Dear reader,
It’s hard to believe: There’s a car industry meeting taking place in Wolfsburg at which Volkswagen is the patron, but not directly in the foreground. “Crisis” is probably a term you hear more often at the International Suppliers Fair. After all, many car suppliers are in deep trouble.
The European Vehicle Suppliers Association (Clepa
) turned on the calculator at the trade fair and determined: Since 2020, 86,000 jobs have been cut in the industry and only 30,000 have been created. Particularly affected: Germany. 59 percent of the jobs eliminated were located here. The trend is likely to continue: in the first half of 2024, suppliers announced that they would cut a further 32,000 jobs. Good auto news is rare these days. But they still exist, including in this newsletter. Promised. Our topics of the week:
On September 4th, the Daimler Truck supervisory board elected the Swede Karin Rådström (45) as the new CEO. On September 5th, 10 a.m., chairman Joe Kaeser (67) announced directly what he expected from the front woman: 15 percent returns and a market value of 50 billion euros. Both well above current values. Competitors like Volvo and Paccar finally managed to do the same. Rådström is familiar with sporting goals as a former successful rower. “There is no reason why we cannot achieve the goals,” she says herself. Together with CFO Eva Scherer (40), she is now working on the right plan. My colleague Margret Hucko and my colleague Michael Freitag report on the first lines of the first women’s top duo in the Dax. Rådström and Scherer want it build, rebuild and dismantle
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I promised you positive car headlines in the newsletter intro. Here you go: While competitors have recently had to issue a series of profit warnings, General Motors is earning better than expected. Even before the positive Tesla figures, GM reported a profit of $3 billion in the third quarter. The stock exchange thanked CEO Mary Barra (62) with a price jump of 10 percent.
Deepdrive: Buying a car online
After years of dominance, Tesla has, according to the consultancy Bearing point
no longer the best online shop for cars. Mercedes and Nio passed by. But the front runners can’t score points everywhere. In Germany, Mercedes (-11 percent), Nio (-63.5 percent) and Tesla (-41.9 percent) perform worse than the overall market (-1 percent) in terms of new registrations despite their online expertise.
There has been controversy about the “pop-up cycle path” on Berlin’s Kantstrasse for years. Now district councilor Christoph Brzezinski (CDU) has even announced that hundreds of residents could lose their homes. The fire department cannot set up turntable ladders because of a parking strip between the bike path and the traffic lane. Since there are no other escape routes, this is essential for the survival of residents in around 35 houses from the third floor onwards in an emergency. Plans to convert the parking lane into a bus lane were never implemented. The search for a solution will begin again on Thursday. May she be successful. Otherwise you would have to ask yourself: Do you have a bike in Berlin?
Have a good week.
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.