The German car industry will not die completely, as the EU can protect its market from chinese manufacturers through regulation. But it will shrink and transform. Probably also back to fossil fuels (yuck), because there the Germans still have a lead (they are trailing with EVs).
Germany's new hot industry is defense technology.
German car industry is trailing with EVs, because they can not manufacture the heart of EV - the battery.
I really feel that plugin hybrids with 40-50 miles of electric range are the ideal car for like 85%+ of Americans whose usual daily commute could all be done on electric. I've heard all the arguments against them, and after owning 2 PHEVs (Chevy Volt before this), I disagree with all these arguments. Yes, I understand that they're more complicated that a pure EV, I know pure EVs will be the future (I'll also be dead in the future), but my ownership experience with PHEVs over the past decade proved they were the perfect car for me. Never had any reliability issues, and despite hearing arguments that they are "the worst of both worlds", they were definitely the best of both worlds for me - all the benefits of an EV (low operating cost, fantastic acceleration, quiet, smooth ride, almost no trips to the gas station) with none of the downsides (didn't need to install an expensive charger at home as the wall charger was sufficient, never had to worry about range anxiety, never had to carefully plan road trips around charger locations).
There’s nothing about EV drivetrain that requires more complicated software than ICE powertrain. It’s just consumerism telling people that their next vehicle (whatever drivetrain) should be an iPad, a home cinema, and a PlayStation all-in-one.
China has the big advantage of having designed these car companies around drastically reduced labor needs and until we adapt to that we're not going to compete on the most important factor which is how much the car costs.
All it does is simply makes the Chinese government sound good and competent.
Oh, nice, a government that does good things that lead to good outcomes! How unusual, how unexpected! That's basically cheating!
We can't realistically have our government be useful and competent and serve our interests, so there's no way we can compete!
"UBS Completes Historic Takeover as Credit Suisse Ends" (May 31, 2024) <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-31/ubs-compl...>
Thanks to heavy subsidization of the industry by Chinese government to gain an competitive advantage.
If by heavy subsidies you mean pocketing 150 billions of dollars from EU R&D budget for innovation that have never happened then no, Chinese cars manufacturers are not subsidized.
You can't have a functional government that serves the interests of it's people and enables the country to dominate increasingly more sectors!
It's basically cheating!
The government has to be dysfunctional, and should only collect disproportionate taxes with the idea that they'd be wasted extremely inefficiently.... on god knows what, some bullshit, some "social programmes" and "culture" and the dumbest things imaginable - whatever they might be, but not anything that's actually ... you know good for the country!
Same with VW or with any other traditional German company. Sometimes to justify their job they would create problems that doesn’t exist and come up with a solution
Even in accounting there are many roles and subspecialties!
VAG employs 600,000 people - that you have 8 or 10 layers is not absurd.
Also, wielding axes in a working environment is a big no-no, no wonder they're out.
I don't have kind words for SPD/Die Grünen in specific, or, to be frank, Germany in general.
because they've governed Germany for the past decades ... wait ... they have not?
There were SPD chancellors for 24 years total, CDU the rest. German politics have been traditionally mostly CDU dominated.
I guess we have had a good run for far too long, so that complacency is finally catching up with us. The only sad thing is, that many people, who deserved better have to suffer for it.
But lets not be too sad about some middle management being let go. They are often part of the problem. Let us rather be sad about educated and capable people losing their jobs and dropping into a very difficult job market, which they might not recover from.