In an interview with t-online, Hildegard Mueller, president of the German Association of Automobile Producers (VDA), sided with the EU Commission plan to exit from combustion engines for cars, endorsing increases in investments into e-mobility instead, while also declaring the loss of jobs in the automobile sector in Germany as something that is unavoidable. She noted the effect of the EU regulation which “sets clear guidelines for manufacturers. If a customer buys a gas-powered car instead of an electric car, this can push manufacturers further away from their CO2 targets and ultimately result in fines. This creates situations in which selling a vehicle doesn’t make economic sense. That’s absurd.” However, she does not oppose the regulation as such.
Neither does she call into question the VDA analysis that the transition from combustion engines to full e-mobility would eliminate 225,000 of the 700,000 jobs in automobile production in Germany.
