Recently also BMW: job cuts, severance payments, all temporary workers lose their perspective, damage to their reputation as a corporate citizen. Behind the company reports wrapped in cotton wool there are tough professional fates, and society is losing experience and talent. This also includes taxpayers, i.e. those who hold the store together. The German automotive industry lost 42,300 employees in the first half of the year, the decline is greater than in any other industry. Around 691,500 people are still employed there, the lowest level in twenty years. Compared to the high of 834,000 in 2018, around 142,500 jobs have been lost.
The pace of decline should make people sit up and take action. Or has a mixture of habituation and indifference set in? Politically, for a long time it was believed that the industry, which was always complaining about anti-chambering, could be expected to do anything with the arguments of environmental protection and safety - and when organizations that reveled in the destruction, such as the German Environmental Aid, complained, they received applause. The ban on registering new vehicles with combustion engines, which will apply in the EU from 2035, must also be viewed from this perspective.
Electromobility in the perfect storm
The decline in employment has been going on since 2019, but it is now much stronger than the transformation to electromobility would have suggested, states the Center of Automotive Management at the Bergisch Gladbach University of Applied Sciences. Its calculations only predicted such a low level of employment when electric cars had a market share of 50 percent. But today only around 25 percent are fully electric and eleven percent are plug-in hybrids, which is a real bankruptcy given the subsidies that have been provided for years through direct purchase bonuses or reduced company car taxation.
The idea of a perfect storm is obvious. Chinese manufacturers are entering the market with power, money and enthusiasm. Expensive energy, high labor costs, a demotivatingly large gap between gross and net salaries, and oppressive regulations are weakening Germany as a business location. As an entrepreneur or board member, it is important to make the best of difficult conditions. But even the most hands-on entrepreneur has a hard time running with shackles.
Don't learn to hate the car
Luca De Meo once said as CEO of Renault that we had to be careful that people didn't hate the car one day. That sounds irritating because the desire for individual mobility is increasing, contrary to all prophecies of doom. But today there are such high hurdles before the decision to buy a new car that people stick with their old cars; the average age of the existing car is well over ten years.
The question of the drive is overwhelming. The same applies to the compulsorily installed electronic monitors, who rob everyone who takes a test drive of their desire and nerves with their tinkling and shaking. The EU, as a rule-setter, has overreached here, and the accident protection company Euro-NCAP has lost the measure of its actually beneficial work.
China and its own weaving errors
The home-made difficulties are joined by geopolitical ones: Trump's erratic tariffs. China's long-planned access to raw materials. If the dependence on batteries from China is really viewed so critically, the EU cannot possibly stick to the ban on combustion engines. Not just because Europe is making slower progress with electromobility than hoped. Not only because there is a remarkable gap between Nordic countries on the one hand and Southern and Eastern Europe on the other. But also because the world has changed and it might be stupid to let even more skills move away than already. A four-cylinder from China beats in a Mercedes-Benz? Porsche is forced into CO₂ pooling with Xpeng in order to avoid penalties that threaten its existence? Who would have thought?
Practical examples will make weaving errors generally understandable, hopefully also for the Merz government and EU Commission President von der Leyen. The head of the Japanese manufacturer Mazda, who wanted to achieve around 25 to 40 percent of sales with electric vehicles by 2030, has lowered his forecast to 15 percent - and now also wants to concentrate on the further development of combustion engines and hybrid drives.
