[Skybird]

A (typical) German tale. Narrated by FOCUS.
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Munich resident drives an old diesel again after a year of e-car chaos

The former Skoda, Holger Macht's faithful companion with a rattling diesel engine, had actually had its day after 20 years of life. Nevertheless, Macht still drove the car to his work in Bad Tölz every day for the past three years. But he already suspected since 2020: That won't work for long. "I knew that the Skoda would soon refuse service," he says.

Macht is a teacher at the Fachoberschule (FOS) and teaches German, history, and politics and society. He drives 100 kilometers a day to and from the FOS. That adds up to 25,000 kilometers a year.

In recent years, he had followed the diesel debate closely, hearing about the unhealthy air to which older diesel cars in particular contribute. And at some point he had decided to stop contributing to the bad air: "It was absolutely clear to me: I definitely wanted an electric car."
Munich resident wants to swap his diesel for an electric car after 20 years

Now one or the other will think: Why doesn't the man use public transport? But the connection to Bad Tölz is not that simple. After all, when the old Skoda actually went on strike for good overnight, Macht was forced to switch to public transport from mid-June 2022: "It took me 35 minutes to get to work by car, and a hundred minutes by public transport."

70 minutes by car, there and back, instead of three hours and 20 minutes by public transport: That has never been in a healthy ratio for Macht. Moving to Tölz? Out of the question for him. Macht has a private tie to Munich. "As a teacher, it's also not wrong to have a local distance from your job," he says, even though he loves his profession.

But Macht, as a frequent driver, bought an economical diesel again after all, for 8,000 euros. When the summer vacations started, he had time to look at some used cars. There wasn't much choice. "The market was completely empty," says Macht. But if Macht had his way, he would have taken out a loan and bought his dream electric car long ago.

For him, it's a dilemma. "I would have liked to have provided a little better air," says Macht. His conscience torments him to this day. "I only go into town by public transport anyway." But Macht encountered obstacles in his electric car project that he could not have foreseen.

The teacher lives in Ramersdorf, in a Gewofag housing development near Rosenheimer Strasse. He had been thinking about an electric car since 2020, shortly after there was talk of diesel bans in Munich for the first time. At the same time, he knew that his old diesel wouldn't last much longer.

The e-car project began for Holger Macht with an e-mail to Gewofag. He wanted to ask for permission to install a wallbox, or charging point, in his underground parking space. It shouldn't be complicated. For Macht, it was clear: "If I buy an e-car, then with its own charging point in the underground garage." His basic condition.

Too often, he had observed that the public charging stations were permanently occupied, with e-cars or even hybrid vehicles. But often also with diesel or gasoline vehicles, although that is not allowed. "When I leave for Bad Tölz in the morning, the thing has to be charged. I can't speculate on a charging option the night before or in the morning," says Macht.

On August 3, 2021, he wrote the first of quite a few e-mails to Gewofag: "Would you agree to a wallbox in the underground parking garage? Is there a need for a form-based application?" it says. The first answers come quickly, even on the same day. In fact, the approval of the landlord is required by law, the first mail says.

The second one, two days later, says: "An inspection is necessary and has been commissioned. This test was carried out by an expert from a Munich electrical company - whom Holger Macht was able to meet in person on September 10, 2021. They went together to the underground parking garage, to Macht's parking space.

Nearby is an electrical junction on the wall, about five meters from Macht's parking space. "The surveyor said that you could easily branch off a line here and put an electric meter in between, which would then record my consumption," Macht recalls. A wallbox could then be installed at its end, he adds: Macht's own new electric charging station.

Great, Macht thought, and believed it was only a matter of time before his wallbox could be bolted on. Full of anticipation, he picked out an e-car that would suit him. "It had to be a compact station wagon in which I could also easily take my husky Tommy," Macht recounts.

A few clicks on the Internet. There it was, the dream e-car: a Kia EV6. Cost: about 60,000 euros. The idea: pay a quarter of the sum immediately. "For the rest, I wanted to take out a loan," says Macht.

But the teacher didn't count on the landlord. Four weeks later: Still no answer from Gewofag. So Macht wrote again on October 9, 2021. The answer: They had requested the audit report and would get back to him.

