The IAA has also been more glamorous. For decades, the late summer performance show of the automotive industry at the Frankfurt exhibition grounds was considered the industry event of the year. The exhibitors sent hosts of representatives. No one could afford to miss.
Very different this year. When the International Motor Show opens its doors to the public this week, illustrious names like Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati, Lotus and Aston Martin will be missing. Even industry greats like Toyota
For this, the opponents of the car push all the louder on the stage. For the first public weekend environmental organizations and the climate protection movement "Fridays for Future" have announced demonstrations and blockades.
The crisis of the IAA can be interpreted as a real alarm signal. Because it symbolizes the problems that the entire industry is struggling with. The trade war between the US and the rest of the world exacerbates the onset of the economic downturn, diesel scandal and driving bans unsettle buyers - and in general: The car, once an icon of freedom, with the promise of departure and self-fulfillment, has lost its nimbus largely. For city dwellers anyway, but in view of the incalculable effects of climate change, doubts also grow in cast-iron petrol heads.
The perceived tension can be proven with numbers: Worldwide, the industry sold around five percent fewer cars in the first half of 2019 than in the same period of the previous year. In their most important export markets China and USA alone, German manufacturers have suffered declines of more than 20 percent since the beginning of the year. And experts are convinced that this marks only the beginning of a long phase of the downturn.
Discounts eat yield
Perhaps the decline would have been much stronger if the car manufacturers had not supported sales with generous discounts. But the discounts eat up the profits in addition. Together with the sales declines, they are causing a big minus in the quarterly balance sheets. BMW and Daimler even had to issue profit warnings for the full year.
More at SPIEGEL +
The money is missing in a particularly delicate phase. For the foreseeable tightening of exhaust emission limits is forcing manufacturers to drastically increase their investment in future-oriented engines. Thus, the VW Group wants to equip by 2025, a quarter of its fleet with electric or hybrid drives. BMW
To make matters worse, the mortgages of the past weigh on the corporations. In the VW emissions scandal, the lawsuit in Germany only gets rolling - with incalculable consequences for the group's finances. Even unauthorized price fixing and windy promise promises in terms of consumption have damaged the reputation of the industry and bounced customers. The worship of the once favorite favorite brand has meanwhile often given way to skeptical distance.
But the skepticism of the buyers goes much further. Because so far, the offered electric cars are at best a second car for well-off households. Purchase decisions are therefore postponed for as long as possible. "The longer the German car industry needs to deliver affordable e-cars that are suitable for everyday use, the greater the customers' doubts as to whether e-mobility really is the future," explains Timo Wollenschläger, economic researcher at the Munich Ifo Institute in the journal " Car, engine and sport "the dilemma of the manufacturer.
Battery cars for the near future
At least it is gradually becoming clear which direction the industry's journey will take in the near future. "The battery is clearly in the pole position with the electric drive," says Felix Mogge, Senior Partner at consulting firm Roland Berger. Fuel cell or hydrogen drive will come a little later. Which in no way means that developments in this area should be neglected.
However, Mogge does not believe in a speedy breakthrough in technology due to its low range and incomplete charging infrastructure. "If you drive a long way, you have to rely on the classic burner," he says. The breakthrough, expects the traffic expert, will first bring the autonomously driving car. Because then it would be profitable to use in car-sharing fleets.
However, it is hardly to be expected that life will become easy for the classic carmaker. With Google, Apple or Uber are already competitors at the start, which have unequally more capital to cope with the high development costs, which requires the technology. What's more, they have the know-how to monetize the data they provide, making the price of traveling in such a self-driving car pretty cheap. BMW and Co want to keep up in this field, they must quickly find powerful partners.
The often raised accusation that German carmakers overslept the trend towards the (autonomous) electric car, or even prevented it, is considered by experts to be unfounded. "Manufacturers and suppliers have triggered many developments in recent years under the umbrella of public perception," says Mogge. "We'll see the innovations in the new cars."
" Not everyone will survive"
But technical solutions are not everything. They only bring profits, even if they are installed in cars that are more desirable than others. In any case, German industry has not been among the front runners in this respect in the past. German engineers are considered technically inclined but little cost-sensitive.
