On Thursday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is hosting what might be the most important car summit in decades, a gathering of Germany’s automotive titans in Berlin to tackle an industry-wide meltdown. As we’ve often pointed out on Automology.com, Germany’s automotive might, once the envy of the world, is beginning to look more like a cautionary tale than a success story.+
The numbers tell a grim tale. Car manufacturing employs about 750,000 Germans, yet 50,000 of those jobs vanished in the past year alone, that is a gut-wrenching 6% cut. And the VDA, Germany’s car-industry federation, warns that another 140,000 could disappear by 2035. The culprits? The relentless march toward electrification and the rising tide of Chinese competition particularly in China itself.
Electric vehicles, efficient though they may be, need fewer hands on the assembly line. Fewer welders, fewer machinists, fewer people, period. Meanwhile, China has turned the EV game into an industrial arms race, flooding Europe with cheaper, faster-to-market models that Germany’s bureaucrat-heavy giants struggle to compete with.
Add to that the European Union’s lofty climate neutrality goal for 2050, and you’ve got an industry groaning under the weight of regulation and idealism. Merz, to his credit, has called out the EU’s proposed 2035 ban on new internal combustion engines as “wrong”; a rare flash of pragmatism from Berlin. But his coalition partners, the Social Democrats, are clinging to their green credentials like a security blanket or a well-worn pair of hemp trousers.
After today’s rally with the car bosses, expect sparks to fly at the chancellery. As we’ve written before on Automology, Germany’s car industry doesn’t just need new models, it needs a new direction, or maybe the ditching of the zero-emission mantra espoused by the virtual signalling greenie zealots. Otherwise, Europe’s automotive powerhouse might soon find itself overtaken, not just on the road, but in the race for relevance.
