OEM&Lieferant Ausgabe 2/2021

86 In the GRÜNEN’s party program it says liter- ally: “From 2030 we only want to allow emis- sion-free new cars.” The SPD assumes that the future belongs to electric drives, without giving a specific date. For the LINKE there is no alternative in terms of climate policy to phase out the combustion engine by 2030 at the latest. It also calls for an export ban on cars with internal combustion engines. Large parts of the press are also assuming the imminent end of the internal combus- tion engine. Gerald Traufetter announced in SPIEGEL on June 5th, 2021 the year 2045 as the definitive end of the “era of combus- tion engines” – the year in which Germany should be climate-neutral. Even some manufacturers have said good- bye to the combustion engine. Mary Bar- ra, CEO of General Motors, said that her company only wanted to sell locally emis- sion-free cars from 2035. Ford struck in the same direction with the announcement that by the end of the decade the vehicle range would be completely converted to electric drives. Jaguar aims to achieve this goal as early as 2025. Volvo Cars plans to only roll off the production line with all-electric vehi- cles from 2030 and even wants to do without hybrid vehicles. The VW Group also relies fully on battery-electric drives, but without mentioning a specific phase-out date for combustion technology. Some states are much more specific in this regard. Norway is making the most rigorous progress with a combustion ban from 2025. Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slove- nia and Sweden are not planning quite as ambitiously with the year 2030. Spain and France want to give themselves until 2040. The consequences of the EU Commission’s decision to ban CO2 emissions from new cars from 2035 are not yet foreseeable. This could mean a de facto ban on fossil-based combustion engines in the EU. In view of these scenarios, one could actu- ally get the impression that the time of the internal combustion engine has definitely expired. However, if you take a closer look at the statements, weighty questions remain unanswered. No obituary – the future of the internal combustion engine By Armin Gehl, Managing Director of autoregion e.V., Saarbrücken The end or at least the future ban on the internal combustion engine seems to be the sine qua non for climate-neutral transport. This is what is rumored at least in parts of politics and the press. The seemingly simple solution and the associated prioritization of battery-electric drives negates weighty problems – a plea for more technology openness. Image: © autoregion e.V. For example, the consequences of an end to the internal combustion engine, politically wanted by some parties, in terms of employ- ment policy are not discussed openly and seriously enough. Due to the transformation to electric drive, at least 178,000 employees nationwide by 2025 and around 215,000 jobs by 2030 in the mostly medium-sized supplier industry, which cannot be substituted within this industrial sector. Even IGMetall predicts that more than 250 suppliers are about to go bankrupt. The industrial policy dimension of these exit scenarios also does not seem to have been thoroughly thought out. A quick exit from combustion technology would mean giving up a globally unique technological top po- sition. No other industrial nation would be able to achieve such a technological level in drive technology in a shorter period of time. This shows the current competitive situation for vehicles with electric drives. Tesla - a no- name supplier for a long time - managed to become the market leader for battery-elec- tric vehicles in record time. The situation on the Chinese market is similar. Manufactur- ers that have hardly appeared so far pro- duce electric vehicles at a remarkable tech- nological level. In the area of combustion Armin Gehl, Managing Director of the association autoregion e.V.