Dear readers,
Battered by recession, transformation and political upheaval in international trade, our automotive and supplier industry is not exactly experiencing rosy times at the moment. It is surprising that – particularly in election campaigns – various parties are calling for the EU’s so-called combustion ban to be lifted as a solution to the problem. But let’s start with the terminology: the term itself is misleading. It is not the combustion engine that is being banned. Rather, a ban on the registration of new vehicles with combustion engines will apply from 2035. Existing vehicles may of course continue to be driven and also sold and purchased. But even the registration ban is a target of political criticism. The impression is being created that the abolition of the ban on combustion engines will solve all problems and that our automotive industry will regain its former strength virtually overnight.
However, this argument, which is popular among populists, misses the reality of the markets by a hair’s breadth. The fact is that the so-called ban on combustion vehicles is not just an EU phenomenon. Countries outside the EU are also planning registration restrictions for combustion vehicles. For example, the non-EU countries Norway and the United Kingdom are planning restrictions from 2025 and 2030 respectively. In California, the most important vehicle market within the USA, a sales ban will apply from 2025; in Washington State from 2030 – as well as in India. In the Chinese province of Hainan – a market the size of Belgium with around 10 million inhabitants – a ban on the sale of combustion vehicles has been in place since 2019. In addition, the Chinese government is imposing quotas on the production of combustion vehicles by its own OEMs – to name just a few examples.
All OEMs in both North America and Europe have reacted accordingly and strategically aligned themselves to the fact that electric drives will most likely be the mainstay of individual mobility. And not only the OEMs have done this. The entire supplier industry has also revised its product range and switched to alternative, emission-free drives. Investments have been made in new plants, locations, technologies and products.
The abolition of the ban on combustion engines would remove the economic basis for a whole series of these investment projects and thus create great strategic uncertainty.
What the automotive industry and its suppliers need are unambiguous, clear, transparent and, above all, long-term framework conditions. Specifications with a half-life of four or five-year election periods are not suitable as a basis for stable development. They would reduce the speed of product innovation and do more harm than good to our industry.
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Editors OEM&Lieferant
Dr. Rudolf Müller
Elisabeth Klock
