BEV sales in France are 20% of cars sold and in Germany it is 19.1% in 2025. So it is pretty similar, but Germany has had much faster growth recently, so it is very possible that this is going to change this year.
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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As a German, many of my countrymen and -women are rather embarassing.
I think everyone is embarrassed by their fellow citizens
Germany has done a lot of good with green energy too, so it's not all bad
Except for what they did with nuclear power.
Unlike what France wants us to think, nuclear power is not green. Unless you count that warm and fuzzy green glow.
Nuclear was supposed to be a stopgap until renewables and battery storage can handle 24/7. Nuclear by far produces much less CO2 than coal or gas. That matter much more in the long run.
And guess what? That time is now. It's just politics holding us back. The technology is here.
It is still absolutely stupid to get rid of nuclear power before coal, I guess that's what they're talking about.
Our coal usage is at an all time low and continues to decline. In fact the decline in recent years is greater than the contribution of nuclear power has ever had to our energy mix (roughly 2% per year).
Yeah, I think we should rather stick to good old clean coal tbh. Nuclear is for the deranged.
Nuclear is for the people who want to take the risk and don't care about their neighbours they contaminate as well in case of a catastrophe.
Except usage of coal has been going down steadily and is at an all time low. The amount we use coal less is bigger than the amount of electricity nuclear has ever contributed to the German electricity mix.
The main threat here is climate change. Nuclear plants are an excellent low CO2 alternative to traditional baseline power.
We can handle the waste. We canβt handle a 3c climate change bump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
Except we can't handle the waste. At least not in Germany where we move it between temporary storage locations until we find a permanent one soonβ’οΈ and are shocked that due to improper storage the containers are rusting.
You're right about climate change. But for Germany, nuclear power is not the awnser.
- We don't have a safe, final place to store the waste.
- We would again be dependend on other countrys, to import uranium.
- All nuclear power plants are offline and would take a lot of money to modernise / reopen them. To have a significant impact over all we would also need to build more. All of this will easily take more than 10 years.
For us, it is way more cost efficient, faster and safer to invest in solar, wind and battery's.
I live in Germany. I donβt understand the βno spaceβ argument. Just buy a 1km x 1km farm plot in Bayern and dig down. The space is there. The footprint is small. Look at the Onkalo site. The above ground footprint is even smaller.
This being said I think long term storage should be a EU level agenda modeled after the Finnish Onkalo model with shared locations.
Germany is already dependent on importing energy sources. So importing uranium ore from Canada is no different. Except we would import from an ally. Even solar which I support requires imports. Wind less so but even then our wind turbines are only partially domestic.
As far as reopening closed plants yah. You are right. I donβt think that is easy to reopen them after such neglect. The short term answer is to buy low CO2 power from France while Germany continues its renewable path. Aka nuclear base energy by proxy.
The short term answer is to buy low CO2 power from France
The same France that constantly buys electricity from Germany because of constant issues with their nuclear powerplants?
You can not just dig down anywhere. You need the right kind of rock and in a formation large enough that you can dig down and be sure, that no water can ever touch the nuclear waste and transport the nuclear material to the surface. That geology is pretty rarer.
This is true and why I think it should be a EU sponsored agenda. This being said a small plot with the right type of rock/location is not so rare it can not be found in all of the EU. We know this for a fact.
I suspect such a site could also be found in Germany. I mentioned Bayern just because there has been a large study done already that found several durable candidates.
The glow isn't green, though, but more blue or violet. Real life is not the Simpsons.
Nuclear power isn't (and never was) about cheap and clean power generation, but about having and maintaining a knowledge, equipment, and personnel pool for the military application of nuclear power.
Even if you have no military nuclear programme, if you have a civilian one that is set up correctly, you are within months of building yourself a workable nuclear deterrent. Politicians should simply stop lying about its purpose and it would be fine. Especially in a time where Europe needs to think hard about becoming independent from a nuclear deterrent provided by an outside country.
There is a difference between operating a technology on a comercial scale and having the capabilities to build on it. The university I went to had a reactor in one of it's cellars. Granted, tiny compared to a comercial plant but enough to do research with and train people on.
It's not "emotionally hard to accept" it's financially hard to purchase.
While I would agree, many people really do hate the idea of electric cars for no other reason than nostalgia for combustion engines. But it's changing.
There are definitely die-hard fans of combustion engine cars, but realistically, the majority would gladly switch if electric cars were affordable and the infrastructure was in place. However, EU imposed tariffs on Chinese electric cars while local manufacturers failed to provide accessible options.
I know plenty people that are buying new cars (not cheap ones) and are deliberately not going electric. It is not about the money for some peopleβ¦
Our electric car is currently in the shop and we got a IC one as a replacement. I can't even express how much it annoys me to feel the car shift (at least its an automatic) and make noise when I accelerate. And that's a quality car, so it's muffled already.
after riding in an electric car, every IC engine sounds like a tractor
And even the high quality ones overall feel so clumsy and rattling
We really get spoiled in our EVs, ngl.
Every time I drive: "Why can't my car be more quiet?"
Me, constantly, about everything: "Why can't it all be more quiet?"
Muh big machine vroom vroom. Some people are so dumb π€¦π»
I'd argue that a lot of Germans are rightfully nostalgic about the quality of cars from before the automotive industry pioneered enshittification in the mid 2000s. Electric cars weren't even viable back then because of the state of battery technology. That only became decent well after all cars had already been thoroughly enshittified, so there is no way of buying a non enshittified electric car, because nobody is even making one.
I get it somewhat, just not the intensity of their emotional connection to combustion engines.
The combustion engine's character, flaws, sounds, cancerous wonderful smells. Tuning culture. Shitbox culture. Wrenching. All of that.
But I'm not spiralling into despair because EV is the hot new thing. It's different, yes, but keep an open mind and you'll age slower in the head. You can take EV battery safety courses and learn to wrench on them. Tuner and shitbox EV culture is already thriving on YouTube. People will learn EV have character too. The loud fart sounds shall be missed (many of you won't of course lol) but oh well it's not that big a deal.
My next commuter is going to be used EV. I am lucky to have a garage, so my big shitty V8 1994 Chevy trugg will continue doing the occasional dirty job until I can't buy gas at a reasonable price any longer or it's illegal to operate. I keep it nice minus the bed, so if I live long enough maybe I DIY EV swap it πΉ.
On first perusal of the title, my mind read "combustable cars."
That's very endearing, Germany. Now be big boys and rip off the bandaid. You've been through worse.
Why though? EVs have way, WAY less maintenance and "fuel" cost.
Let's see an EV on the road after 15 or 20 years.
Just add speakers that do the vroom vroom sounds.
Follow me for more business advice (maybe) :P
And that is something they can look back fondly on.
It is a car. you will be calling it junk and replacing it in a few years. So don't get emothional.
I get it - a stick shift ICE may not accelerate as fast/smooth - but it is a lot more fun. However driving is a serious task with potential to kill people. You can't treat it like a game