3. Object of Desire

The following section is based on the study by Schwedes et al. (2011a).

It has to be mentioned here that the Federal Government’ figures tacitly include hybrid vehicles, which comprise more than 50% of the total. The study by the Institute of the German Economy, on the other hand, only takes battery-powered electric vehicles into account. Nevertheless, this constitutes a clear change of direction.

The historian of technology Gijs Mom goes so far as to explain the failure in the 1990s by resorting to conspiracy theory (cf. Mom 2011). The conspiracy theorists repeatedly refer to the film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” (an excerpt can be found here: https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​r75lqbA0uMM accessed 22.09.2019). However, the film does not reveal a conspiracy, but rather identifies a number of groups of players who, from their specific point of view, spoke out against the electric car for good reasons. These include the majority of the US population, who were not willing or able to dispense with the four-door, gasoline-fuelled sedan, in view of the social conditions at the time. Thus, no conspiracy was needed to thwart the electric car, but rather the social conditions at the time were sufficient, where individual groups of players, such as the oil and automotive industries, with their respective particular interests, benefited from the gasoline-fuelled car. In reality, the electric car failed in the 1990s both in the USA and in Germany due to a lack of political transparency, which prevented an enlightened public discourse that would have made it possible to objectively weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of the electric car within the framework of a sustainable transport development strategy instead of being dominated by powerful special interests.

This is an example of how politics makes a difference. Contrary to the popular assertion that differences between the political parties have been levelled out, energy policy shows that the coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens at the end of the 1990s initiated a turnaround that the coalition between the Christian Democrats (CDU-CSU) and the Liberals (FDP) was neither willing nor able to achieve. The CDU/CSU-FDP coalition’ initial attempt to reverse the nuclear phase-out at the expense of the expansion of renewable energies made this clear once again.

Under the CDU/CSU-FDP Federal Government, however, the transformation of the energy system was again increasingly contested (cf. Kemfert 2013).