Dear reader,
We’ll get back to you and hope you had a relaxing Christmas holiday and a good start to the new year. The German car market caught on the last meters of 2025 Tailwind and, with 2.86 million new registrations, exceeded the – admittedly weak – previous year by 1.4 percent. Car production was also slightly above the 2024 level.
But the big picture remains difficult: In today’s lead story you can read why the next rough year awaits the scene in 2026 and why the auto industry in particular has brought this on itself. Our topics of the week:
How strategy errors cost the auto industry billions
What new job Audi’s former strategy chief is taking up
Why the Suzuki Jimny won’t disappear from Europe despite its sales ban
Topic of the week: The auto industry’s costly strategy deficits
In 2025, the German auto industry will outdo itself with ever new savings programs. The costs have to come down, but what happens otherwise? Where are the ideas in the increasingly tough competition from China and the USA? Industry expert Christian Malorny sounds the alarm in his guest article: “If the European and American car bosses do not radically change course, the classic order on the global automobile markets will collapse and further expose the management errors of the local automobile industry.” While people here are celebrating their tentative catch-up in electromobility, others are already setting new standards with autonomous and inexpensive vehicles. Read here, what VW, Mercedes or BMW should do from Malorny’s point of view in order to get closer to their former leadership imperative
.
On January 6th, not only some parts of Germany celebrate the Three Kings, Lufthansa, a DAX company, also celebrates its birthday on that date. 2026 will be a very special one, the airline turned 100 years old on Tuesday. Reason enough to consider the history of Lufthansa. Helmut Reich gives the chronicler and reports: Only a few German companies are so closely linked to contemporary history – of terror, turbulence and tragedy
.
Deepdrive: Green is trending
The Greens are becoming increasingly popular – at least when looking at the streets of the Federal Republic. According to the, the number of new green cars exceeded Automotive Industry Association
In 2025, the 100,000 mark (100,715) will be reached in this country for the first time in more than 25 years. Compared to 2024, this meant a lush green increase of 26.5 percent and was enough for a “market share” of 3.9 percent. However, real evergreens remain a dreary paint trio: with a total of almost 78 percent, the vast majority of car buyers also opted for a black, gray or white model last year.
While Elon Musk (54) sent the first signs of relaxation in his recently tense relationship with ex-buddy and US President Donald Trump (79), he has not found a suitable recipe for selling the cars made by his manufacturer Tesla. In 2025, sales fell for the second time in a row, Tesla only got rid of 1.64 million units. The crown for the world’s largest electric car brand is gone: BYD delivered almost 2.3 million electric vehicles last year. Tesla’s aura is collapsing particularly quickly in Western Europe: at the beginning of 2020, almost every third new electric car there was a Tesla. Last? Not even one in ten anymore
.
I wish you a crash-free 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
.
You can also find our newsletter “manage:mobility”. here on our website.