Policemen were brought up in front of the doors of the discussion site. Officials with broad shoulders were waiting for demonstrators in front of the state representation of Baden-Wuerttemberg in Berlin last night. The hosts from the car dealership also seemed a little uncomfortable with the idea that the president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) wanted to debate with environmental activists. As a precaution, they put a thick Audi "E-tron" right next to the entrance. The electric SUV should probably symbolize: Look, we're thinking about.
The armor against the expected demonstrations in front of the building south of the Tiergarten was in vain: no banners were to be seen, no demonstrators and no seat blockades. As calm as the discussion on "Climate protection and the mobility of the future" went, it should not be at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt. The people in charge at the VDA know why they took this unfamiliar step - towards their critics, for the first time in this form.
Unusual people in the car industry
Bernhard Mattes, the VDA chief, immediately tried to clarify the new language rules of the three major German car companies: they understood that the big transformation towards clean electric cars was to be tackled. "We are not against the climate goals, but we are committed to these goals," called Mattes into the room. "We will do everything we can to achieve it."
Christophe Gateau / DPA
Representatives of the automotive industry and environmental activists discussed the topic "Climate crisis and the mobility of the future"
Limits? In the past, the VDA set up hosts of lobbyists to prevent them. Britta Seeger, Sales Director at Daimler and one of the co-negotiators, said: "Stable goals are very important to us." Just bring highly attractive products on the market, with electric motor. The customers, however, still have "reach fears".
Unusually, the voice of workers in the auto industry, embodied by BMW General Works Council Manfred Schoch: "I am deeply convinced that the transformation of the auto industry must come, and if he does not come from us, then from the Chinese." He wanted to persuade the eco-fighters to join forces in his first statement. So, should it be true: the two once-unforgiving camps would fall into each other's arms?
"With 250 km / h to the abyss too"
They did not. In that sense, the world is still reasonably in order, as it once was, at least as far as the ideological camps are concerned. Because the climate protectors did not leave even the most friendly argument of the other side to want to expose it as implausible, hypocritical talk. Even the commitment to the climate targets Luise Neumann-Cosel of Campact did not take the VDA president. "You have not yet grasped the requirements of the climate goals, Mr. Mattes!", She called to him. Instead of two degrees of warming must be at 1.5 degrees and that is why the car industry makes too little. "We are on a disaster course and are racing at 250km / h towards the abyss," the Campact woman said, "and you're at the wheel with her big SUVs."
The campaigners talked to each other warmly for the IAA. The auto industry can not hope that the activists will leave them as well as the chimneys of the nuclear and coal-fired power plants that they used to climb with verve. The car is still good as an enemy image, even if more and more electric cars are added to the dealers' salesrooms. The VDA offered the perfect target for many years: with the predecessor of Matthes, Matthias Wissmann, a strippers pulled over from the Ministry of Transport, who shamelessly ensnared the Chancellor ("Dear Angela") before each new CO2 round in Brussels.
More dreadlocks than hairstyles
Almost the VDA had overslept the rethinking that is taking place at Volkswagen under Herbert Diess and Daimler under Ola Källenius. Bernhard Mattes, former Ford boss, had a hard time taking off the old engineering thinking. For a long time he failed to flush the diesel with green fresh blood out of the veins of the VDA. The discussion evening, maybe he was just too late, too reactive and not proactive. In the audience, the opponents were in the majority: more linen shirts than pinstripes, more dreadlocks than hairstyles. Berlin's eco-functionaries did not miss the opportunity to acknowledge the proverbs of the car friends with mumbling interjections and loud applause for their protagonists on stage.
Lennart Stock / DPA
VDA President Bernhard Mattes tried to appease the activists
Ultimately, the two viewpoints, electric cars and plug-in hybrids or not, are not compatible. The automakers want to save the motorized private transport with the electric car. The activists want to reduce the number of cars in favor of buses, trains and bicycles, radically, one to a quarter of the stock, the other like even more. "They want to continue selling travel limousines," said the federal representative. "We want cars to cover only a residual need for roads." A residual requirement? That was too much for VDA man Mattes. He promptly gave up the line droned in by the communication trainer and fell into old argumentation patterns, instructively, from above: "Who would take it to go to a quarter of the Germans and say: 'You have to leave your car.'"
There they were again, the old stereotypes. Some consider the others unscrupulous polluters; and vice versa, the others, the one for unrealistic Ökoträumer. For the IAA there is no all-clear after this evening. Neumann-Cosel of Campact said: "They push these muddlers very specifically in the market and therefore we will stand before the IAA." She also betrayed what she wanted to write on her poster. It is a saying of the so-called Fridays and reads: "traffic turn instead of end of the world."
