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The Germany car industry should have seen the writing on the wall a few years back - when Merkel was forced to intervene to water down the European Commission's proposed emissions regulations - and disrupted itself, and if it had, it might have put them in a better position now. But even that would I think have been just forestalling the inevitable: the barriers to entry to the car industry seem to me to be lower than ever before, to the extent that even Vietnam - somewhere that was previously considered a 'developing' country - has its own home-grown electric car manufacturer, and I'm betting it's a lot cheaper to make cars in Vietnam than it is in Germany.

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Turkey also: https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/29/turkey-togg-electric-cro...

I'm starting to think that the most significant consequence of the mechanical simplicity of electric cars is not the additional per-car reliability or potentially lower TCO. It is that manufacturing cars has suddenly become accessible to a much wider and geopolitically more diverse set of industrial bases. Maybe electric cars will be the new textiles where developing economies are concerned.

> manufacturing cars has suddenly become accessible to a much wider and geopolitically more diverse set of industrial bases

It has always been. German companies manufacture parts or cars in cheap countries (like turkey). Yet there are no well-known hungarian or turkish cars

Both the Turkey EV (TOGG) and the Vietnamese EV (VinFast) are prototype cars made by Pinafarina in Italy, I believe. They're not as fully homegrown as one might think.

It also reminds me, at least a bit, of what happened to film and cameras when digital imaging took over.

In fact, they did see the writing, BMW for example developed the Hydrogen 7 [0], Mercedes Benz produced Fuel Cell cars[1]. What they didn't expect, was, that simple Lithium based batteries would take over. Obviously they wanted to retain the range of the combustion engine cars

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_F-Cell

VW had a skateboard platform concept EV 10+ years ago. They could have productized it if they had competent leadership.

We had EVs over 100 years ago and folks already knew the advantages of electric power over fossil fuel power. However, batteries have been the limiting factor for awhile. Even now, only Tesla seems to have batteries that meet consumers power/range/cost expectations and they exclusively own the largest battery plant in the world.

I'm not sure we can blame VW for being slower to EVs than Elon Musk and FWIW, the VW company seems to be pivoting to EVs the fastest. The Taycan - a VW product - is the first car that's competitive with a Model S.

Yip, was many electric cars before petrol took over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_P1

Being one example.

Hydrogen fuel cell concept cars were in the news for as long as I can remember. I consider them nothing more than appeasement to prevent stricter emission standards. German politicians have been prophesying self-regulation towards more efficient cars for more than thirty years now. What we got instead was a SUV boom and cheating on emission tests.

> The Germany car industry should have seen the writing on the wall

But that does not change anything!

The point is less workers will be needed. What difference does it make to "see the writing on the wall"? I don't even see any reason to look into the claim itself - it's completely irrelevant. Even if they adapt perfectly and Germany becomes a happy 100% electrical-car country, we will lose a lot of employment in the car industry.

> we will lose a lot of employment in the car industry

This only increases the importance of hanging onto as many as possible of the shrunken pool of jobs that will be left.

The world is weird and complex, BMW had some L2 autonomous system late 80s. Nobody cared it ended up on a shelf somewhere.

BMW also didn't care about it since the main point of the BMW brand was driver engagement and sporty feel aimed at purists.

Autonomous driving goes against that mantra and was seen as something uncool, for old people who couldn't drive or something like that and would get you ridiculed by driving purists.

That, however, was before sporty cars became luxury cars and vice versa.

Very good points

Thanks to Germany, eastern Europe is a dumping ground for low quality, highly polluting German cars. A sad state of affairs and it shows just how the EU is biased towards a handful of countries.

It's not really Germany's fault. It's our fault in the East for the vanity of prioritizing low cost second hand luxury vehicles above our health and not holding the government accountable for the lack of a functioning public transport system. The Romanian railway system is a national embarrassment.

Germany isn't dumping anything, it's just supplying the demand coming from Eastern Europeans who make lengthy trips there with platform trailers to bring back cheap second hand luxury vehicles that are now longer economically viable there.

I've seen way more BMW X5s and Audi Q7s in Romanian cities than in my time working in Germany and Austria combined. I don't think the Germans came and shoved them down our throats.

Where Germany is at fault is its lack of action after Dieselgate since it decided to protect VW and its executives rather than the health of the EU citizens that are still having their lungs stuffed with diesel particulate from the tens of thousands of TDI engines happily roaming around us.

Countries have laws for exporting used electronics exactly so poor countries dont become dumping grounds. The same should be the case for intra eu vehicles. The German government is blocking such an initiative using the EU, and clocked or high polluting vehicles end up in countries such as a Romania. Poverty and corruption in that country are rampant but that is no excuse to dumping low quality german cars there.

Edit: the gov of romania has already tried taxing old vehicles but was pushed back by the eu. Blind obedience to the eu and self blame wont fix your country.

The two taxes were found to be illegal by the CJEU. It's the fault of corrupt and incompetent Romanian politicians, not the EU. I'm not aware of any German intervention. Why isn't Hungary a dumping ground for old German cars, only Romania and Bulgaria?

Romania and Bulgaria are indeed poor and corrupt, and from what i see you, the citizens of that country, enjoy being a dumping ground for crap cars as well. Enjoy your status and obey the eu and germany.

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