Bicycles on display in one of the pavilions at the Munich motor show.MICHAELA REHLE / Reuters
A much smaller space, just half a dozen vehicle manufacturers, perhaps more bikes than cars, and aisles that have never been so empty. That has been the letter of introduction of the first day of the international motor show held in Munich since this Monday. The reunion of the automotive industry has been unfortunate despite the fact that it had not seen each other since September 2019, when the last Frankfurt show was held. In April of the following year they had to see each other again in Geneva, a benchmark event for the sector, but the health crisis no longer allowed it. As with Mobile de Barcelona, it announced its cancellation when the carpet was already waiting for the vehicles.
Since then, in addition to problems to produce cars, almost everything has been presentations by Zoom, Teams or YouTube and in Munich, which takes over from Frankfurt as the headquarters of the benchmark German show, it gives the impression that everything has changed. The overwhelming exhibition spaces in which brands routinely spent fortunes to present their new models are conspicuous by their absence. And even the name of the event raises a change of stage that will have to be seen if it is reversed: IAA Mobility. The acronyms respond to the name of the German manufacturers' association that organizes the show and the name the challenge that it is not only a vehicle exhibition. It is a formula that is spreading. In Barcelona, the Automobile show will have a complementary show called Tomorrow this year.Mobility that goes in the same direction and that Fira de Barcelona wants to promote.
More information
The lack of chips forces the stop of Spanish car plants
Vehicle manufacturers skyrocket profits amid semiconductor crisis
One of the most significant changes at the Munich show is the more modest presence of the Volkswagen Group. The consortium has renounced the participation in the pavilions of its Audi or Porsche brands and its flagship brand, Volkswagen, has greatly limited the exhibition space. Less than a dozen vehicles and all of them electric. "It is in line with the offense the brand is on," says a spokeswoman. In any case, the company showed as a novelty a prototype of the vehicle - ID.Life, it is called - with which it plans to enter the cheapest segment of the electric vehicle, with a platform developed by Seat for the entire group and which will foreseeably be will manufacture in Spain. Cupra, the sports brand of the Spanish company, plans to present this Tuesday a sports prototype of the model that it will launch in the same price range.
Volkswagen executive Ralf Brandstaetter introduces the ID.Life concept car.
Sven Hoppe / AP
Despite the scarce presence of manufacturers, the modest volume of journalists - the first days are reserved for presentations to the media - who attended the Bavarian fair yesterday continued to crowd into the exhibition spaces of the brands present, especially European.
At Mercedes, they had no qualms about displaying combustion vehicles swarming before the futuristic version of a station wagon.
And the same happened in BMW (also focused on electric vehicles) or the Renault space, the only French brand that has been planted in Germany to be able to present its Mégane E-Tech and the prototype of the new Renault 5 that will see the light of the next anus.
Two bicycle pavilions
There were fewer visitors in the space from the Asian Wey, owned by the Great Wall Motor group, which announced its arrival next year in the European market with a plug-in SUV. But in the Asian booth there were not as few journalists as the half dozen who attended the presentation of a bicycle brand. This type of mobility has almost two pavilions in which dozens of models of different brands are exposed. But yesterday they appeared empty despite being the first through which the assistants had to pass. Most passed by. "We hope that in the coming days there will be more people, especially on the opening days for the general public," explained Ignacio Giménez, head of marketing for the bicycle manufacturer Cannondale in Spain and Portugal.It is the first time that the brand participates in a motor show, but Giménez explained that if they did it, it is because of the pull that the use of bicycles, also electric, has in Germany.
Munich is aware of the change in style that it wants to give to the motor show, which has an appendage in the city center to test cars or bicycles and wants to push itself beyond even electric mobility. The leading role is continued by those of always: cars, with the company of many traditional component manufacturers. The Geneva Motor Show, to be held next February, will say whether the cars continue to command.