There is no lack of gloomy forecasts and harbingers of a crisis in the German and European automotive industry. The Munich Ifo Institute warns of de-industrialization. Various studies expect a loss of more than a quarter of jobs at car manufacturers and suppliers in Germany. The management consultancy PWC sees the value added in the construction of combustion engines in Germany increasing slightly to 20.1 billion euros by 2025 and then shrinking to 1.5 billion euros by 2035. Employment in this sector is expected to grow to 169,000 by 2025, then shrink to 61,000 in ten years.
On the other hand, the market for and the production of battery-electric passenger cars (BEV) is expected to grow strongly in parallel with the disappearing production of combustion engines and cars. But how this market will develop in Germany and Europe still depends on many imponderables. At the same time, it is not certain that Germany, Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer and – just overtaken by India and South Korea – still in sixth place in the world, will be able to maintain its former position in the future electric car market: in the world of combustion cars, the three German corporations BMW, Mercedes and VW with the brands Audi and Porsche in the premium and luxury segment have achieved a widely recognized supremacy all over the world. Not only the history with the inventors of the automobile (Carl Benz 1885 and Gottlieb Daimler 1887) helped, but above all the combination of quality, engine performance and chassis, which combine comfort, speed and safety even at high speeds on German autobahns.