autoregion international - Edition 1/2020

31 S H A R E autoregion e.V. Without panic into the future autoregion international in conversation with Armin Gehl, autoregion e.V., Saarbrücken Image: © autoregion e.V. Mr. Gehl, the economic skies over Ger- many are clouding over considerably. The growth forecast of the five leading eco- nomic institutes for 2019 was reduced from 1.9 to only 0.8 percent of GDP. Simi- lar figures are given for the forecasts of the automotive industry. „Auto-industry 2019 Departure into Uncertainty“ was the headline of the Tagesspiegel newspaper on January 4, 2019. Should we have seri- ous concerns about the future of the auto- motive industry in Germany? Armin Gehl: Absolutely NOT! With its developments in the automotive sector, Germany is and will remain a benchmark. The expansion of electric mobility poses an enormous financial challenge for the automotive industry. The 16 leading car manufacturers have almost doubled their investments in electricmobility in the past year. Tesla seems to be failing right now. Quite a few experts suspect that Tesla could go bust at the end of the year. Howdo you assess the risks in view of the still low registration figures for electric vehicles? Armin Gehl: The aspired to political goal of more than one million pure e-cars on our roads is absurd with the current charging infrastructure. The extension of subsidies has also not borne fruit. Politicians should have the courage to recant their statement and concentrate pure e-mobility on urban areas, i.e. smaller and affordable e-mo- dels. It is the biggest nonsense that vehic- les with ranges over 100 km lug more than 500 kg of batteries in their chassis through the region. Pure e-mobility based on pure battery technology will not prevail in the massmarket. I only see one chance here for plug-in hybrids with a combustion engine or a fuel cell. How does the supplier industry, which is strongly represented in your region, deal with the topic of „electromobility“? Have companies that were previously strongly focused on combustion technology been able to strategically reposition themselves or have OEMs had to look for newsuppliers? Armin Gehl: The companies located in our region have recognised the signs of the times and now also produce components for vehicles with electric drives or hybrids. Isn‘t concentrating on e-mobility an ad- ditional risk? Does this mean that alter- native drive concepts such as hydrogen technology are becoming sidelined? Armin Gehl: No, hydrogen as a fuel will come, I am convinced of that. I believe it is only political circles that have not yet re- cognised the sign of the times, and are still getting carried away with purely battery- based e-mobility. Our responsible politi- cians should concentrate on the definition of framework conditions, but they should leave the implementation to industry! The international trade conflict, up to now mainly between the USA and China, has taken on a new dimension through the threat of punitive tariffs against Mexico, which is also placing an increasing burden on the German automotive industry. Is this risk controllable at all or do we have to adapt to constantly changing export conditions with the corresponding con- sequences for the international location policy of the automotive companies? Armin Gehl: The danger is hovering over the heads of the automotive industry like a sword of Damocles. Trump is unpredic- table, but he may also have realised that German carmakers in their USA plants con- tribute a great deal to a positive balance sheet, safeguard jobs and even create new ones. Export is not directly at risk unless China considers that more than 75% of a product‘s depth of added value has to be created in China, then our premium manu- facturers would have a problem. Last year, problems with the certification of new models in accordance with the current WLTP exhaust regulations led to production congestion and approval refu- sals. Have these problems been overcome in the meantime or do buyers still have to adjust to supply bottlenecks, especially for new engines? Armin Gehl: To my knowledge these prob- lems are a thing of the past - that domestic sales are not going as well as last year is well known, but we moan rather a lot. China has experienced an extraordinary growth boom over the past ten years and has developed into the most important automobile market in the world. Now, in the past year, we have seen a significant slowdown in growth for the first time. What consequences does this have for the German automotive industry? Armin Gehl: I believe that domestic produc- tion will not be badly affected, as there are only a few models produced and exported for the Chinese market. Only 5% of domes- tic production was exported to China in 2018. In the past few years, the automotive in- dustry has been a real driving force for jobs and has made a not insignificant con- tribution to structural change away from heavy industry, particularly in your region. Will this continue in the future, or do you expect employment to decline, particu- larly as a result of new, less labour-in- tensive technologies and lower sales volumes? Armin Gehl: No, the companies in the Grea- ter Region are very well established and see the future as a challenge and an oppor- tunity without becoming struck by panic and shock. New products and the intro- duction of new trend-setting technologies in production are accepted and imple- mented. The companies also attach great importance to the further training of their employees in order to qualify them for ro- botics and thus for the use of Industry 4.0. Many thanks for the interview. The interview was conducted by Dr. Rudolf Müller Contact https://autoregion.eu/de/ contact autoregion e.V. https://autoregion.eu/de Armin Gehl