier – with China and the United States providing the demand. We’ve been through this before, haven’t we (and again and again)?

“Die Bedeutung des US-Marktes nimmt wieder zu.”

Go west, German autombile companies!

January 12, 2010 By in Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Mit einem blauen Auge davongekommen (getting out of the econmic crisis with just a black eye), German automobile locust types now have their other eye clearly focused on US-Amerika and plan to produce even more of their fancy schmancy Germerican cars there.

Actually, they’ve been doing this quite some time already and doing it quite well, thank you. They’ve continually increased their share of the American Automobile Market Pie these past five years and now enjoy a healthy 7.3 percent piece of it. And believe it or not, the American auto market is still the biggest in the world, although I wouldn’t know why. Or you wouldn’t think so these days, I mean.

Or could it be that German auto makers just want to get the hell out of Germany because, I dunno, German workers are too expensive? Nah.

Die deutsche Autoindustrie sieht sich in den USA als Krisengewinner.

Volltreffer!

March 2, 2009 By in Heconomy Tags: 1 Comment

Talk about being right on the mark. Everybody is trying to get a piece of this new consumer incentive plan for old cars (Abwrackprämie) over here in Germany these days. The government shells out 2,500 euros to anybody who trades in his old wreck for a new, more environmentally friendly one, I mean new one. German consumer confidence is way up at the moment, primarily because of this.

 

 Konsum until you drop.

 

But this is another one of those only-in-Germany kind of things, folks. The wreck you trade in here to get the money has to be at least nine years old! That’s right, nine (not nein). Only German cars live that long, of course, so it’s basically a subsidy for the German car industry. And they’re selling their smaller models like hotcakes at the moment, despite all of the economic doom.

 

By the way, you can’t trade the ones in you torch first, though, no matter how old they are.

 

„Die Verbraucher in Deutschland haben trotz der schwersten Rezession seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg mehr Lust zum Einkaufen.“