The last time Olaf Scholz visited the Ford factory in Cologne, the Chancellor inaugurated a production facility with the “Electric Vehicle Center,” which was an important investment for the future for the American car manufacturer. Since then, Ford has only produced electric vehicles in Cologne. However, he is currently on short-time work because the two car models are hardly finding any buyers. Now the SPD politician has come to the Rhineland again in the middle of the election campaign to at least briefly take part in a works meeting of Ford employees. The employees are upset because their employer wants to cut 2,900 jobs in Germany, meaning a good one in four at the more than 100-year-old location in Cologne. Ford justifies the further job cuts with the high costs in Germany and the weak business with electric cars. Auto industry suffers from lack of sales Scholz sees the best solution for this in “sales promotion that works across Europe,” as the Chancellor said after his visit to the works meeting. This means that the funding for electromobility would also be accompanied by “an expansion of the charging infrastructure everywhere in Europe”. The other option is an EU approval for Germany that there can be national funding for electric vehicles that focuses on vehicles that are manufactured in this country. After the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling at the end of last year, the government briefly canceled the purchase bonuses for electric cars, after which sales of these vehicles fell significantly. Not only Ford is affected by this, the entire automotive industry is feeling the weakness in demand. However, the American car manufacturer already has concrete plans to cut 4,000 of the current 28,000 jobs in Europe. “We all agree that huge efforts are needed by everyone to transform the auto industry in Germany,” said Marcus Wassenberg, managing director and labor director of the Ford works, on Tuesday. Already at the end of November, when Ford presented the reduction plan to its employees, Wassenberg told the F.A.Z. said that there must be a contribution from politics. “We need the environmental bonus and we need the charging infrastructure,” said Wassenberg. Ford invested two billion dollars in converting the factory in Cologne to produce electric vehicles. Thousands of employees have been retrained.France as a role modelThe Ford works council had also called for a purchase incentive bonus this week to stimulate demand for electric cars. “Role models like France have shown that funding can be linked to income or provided in the form of a flat rate,” said a statement from the general works council. In France, the purchase premiums are linked to a catalog of environmental criteria, which means that Chinese electric cars that were produced using coal-fired power are excluded from the subsidy. “We appeal to the responsibility of politicians to set the right course for electromobility,” said general works council chairman Benjamin Gruschka.More on the topicScholz, who invited people to the steel summit in Berlin on Monday, where the future of the ailing industrial group Thyssenkrupp and whose thousands of jobs were cut, emphasized the importance of industrial jobs. Germany will remain an industrial country. “We will do everything we can to achieve this because we are at the forefront of technology,” said Scholz.
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