The automobile industry, which is extremely important for Germany, is increasingly being pushed abroad. The industry association VDA sees an urgent need for action in the economic framework.
The automotive industry sees production in Germany at risk due to high energy prices and excessive bureaucracy. “Some factories can only be kept here because money is being earned at locations abroad. We have a serious location problem,” said the President of the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), Hildegard Müller, to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (Saturday). Jobs in Germany can only be kept if energy becomes cheaper, raw materials are secured and bureaucracy is reduced.
Instead, the EU is taking a different path with the supply chain law and piling up new bureaucratic hurdles. “The federal government must also move from talking to action, otherwise the creeping deindustrialization will no longer be able to be stopped because Germany cannot keep up with production costs,” warned Müller. Berlin must put significantly more pressure on Brussels, conclude energy partnerships with Africa, the Middle East and Latin America and trade agreements. “We will not fail because we no longer build good cars. It is all about the framework conditions,” said Müller.
The VDA President also called for the withdrawal of EU punitive tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The subsidies in China are a challenge, but punitive tariffs are not an appropriate means of protecting the industry. “There is a threat of countermeasures from China and a spiral of protectionism would probably hit Germany hardest as an export nation.” German manufacturers sell around 100 times as many cars in China as Chinese brands in Germany, Müller stressed in an interview with the newspaper. Concerns about a flood of electric cars from the Far East are currently exaggerated. The talks that the EU Commission is holding with Beijing must be intensified because there are areas for solutions.
With a view to the weakening market for electric cars, Müller again called for a faster expansion of the charging infrastructure. “The most important thing to get e-mobility going again in this country is charging stations, charging stations, charging stations and networks, networks, networks!” In a good third of all communities there is still no public charging point and almost three quarters of all communities have not yet installed a fast charging point. Freight forwarders who want fast charging stations for their electric trucks are told by their network operators: “We can do that in six or eight years”. The payment system also needs to be standardized and simplified so that users can charge at any charging point.
Source: Stern
