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As a German who never owned a car (have driver license 30+ years) and never will, hurray!

Next: Petrol cars please.

Costs for cities would decrease a lot [1], room for bicycles would increase, noise would drop to a level which can't believed, ambulances would be adjusted to walking persons instead of loud cars with their stereos on and air would be wonderful.

[1] https://www.amazon.de/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X

And the German economy would crash, but never mind that. Before you ban all petrol cars you will first need something that can replace them because not everybody is in a position to use public transport both due to capacity, speed and door-to-door elements.
> ambulances would be adjusted to walking persons instead of loud cars with their stereos on

German ambulances and firetrucks have an unbelievable siren volume! It is piercing - I have to literally cover my ears if I'm a bystander. I have never heard anything like that in other European countries or the US. So I suspect that you can already lower their volume if you German people were willing to, seeing that it works fine in other places...

One thing I've quickly realized from driving an electric car: gas (petrol) cars smell really, really bad. We're just so used to it we don't notice.
As a ___ who never owned ____ I would love to see ____ completely banned.

I guess I sometimes feel this way about some things, but then pretty quickly get over it and realize that other people have different utility functions than me, and that I kinda like this whole life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness thing.

I much rather take the approach that externalities be accounted for properly than to ban anything that produces an externality.

So it’s rather much more like; how many trees do you want me to plant to keep my car? Or more probably, enjoy the $2.50/gal I just paid your town in taxes to fill up my gas tank. Instead of, fuck off with your dirty car you’re not welcome here.

So what‘s with the constitutional guarantee of ownership ? I highly doubt that court decision is constitutional, I think and hope it is going to be overthrown by the German Federal Consitutional Court. I‘m so tired of the freedom hostile Green-Leftist agenda in Germany !
As a German urbanite who has been moving in and out of cities to even rural areas I have to say: Look beyond your own nose. Not everybody lives in Berlin Kreuzberg.

It's basically statements like these "Next: Petrol cars please" that deprive the clean-air activists of any credibility.

As a German who also never owned a car (also have a driver's license), I find your enthusiasm invigorating. But I do not see it happening.

If the outcome was better funding for public transportation, I would be all for it. With more people using public transportation, traffic would lighten up and may get more relaxed? Everybody wins!

It would be really nice if it turned out this way, but I am not overly optimistic. The car lobby has a lot of power, and the relationship people have with their cars is not very rational.

(I will freely admit that my relationship to my computers is similarly irrational, but all my computers combined gobble up far less energy than a single car with its motor running in idle. Plus, a substantial amount of the electricity that drives my computers comes from renewable sources.)

What do you think about the idea that this is a hidden stimulation for the German car industry, ie. If you can find a reason to ban all cars that are painted blue, you create massive demands for other colors.
> ambulances would be adjusted to walking persons

What about death? I mean, wouldn't this take too long to reach people and to bring them into hospital if needed?

(We already have cases were people die on the way to the hospital as things stand.)

Please no bicylces, they are terrible for pedestrians. I'd rather deal with cars than bikes.
It'd also practically stop economic growth of areas outside large cities and slow down economic growth of the city itself. Many businesses would be ruined (and thus people working on them). Many people would loose their jobs.

This is a very backwards approach. Why don't we destroy our cities that have replaced the beautiful nature that used to be there instead of them?

It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5...

The situation is similar to Germany's work on its electric power sources. Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous. Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca...

Stop touting "Germany buys electricity from France because they don't have nuclear power". France always exported electricity because they cannot power their nuclear power plants up and down as easy as others can their coal plants. In hot summers and cold winters France relies on Germany electricity to stabilize their net because nuclear power then becomes a problem.
Sorry, but some of your statements are only partially correct. In fact germany exports more energy than it imports. (https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germa...) Also the popularity of diesel might have other factors as well.
I was in Spain last year for several weeks and it was so depressing how every town viewed at altitude was covered in a pervasive pea soup of diesel smog.

The link between German industrial policy/protectionism and environmental disasters like diesel has been known for a while now but European cities in particular will be paying the price for a long time.

> Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous

Nuclear was turned off because of FUD.

Diesel fuel is taxed lower primarily because it’s historically been the fuel for trucks. Using Diesel engines in cars is a comparatively new development.
> It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5....