Another problem is that the leadership circles of the individual manufacturers are by no means in agreement, for which the development budget should now be used concretely. The best example of this is BMW, where after the flops of the electric avant-garde i3 and i8 a powerful faction has formed, which regards the focus on the battery technology very skeptical. Top engineers like Carsten Breitfeld have long since left the company to build electric cars elsewhere. At Daimler
The corporations no longer have much time for a decision if they want to compete in the race for supremacy in the automotive industry. And sure that it succeeds, even the once so self-confident CEOs are no longer: "From today's perspective, the chances may be 50 to 50 that the German automotive industry in ten years, the world's top," said VW CEO Herbert Diess recently the "Business Week". Even the recently retired Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche expressed doubts that companies existed by natural law forever.
The German car industry is facing tough times, Roland-Berger-Mann Mogge is convinced of that. "Not all companies in the industry will survive," he says. "Those who succeed and who will be endangered in the future, above all depends on the ability to adapt to the changes".
How does the Civey method work?
The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-level fully automated procedure. All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("Riversampling"), so it is not only users of SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed. Anyone can participate in the surveys online and will be included in the representative result with their answers if they have registered. From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample that ensures that it matches the population, for example, in terms of age, gender and population density. Finally, in a third step, the results are weighted by other attendees' socio-demographic factors and attitudes to correct distortions and prevent manipulation. More information can be found in the Civey FAQ.
Why is a registration necessary?
The registration helps to weigh the answers, thus allowing a result for the surveys, which is representative of the voting population in Germany. Each participant is asked for their gender, year of birth and place of residence. After that everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
How do the results become representative?
The answer of each participant is weighted so that the result of a survey is representative of the population. For the Sunday question and the government monitor, this population comprises the population entitled to vote in Germany. The weighting is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal details at the registration as well as the history of earlier answers of a user. More methodological details can be found in the Civey whitepaper.
Will you reach enough participants online?
Opinion polls are usually conducted by phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually participate in a survey when they are approached. Internet connections and landline connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - with about 90 percent of households, mobile phones even 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods in the single-digit percentage range, especially experts estimate it for telephone surveys.
Thus, in both methods there is a group of people that can not be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to participate in the survey. Therefore, a significant number of people must always be approached for a meaningful result. Civey surveys are currently in addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE in more than 20,000 other websites involved, including various media. This ensures that as many populations as possible can be reached.
How do I recognize the quality of a result?
Until the result of a survey becomes representative, enough different people have to participate. Whether this is already successful, makes Civey transparent, in that for each survey result a statistical error probability is specified. The number of participants and the interview time are also published for each survey.
What does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?
In our graphs, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval. This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a poll score. For example, on the Sunday question, one can not say exactly how many percent a party would get in a poll, but specify an interval where the outcome is likely to be. If the intervals of two survey values overlap, then strictly speaking no statements about the difference can be made. For the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close together that overlap their error intervals, it can not be derived from which would currently perform better in the election.
What happens with my data?
The personal data of the users are stored encrypted on German servers and remain secret. Civey employees use only user IDs for reporting and can not associate users with their votes. The main purpose of the users' personal information is to weigh the answers and to ensure that the surveys are not manipulated. To prevent this, Civey uses both statistical and technical methods. In addition, Civey works with external partners who create audiences. Only when users have accepted the privacy policy of both Civey and an external partner, may your responses be used by the Partner to model those audiences. However, a partner does not receive information about your political and religious attitudes as well as those with which you can be identified. Civey users are also not ads based on their answers. You may object to the distribution to partners at any time here as a logged in user. More information about privacy at Civey can be found here.
Who is behind Civey surveys?
At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to participate in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin. To compile its representative surveys, the software of the company, founded in 2015, merges websites into a nationwide survey network. In addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE include, among other things, the "Tagesspiegel", "World", "Wirtschaftswoche" and "Rheinische Post". Civey was funded by the ProFit funding program of Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund.