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The IAA, Europe’s premier auto show, started this week as German automakers are trying to fend off foreign challengers. Tobias Schwarz—AFP via Getty Images
Good morning. Peter Vanham here in Geneva, back from a short Labor Day trip to Germany.
Riding along Bavaria’s idyllic towns and roads this weekend, I could easily see that most people there still stick with the region’s pride: BMW cars. But I could also see the uphill challenge facing Germany’s car industry: EVs and EV infrastructure were few and few in between.
How Germany fares in the EV saga will become clear in the next few years, and it may well become a cautionary tale.
Not too long ago, Audi, BMW and Mercedes were the uncontested kings of the luxury car segment, from U.S. to China. Volkswagen was the world’s largest car maker. But today, the picture looks different. Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world. All-electric car company BYD is outselling Volkswagen in China. And Vietnam’s Vinfast is the industry’s most-hyped newcomer.
You cannot understand why those shifts occurred without grasping the forces at play in German society.
When I first visited Volkswagen’s “Autostadt” 15 years ago, the company blamed slow progress towards cleaner cars on the German consumer. “I can’t sell the customer a Golf if he wants an four-wheel-drive,” Gunther Damme, the executive in charge of sustainability, told me. In more recent years, the same German consumer has been among the most skeptical when it comes to electric cars.
Today, despite almost all German car companies racing to develop electric models, some resistance remains. Germany’s government this year insisted on exceptions to a European deal for all-electric car production by 2035. And BMW will continue selling internal combustion engine cars wherever it is allowed post-2035, CEO Oliver Zipse said last week.
In contrast to Zipse, both Volkswagen and Mercedes CEOs have repeatedly expressed their commitment to an all-electric future. And even though most cars on the Autobahns are fueled by diesel and gasoline, EV sales make up 20% of new car sales in Germany. The new government has also introduced an ambitious plan to roll out EV chargers.
Is such incremental change enough to maintain Germany’s dominance in the car market? We’ll soon find out. No matter how the story ends, it’s sure to become a business school case study—for better or for worse.
More news below.
Peter Vanham
peter.vanham@fortune.com
@petervanham
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AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.
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