Advertising
The Europeanist “In the Death Hazard,” said the head of the EU Stefan Syzurne a few months ago, without chewing his words.
Decent sales, high energy prices, an increase in global competition and an indefinite normative and commercial environment loaded the industry into a crisis.
“There is a risk that the future map of the world automobile industry will be designed without Europe,” Sorosnne said in April.
In order to satisfy the most pressing problems in the industry, the chairman of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen will accept the best leaders in Brussels on Friday.
This is the third and last meeting of this kind this year as part of what the commission called the “strategic dialogue about the future of the automotive industry.”
The meeting is scheduled for three hours – but will it create a new impulse for the industry?
Last spring, the EU launched a plan for industrial actions, which includes funds for batteries manufacturers, mainly thanks to a battery booster in the amount of 1.8 billion euros and additional billions of euros available for research and development of the battery under the Horizon Europe program.
But these initiatives could not change the general sinister prospects.
“The feeling of urgency has not disappeared,” Sigrid de Vriah, General Director of the European Union of Car manufacturers (ACEA), said Euronews. “We need more actions.”
Auto -manufacturers are especially disappointed with the lack of a realistic policy plan for transforming the industry, as was expressed in a recent open letter to Ursul von der Lien from the presidents of Acea and the European Union of Car suppliers (ClePA).
The transformation plan of Europe “must go beyond obsessive ideas and recognize current industrial and geopolitical realities,” they wrote.
According to industry representatives, the fees requires lower energy costs, more market subsidies and tax benefits, and in particular, a more uniform distribution of charging infrastructure to make the transition to electric cars with a self -protected choice for the critical mass of European consumers and enterprises.
Stagnation in the electric car market in Europe
At the moment, the share of the market for cars with a battery in Europe remains stagnant at about 15% – not enough for a revolution of technology, which is considered a decisive for the future.
Many European consumers do not dare to buy an electric car, because in Europe there are not enough charging stations, 75% of which are in three countries: the Netherlands, France and Germany.
Throughout the EU, only about 880,000 Public points are currently availableField
But, according to ACEA, by 2030, 8.8 million charging points will be required, that is, in just five years.
To achieve this, 1.5 million charging devices must be installed every year, that is, almost ten times higher than the current growth rate.
Seeing more financial and legal problems on the horizon, the automotive industry wants to reconsider the existing CO2 rules.
“Achieving the hard goals of carbon dioxide for cars and trucks for 2030 and 2035. In the modern world, it is not more appropriate, ”as the presidents of Aeca and Cleep wrote.
Against, seek flexibility and realism As for Drive Technologies (or otherwise: the ban on internal combustion engines) as a critical rescue rope for the damaged industry.
In the end, “you cannot force people to sit in a certain type of car,” said Sigrid de Vris.
For many years, electricity was a key strategy that the industry has been developing around the world for the production of vehicles with zero emissions, responding to a key desire for politics organizations.
These vehicles are also increasingly connected and able to exchange information with other cars and infrastructure on the road that seek to become “high” computers, which are increasingly dependent on chips and software.
Consequently, the new companies from batteries and technologies have entered the automobile market and surpassed traditional automakers.
And now where most European companies are still behind their Asian opponents in the innovations of electric vehicles. In 2024, Only an electric car built in the EU V worldVolkswagen ID.3.
In this context, from a quasi -control of global batteries and low labor costs, China became a knot of electric vehicles with Chinese cars that become more and more competitive.
And the people’s republic remains today the largest world market.
Last year, according to Germany, Trade & Invest, more than 32 million cars were sold in China, half of which are electric (11 million in the European Union and 15 million in the United States).
At the IAA Mobility industrial exhibition in Munich, the largest in the world, the number of Chinese participants increased by 40% at the highest level over the entire time.
China’s dominance and US duties
The growing dominance of China, combined with the duties of Donald Trump in European cars, puts the European automobile industry under strong pressure in order to quickly adapt to the new environment and develop industrial durability for working with China, as noted in the EU competitiveness report. President ECB DraghiField
Other experts in favor of more cooperation with the Chinese.
“We need closer ties with China, not distance. It would be stupid not to work with the Chinese, as they store all the documents, ”said Euronews, Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, economist and director of the Car Research Center (CAR) in Germany.
“That’s why we need political support. We do not need to hit China. ”
There is nothing more than the survival of the European automotive industry, which is widely considered the industrial basis of the European economy, supporting more than 13 million direct and indirect jobs (more than 6% of the EU total employment).
In Germany, Sweden and some countries of Eastern Europe, the automotive industry represents more than 10% of production labor.
Thus, when last year, Germany, the largest economy in Europe, lost only 50,000 car jobs, shocks became reasonable everywhere.
Some of the most famous automakers in history are accepted in the country, but their survival is not guaranteed forever.
It is enough to look at the UK, someone’s car industry was once dominant, but today there is only a 100% British brand, a family Morgan, which produces handmade sports cars.
“Each work has been lost, every final factory will not return,” said Dudenhefffer.
“Thus, if the automotive industry is fighting and retreating, the general economic prospects in Europe can be destructive in the coming years.”