German Manager Magazine: News about Volkswagen, ZF, Flix, XPeng – the newsletter manage:mobility003212

Dear reader,

Whether rail or Lufthansa: Habemus tariff agreement! That you can still write that, especially after the endless dispute between the railways and the GDL. More money, inflation compensation, 35-hour week: The train drivers are getting a nice package that will hopefully keep them from further strikes for a long time. Perhaps the approaching retirement of GDL boss Claus Weselsky (65) also contributes to this.

The union boss has achieved a lot for his members. Some are concerned about the trend towards increasingly comfortable conditions for employees. manager magazine columnist Klaus Schweinsberg, for example. The economics professor says: The Germans have to work more again. Critics are likely to immediately comment: “Work smarter, not harder.” Only one thing seems certain: even if the railway solves a problem, it continues to provide a topic of conversation.

As soon as the sales figures start to sag a little, electromobility as a whole is called into question. Mercedes boss Ola Källenius (54) was most prominent in moving away from “electric only”. Is Volkswagen also turning towards combustion engines again? Three years ago, Chief Technology Officer Thomas Schmall (60) was celebrated for his announcement that he would build six large battery factories. But as steeply as VW shares subsequently rose, they have since fallen again. The company’s electric cars are not doing well. However, Schmall rejects a U-turn in Michael Freitag’s interview. “The future belongs to electromobility. In any case, we must and will maintain our strategy,” says the gentleman about the battery cells. Investors have already warned him: “Thomas, there’s no room to fail.”

More and more people are riding Pedelecs. In 2023, for the first time in Germany, more cyclists bought an electrically assisted bike than a conventional one. However, the increase in comfort does not come without a certain risk: According to the Federal Statistical Office

Of 1,000 Pedelec accidents with personal injury, 7.9 ended fatally, while in crashes involving non-motorized bicycles it was only 3.6.

Deep Drive: Debates about the company car

The further Simmering company car dispute at Audi

solved at LinkedIn

At the beginning of the week there was another debate: Do we still need company cars? Alphabet says: Yes. According to study

Companies can impress even their youngest employees with four wheels. The company car is much more in demand among GenZ than, for example, bicycle leasing. But be careful: In this case, Alphabet is not the parent company of Google, but a subsidiary of BMW.

When Mercedes and BMW still dreamed of great success with car sharing, the vehicles for this were called Car2go and DriveNow. The “wedding in heaven” followed in 2019 and ShareNow was born. Nobody was happy with the marriage in Stuttgart and Munich, but the big bang followed in 2022: Stellantis took over. Now it’s high time for a new name. ShareNow GmbH becomes Free2move Deutschland GmbH. “What does this change for you? “Nothing at all,” the customer service ecstatically tells users Mail

and hopes “that you find this news as exciting as we do”. We respond with an ancient meme

: “Honestly? Nah.”

I wish you a happy Easter!

Yours, Christoph Seyerlein

Do you have any wishes, suggestions or information that we should take care of journalistically? You can reach my colleagues in the Mobility team and me at manage.mobility@manager-magazin.de

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You can also find our newsletter “manage:mobility”. here on our website.

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