That's not true. Diesel was a byproduct of gasoline production, which was cheaper because in less demand. This is changing slowly.

> Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough.

That's disinformation. Germany has a high and growing percentage of renewable power, and it exports electricity - for example, frequently to France, especially in the summer, because scarceness of cold river water to cool the french nuclear plants.

Then, renewable energy in Germany is subsidized to some degree, a subsidy which is paid by a small percentage on the bill of private households. On the other hand, there are numerous companies which are except from this tax. Also, every time there is an oversupply of wind or solar energy, the price at the energy spot market goes to zero. In the net result, companies are paying much less for energy.

And what you also are leaving out of the equation: Renewable energy is now cheaper than nuclear. There is only one nuclear power project in the EU, Hinkley Point in Britain, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the whole project is likely to make a net loss. I guess the only thing that keeps it alive are the nuclear weapons ambitions of the UK government.

The first link goes to a paywall for me. Is the fuel subsidized, or just taxed less? The tax on gasoline in Germany is roughly 100% at current prices.
Downvote for using amp links.
European law has been very tilted towards Diesel engines for a long time. As the recent VW debacle proved - oversight was quite lax compared to the US diesel regs. This laxness was the result of the influence of BMW, Mercedes and VW and the outcome of years of corporate lobbying. It’s a good first step, but they have further to go.

Despite the rhetoric, Germany has also been very restrictive with Tesla, viewing it as a challenge to its crown jewel automotive companies (no credits, no additional supercharger stations, much harsher reading of laws to protect their own industries).

You know that Germany will be serious when that changes.... (or the German car companies will have finally caught up to Tesla’s battery power and power train)...

A big part of the problem here is the the EU was focusing on CO2 rather than NOx and that diesels are actually really good in the CO2 department.
Speaking about "rhetoric":

"Germany has also been very restrictive with Tesla"

How exactly does not subsidizing a company amounts to being restrictive?

Partially related: "Fiat Chrysler is reportedly ditching diesel cars by 2022" (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17053362/fiat-chrysler-di...). Diesel sales are collapsing all over Europe, I think one of the latest reports puts the number of new Diesel cars sold in France at just under 50%, while they used to be at 75% four or five years ago. The writing is on the wall.
I am so confused by government policy here in the UK. Right now I'm looking at a 5 year old used Diesel car with £0 road tax and 70+ MPG for about 10k GBP.

My current Petrol engine costs £130/annum road tax, and only gets 30-40 MPG, I can also buy petrol cars with road tax of £240-500/annum (based on emissions)

But if I buy the Diesel, it could be banned or worthless in a few years, because of these types of policies. So what is the government telling me to purchase?

I can't buy an electric car because I only have on street parking so there's nowhere to charge it, and decent electric cars aren't really available at the 10k mark yet.

I could be wrong, but I would guess that your quandary isn't to do with the policy as such, but the way it's been gamed by car manufacturers. That diesel would likely have a much higher road tax if its actual emissions were taken in to account, and not just the lab-based ones.

Get a petrol car pay the tax would be my recommendation. Depends on what you need too. My 5-year-old petrol Fiesta was <£10k and is £0 road tax.

Vehicle Excise Duty doesn’t (generally) change retroactively, so 5 years ago they were telling whoever bought that diesel car to buy diesel.

The bands are now (since April 2017) flat regardless of emissions for petrol and diesel [1], so the encouragement is to buy either an electric car or a petrol/diesel car (as you prefer) with a new price less than £40k (or more than 5 years old).

The only part that changes with emissions now is the fee at registration, which is factored into the purchase price (for a new car) or already paid (for a used car).

1: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables

> So what is the government telling me to purchase?

At least here in Germany, the message is clear: everything is fine, as long as the replacement interval is as short as the industry needs it to be. If the carmaker lobby could get away with it, they would make the government outlaw all cars already sold biannually.

(Except for vintage cars, which are sacred temples of brand heritage)

I seriously hope you do the right thing and do NOT buy diesel.

It would be incredibly irresponsible now that the dangers of NoX are known.

FYI, I live in London and am seriously affected by NoX, I’ve had bronchitis several times in the past few years.

London exceeded annual NoX limits within just a few weeks of the new year.

