On the bus out of Munich, to the exhibition halls in the Riem district, where the so-called mobility fair “IAA Mobility” is taking place this year, the passengers pressed their noses flat as if they were on a safari. Where are they, someone asked, referring to the air conditioning stickers that had been spotted on the highway that morning, but there were no stickers to be seen and the passengers almost looked a little disappointed, like tourists driving through the savannah neither lions nor zebras were seen.
At the Mercedes stand, a somewhat shy-looking young man with glasses stood on a car and held a sign in front of his stomach that said “The Party is over”; but you didn’t need him to come to the conclusion that there was little to celebrate here. What can be seen in Munich has little to do with the orgies of chrome, high gloss, metallic paint, quadruple exhaust pipes and engine roars played from towering speakers that made the International Motor Show a place of pilgrimage for the auto nation when it was still held in Frankfurt to do. A climate adhesive has to search for a long time until it finds a place where there is nothing green and no wood in the background. Appeasement rhetoric dominates: There is the stand of the supplier Denso with a small ornamental garden and a tree, the slogan is “Mobility in harmony with our planet, society and all people”. The last time there were more trees at a car show was when cars were still partly made of wood. A new side impact protection made of wood is now being advertised at the “Weitzer Woodsolutions” stand: the car becomes a rolling tree.