More weeks passed. At the end of October 2021, KfW cancelled a subsidy of 900 euros for wallboxes. Money that Macht was actually counting on. Frustrated, he wrote to Gewofag - and received sobering news, on November 8, 2021: It was not possible to install a wallbox. Because it was not feasible to lay a line from the location of a potential wallbox to the electricity meter of his apartment on the seventh floor. That was the result of the test report.

Gewofag did not give any reasons for this and also did not address the auditor's idea of setting up the infrastructure directly in the underground parking garage. When asked by AZ, Gewofag wrote that it was a garage that was not located in the residential building. Therefore, a wallbox must always be connected to a power transfer point in the residential building. This would be the only way to measure the individual power consumption of Mr. Macht's future e-car.

For Macht, this was contradictory. After all, he had spoken to the expert personally. So he decided - Macht himself is politically active with the Volt party - to get city politics involved. "After all, the city has a stake in Gewofag," Macht thought to himself. He wrote to the city council faction of the Greens, the mayor's office of Verena Dietl, the municipal utilities and also the city council faction of the SPD. He pointed out that Gewofag always emphasized that it wanted to make wallbox access available to all tenants.

The campaign worked. Almost everyone contacted Gewofag and asked what the obstacle was to installing an underground parking wallbox for Holger Macht. In the end, Gewofag commissioned a second inspection. Mayor Dietl, who is also chairman of the supervisory board of Gewofag, personally informed Mr. Macht about this.

Dietl emphasized in the letter that Gewofag would basically like to promote e-mobility where possible and was currently working on a concept to enable all tenants to use a wallbox in the near future.

Three months later, almost March 2022. No trace of a second test report. Macht wrote to Gewofag again to inquire about the status. Once again he was put off. Then, on May 12, 2022, the result of the test report. A message from Gewofag. It said that the only way to install a wallbox was to lay a line from Holger Macht's apartment on the seventh floor down to the first floor level and from there to the underground parking garage.

Macht would have to bear the costs for this himself. Gewofag (current housing stock: 39,000) could not add anything. Meters, cables, infrastructure: about 16,000 euros. This is the result of the feasibility study by the electrical company. Gewofag could not cover the costs. "And that didn't even include the fees for the wallbox," says Macht.

In addition, he would be liable in the event of an emergency, the letter said, if the newly laid line caused damage. The cost breakdown for the wallbox line is 21 pages long. Macht estimates that the length of the line would have been 20 meters from his apartment.

16,000 euros, plus up to 2,000 euros for the wallbox, plus the 60,000 euros for the car: "Unfortunately, this cannot be financed," Macht wrote in frustration at some point in one of his last e-mails to Gewofag. For almost a year, he fought for a wallbox. For now, he continues to drive his Ford.

But the new used car isn't a permanent solution for him, either, since the city has announced it will ban many diesel vehicles from the city to improve air quality. Even though the city announced temporary exemptions for residents, this does not reassure Holger Macht. Because he could theoretically be forced to change vehicles again in about two years because of impending bans, even though his Ford Diesel is working fine.

Macht now wants to wait and see, but has decided to go electric for the time being, at least on two wheels, instead of four. "I bought an e-bike," he says. Of course, he can't use it to commute to the technical college in Bad Tölz every day - but at least he can ride it into town.
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Are you well entertained? How about a final joke then, to see you leaving this post with a laughing face?

A calculation demonstrated recently and gets often qwuoted since then that if the German "government wants to reach its climate-poltical goals until 2030 and abandon coal then, we would need from now on and then for every day until 2030 that every 15 minutes a big windmill is being launched in Germany additonally. Every 15 minutes.


The global supply chains are down, all main parts for windmill rotors now come from China or cannot be build without parts form China. We have not the material. We have only a small fraction of the engineers needed for this task alone. We have a dramatic shortage of workers. We have a dramatic decline in the economy, but still low unemployemnt - which only illustrates how few available workers we have. The the government collides head-on over the nculear powerplants.

But building 4 big windmills or 8 medium-sized windmills. Every hour. Every day. From now until 2030.