Luckily the tide is turning, public opinion is increasingly growing against diesel, and the govt is finally enacting extra diesel fees and considering bans.

Government policy is to not retroactively change tax bands but to control vehicle use through other means, eg emissions zones.

I’m sure you can work out the morally correct action based on the types of areas you drive through. You don’t really need the government to make this decision for you.

Eastern Europe will be flooded with those cars now. http://www.dw.com/en/germanys-dirty-diesel-cars-en-route-for...
The EU comission threatened to fine Germany for the air pollution caused by these cars. I expect they'd treat other EU countries the same.
Right. Seems like Germany needs a cash for clunkers program like the US had. The best way to guarantee a car not pollute is recycle it into constituent components.
I wonder which ways the prevailing winds blow? (Do they follow the jetstream?) Salt Lake City, Denver, and Los Angeles all suffer significant air pollution from neighboring states and cities- air pollution is a regional, not local, problem. In other words- they ship the cars off, but the pollution could blow right back to them!
Note that this ruling is only to clarify that cities are allowed to implement car bans on their own without a federal directive in place.

Now we will have to wait and see if the cities will actually be sued into having to implement such bans.

>Now we will have to wait and see if the cities will actually be sued into having to implement such bans.

They already have been forced to implement such bans by the lower court. The cities appealed, but as decided today were unsuccessful in doing so.

The backstory here: EU law mandates doing something to reduce pollution if it's too high. German law prohibits various kinds of discrimination. For example, a simple ban on half the cars on Monday and the other on Tuesday would bother large plumber companies much less than independent plumbers who need a carful of tools and have only one car. What actions are the cities permitted to take, and/or required.
Excellent news for the air quality in German cities. We've been blatantly breaking German and EU law for years now.
Is this backed by real science? I was under the impression that modern diesels were highly efficient and quite within the acceptable emission standards.
A correction to the headline; its only older diesels, not all diesels.

From way down the article:

> Cars that meet Euro-4 emissions standards could be banned from Stuttgart from next January, while Euro-5 vehicles should not be banned until Sept. 1, 2019, four years after the introduction of the latest Euro-6 standard.

If you have a diesel with Ad Blu designed to catalytically remove NOx, you should be OK for now.

Can anyone more familiar with this case comment on what exactly happened here?

It sounds like two private organizations, DUH (Deutsche Umwelthilfe) and ClientEarth, sued a couple of cities (Munich, Stuttgart, and Dusseldorf, possibly among others), saying they had to improve air quality. This was, apparently, on the basis that the cities had illegally high levels of NOx -- I'm not certain on what basis this was illegal, whether German or EU regulations.

Munich offered a ban, which everyone was happy with. Stuttgart and Dusseldorf attempted to offer a mitigation strategy, and DUH and ClientEarth sued again saying that the mitigation was insufficient, and the judge ruled that they only a ban would suffice.

The cities appealed, apparently on the basis that they were not legally allowed to impose such a ban(?) and now, a higher court has ruled that they are legally allowed to impose such a ban.

awesome news - first of all public transportation in any town with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants is good enough that nobody needs to use a car except for very specific cases. of course if everybody would switch to ÖPNV then the capacity would be maxed out - so the conclusion is increasing availability of public transportation.

also the way parts of government (mostly those rooted in Bavaria) attempted together with VW, Audio etc. to weasel their way out of taking responsibility. the testing applied was stupid and lacking realism - but nonetheless they programmed software that detects a test and adjusts the motor's inner workings. that's beyond benefiting of stupidity - that is criminal.

It feels great, great, great - I hope this will strengthen research and development for and of electric vehicles.

Wouldn't it be great if Tesla kicks these cheaters in the bin and wins the car race (like the iPhone did vs. the other phones)? Pity producing cars isn't as fast as manufacturing an iPhone. Germany's industry is in real trouble, looks like they were cheating.
I assume they are removing cars and buses making use of this tech first as they are far more likely to be dirty that cars. Even the cheating VW cars were still magnitudes cleaner than the immediate previous generation.

I think they are going to find their pollution problem is nearly as bad and will need to make more difficult choices rather than relying on fear of a partial truth. It isn't just diesel cars making their cities dirty. As stated, the change made to even the cheating cars would have demonstrated such if it were just cars