[Skybird]

[FAZ] The German government is missing its targets for the transformation of the automotive market. China has become the lead market for electromobility. Germany, meanwhile, is on a threefold wrong track.

After two years, the interim assessment of the Berlin traffic light coalition for the intended transformation of the automotive industry is sobering. "We will support the transformation process of the German automotive industry against the backdrop of digitalization and decarbonization," wrote the SPD, Greens and FDP in their coalition agreement in 2021. Germany was to become the "lead market for electromobility". With suitable framework conditions and support measures, they wanted to ensure that 15 million electric cars would be on Germany's roads by 2030.

This image-boosting goal is likely to be missed by a wide margin. For example, Stephan Bratzel, head of the Auto Institute CAM, believes that only seven to eight million such e-cars are achievable by 2030. So subsidies for the purchase of e-cars are now being quickly restricted. From September on, the purchase of business electric cars will no longer be subsidized, although more than two-thirds of all new registrations are business cars and company cars.

For private buyers, the subsidy will then be cut in 2024. At the same time, interest rates have risen, including for leasing, which is particularly important for e-cars. This is one of the reasons why Germany is heading for a lull in e-car sales next year. A recession is also on the horizon due to the poor auto economy.

Meanwhile, China has become the lead market for electromobility, although most cars there are charged with coal-fired electricity. China has the raw materials and the battery factories that Germany's industry and politicians have been too late to take care of. As a result, Chinese e-cars can now be built and offered much more cheaply.

Germany lacks the framework conditions both for a faster spread of e-cars and for investments by the auto industry. The network of public charging stations continues to grow very slowly. There is simply not enough power for broadly organized charging in private garages and underground parking lots.

The companies now planning to build battery factories and manufacture electric cars, and thus decide on the industrial locations of the future, lack the prospect of favorable energy prices in this country - not just for a few years, but for the lifetime of new factories. It is no wonder that German companies in the automotive sector are now particularly attracted to the U.S. and its subsidies, and that they are taking a large part of the investments planned for the next four years - almost 400 billion euros - abroad.

Instead of setting off in the direction of progress, Germany and its government's auto policy are on a threefold wrong track: Firstly, Germany's auto industry has been given a mandate to restructure in the direction of e-cars without creating good framework conditions for this. The policy is thus working for the green goal of limiting car traffic and production in Germany. Secondly, green climate policy wants to save the climate with a wide range of regulations for traffic and cars as well.

But even if Germany disappeared from the map, there would be hardly any detectable climate effect. Only with innovations for climate-friendly cars and production could Germany help the world turn the climate around, but we are far from that. Third, Germany would have new opportunities with climate-neutral e-fuels, but so far they have been missed for ideological reasons.

Not only the Berlin government, but also the EU Commission is doing a lot for a future without German car production. Although the ban on the registration of new internal combustion engines will take effect in 2035, the Commission is still quickly demanding an unnecessarily expensive Euro7 standard, planning an anti-innovation rule for artificial intelligence in cars, and calling for a blanket ban on many chemicals. Germany no longer has a vote in the EU Council of Ministers, because the Berlin coalition government is abstaining due to internal disputes. There was also little to be heard from the 96 German members of the European Parliament.

Even in a more favorable regulatory environment, it would still be far from certain that Germany would remain a major player on the global automotive market. This is where the fact that captains of industry and politicians were not as far-sighted in the past as they should have been from today's perspective takes its toll. The 2021 IAA auto show, opened at that time by Chancellor Angela Merkel, represented a late but hopeful departure in the direction of the e-car. The IAA 2023, opened this Tuesday by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, could be the beginning of a German decline.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtscha...-19147656.html

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FYI, the industry energy prices in Germany are ~3.5 times higher than in the US and 2.7 times higher than the global average, electricity for private housholds costs 174% more in Germany than in the rets of the world (source: Verivox) - and is further climbing, planned and intentionally and preset. If you want to destroy the industry of a country and chase investments away - German thinking found the most effient way to acchieve that in no time it. German efficiency monsters!