The signs of crisis are obvious: the Volkswagen subsidiary Porsche recorded special depreciation in model development and for supplier projects of 2.4 billion euros in the 2025 annual financial statements. Europe’s second largest car company Stellantis wrote off 18.8 billion euros, primarily for Europe and North America. In its balance sheet, Mercedes warns of risks in sales development that could have a negative impact on earnings. At Ford in Cologne, the poor situation can be seen directly in the workplaces. Another round of job cuts has begun there, with 3,700 jobs at stake.
The cause of these crisis scenarios is surprising: it does not lie in the consequences of saying goodbye to combustion technology, but rather in the politically prescribed ramp-up for the Electric cars to search. In order to emphasize its great ambitions, the European Union has attached its goals for the switch to battery-electric drive to the threat of fines from 2025 and a de facto phase-out of combustion engines from 2035. The traffic light coalition wrote in the 2021 coalition agreement that around 15 million purely electric cars should be on Germany’s roads by 2030.
The car manufacturers were too gullible and are now paying for it
European manufacturers have trusted in these prospects. Some were too gullible, such as Porsche, which stopped production of the high-selling, cheaper series with combustion engines in order to replace them with electric cars. The smaller Macan SUV was introduced with an electric drive, but despite all the praise from car testers, it did not achieve the sales figures of its combustion engine predecessor. The presentations of the electric successors to the entry-level Cayman coupe and the entry-level Boxster roadster have now been postponed.
With 700 million euros in depreciation, i.e. financial outlay without getting anything out of it in the end, Porsche has said goodbye to the project of its own battery production. Similarly, Stellantis has withdrawn from battery factory projects with two billion euros in write-offs. In Cologne, thousands of Ford employees lost their jobs because management believed in a rapid transformation to electric drives and switched entire production in Cologne to electric cars. Demand remained well below even minimal expectations, which is why employment is being drastically reduced.
Exactly 100 electric models from Europe’s five car companies
The public all too easily associates the bad news with the parallel decline in demand for combustion technology. It is often commented – far from the facts – that this is what happens if the European car industry wants to ride the combustion car to death until the end.
The opposite is true: At the moment, the five European car companies offer exactly 100 models with battery-electric drives, not counting different engine and equipment versions. Car manufacturers began developing these models years ago. But in the meantime, the necessary conditions for a proper ramp-up of electric drives, such as a charging network and sufficient power supply for millions of cars in Germany and throughout Germany, have not been created Europe.
The upswing in demand for electric cars, which is manageable in contrast to the ambitions, cannot hide the fact that the desired switch to electric drive has so far not been a “ramp-up” but rather a flop. In 2030 there will be perhaps six million electric cars on Germany’s roads instead of 15 million. In Eastern or Southern Europe the changeover is still in its early stages.
What is scandalous is the fact that those responsible for this bankruptcy – EU environmental commissioners, EU bureaucrats, but also environmental politicians from the Greens and the SPD – take no responsibility for this flop. On the contrary: their plan is “business as usual”, with even more demands and of course as strict as possible towards the supposedly anti-innovation car manufacturers.
The next goals are to eliminate plug-in drives and make electric cars mandatory for company fleets and car rental companies. At the same time, from the perspective of the current regulators, any relaxation of the combustion ban in 2035 should only remain symbolic. Instead, an oath of disclosure from the current architects of climate strategies for cars would long be due and a completely new beginning – without all the regulations, but based solely on cheap charging current and plenty of e-fuels.
