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IAA Mobility 2021: It has honed itself

2021-09-04T18:38:42.201Z


At the IAA auto show, the industry brings cargo bikes and driving services to the stage. Greenwashing, maybe. But the old glory of the industry is over.


Enlarge image

Instead of the classic car show, the IAA Mobility is to become a new, diverse mobility fair.

Critics consider this panning to be implausible

Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa

The last IAA in Frankfurt am Main ended with a shrill cacophony: the great honking of all cars on display on the last day of the fair.

The so-called honking was popular with fans.

Some did not attend mass until the final day to experience this ceremony.

It was the same on September 22nd, 2019. Did anyone already suspect that this horn concert would probably never take place again?

In any case, it is difficult to imagine a repetition. Yes, because vehicles with a horn should no longer play the leading role at the new IAA. The event will be a kind of festival for carsharers, driver service users, cargo bike enthusiasts and public transport passengers, suggests the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), which organizes the fair. So this IAA is supposed to be different from anything the automotive world has known before.

This is associated with a risk for the industry.

What can be seen may correspond to the zeitgeist and testify to the courage to change.

But is all of this just as fascinating as the good old sheet metal, eight-cylinder engines and exuberant designs?

Three times as many people crowded around a single open hood at Ferrari as could fit into an autonomous shuttle bus.

Chrome and sheet metal inspire many, but mobility is more of a need.

"I see the new IAA as an attempt by the mobility industry and also by the VDA to discover themselves - and as an experiment," says Lars Thomsen, mobility expert and futurologist from Zurich.

Thomsen has often criticized the auto industry for not acting bravely enough.

The fact that Chancellor Angela Merkel will reopen the fair on Tuesday is one of the few constants.

For the first time, the event is taking place in Munich.

Instead of just being in huge exhibition halls, this time the exhibitors' stands are also distributed in the city center.

For the transfer between the exhibition grounds in Munich-Riem and Königs-, Odeons- or Wittelsbacherplatz, special lanes - so-called blue lanes - are set up.

But above all: the IAA is now called IAA Mobility.

This is not good news for car fans with a coordinate system consisting of displacement, cylinders and horsepower.

The VDA, however, urgently wants to move away from the image of a full throttle event.

The IAA Mobility is intended to be »the world's largest mobility event«.

Industry has a credibility problem

"The focus is on solutions on the way to climate neutrality," says VDA President Hildegard Müller.

The new IAA should enable the networking of various modes of transport and "the mobility of tomorrow to be experienced today".

But how serious is the industry really about the departure into the new era?

And does she know how to approach him?

So far, only one thing is clear: this old automotive glory, which the IAA has always been one of, is visibly disappearing.

More than 930,000 visitors flocked to the IAA in 2015;

Just during that fair, the VW diesel scandal became public.

From then on, the industry had a credibility problem.

In 2017, 810,000 people came to Frankfurt am Main to experience the latest car models.

The IAA 2019 attracted 560,000 interested people.

In return, however, protesters came in large numbers, who loudly and sometimes rustic against cars and the auto industry.

IAA innovations?

The main thing is electrical

The decline in participating automakers was even more dramatic.

Many brands have stayed away in recent years.

Now things are getting thicker than ever for the VDA: Only around two dozen manufacturers are still involved.

The list of those absent is longer, including Toyota, Mazda, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, Peugeot, Fiat, Citroën, Chrysler, Jeep, Land Rover, Volvo, Jaguar, Tesla.

There is no trace of crowd pullers like Ferrari or Rolls-Royce.

Instead, Audi, BMW, Mercedes and VW are doing everything in Munich to be perceived as e-car manufacturers.

As central innovations, they all present battery vehicles - including the Mercedes EQE, BMW iX and VW ID.5.

That at least demonstrates business acumen.

A recent study by the management consultancy McKinsey estimates the market share of e-cars in Europe at 75 percent in 2030.

Then there will be around 70 million electric cars in Europe.

This could be helpful to reduce CO2 emissions, but problems such as resource consumption, waste of space or the impending traffic blackout are of course not solved by large and heavy electric cars.

New ideas, especially from start-ups

This would require completely new concepts and alternative mobility offers. Some of them can be seen at the IAA Mobility. It is significant that they come from little-known companies such as the microcar maker Bako Motors (Tunisia), Microlino (Switzerland), City Transformer (Israel) or the Munich start-up ACM. A forum like the IAA makes these ideas more visible. Whether they will prevail is also a political question. The purchase of particularly small electric cars has so far mostly not been subsidized by the state.

Bicycle manufacturers are also well represented for the first time, with more than 70 companies from the sector.

“It is gratifying that the IAA is also opening up to other mobility providers.

Numerous bicycle manufacturers use this opportunity - and now you have to see whether they are allowed to present themselves appropriately and whether this attempt pays off for them, «says David Eisenberger, spokesman for the Zweirad-Industrie-Verband (ZIV).

A number of mobility start-ups, tech companies, traffic and urban planners and charging infrastructure companies are also represented in Munich.

"No other event in the whole world brings the various forms of mobility together so closely," says VDA President Müller.

"Folk festival with attached fair"

But this bouquet of themes and concepts may also become a problem.

"Overall, the IAA seems to be planned as a kind of folk festival with discussion platforms and an attached trade fair," criticized Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Center Automotive Research in Duisburg.

“A colorful mix.” It could make sense to focus more on the car.

Not least because of the corona pandemic, the automobile is experiencing a renaissance.

This would put the industry on safer territory, but boldly refuse to face the future.

It should be clear by next Sunday, when the IAA Mobility ends, whether the new concept has caught on.

This time without a horn concert.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-09-04

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