The future of the German automotive industry : transformation by disaster or by design?

Across the world, the established models of the automotive industry of the 20th century are increasingly dissolving. The enormous implications of that shift on economic, employment, and innovation policies have put the automotive industry in Germany and Europe under pressure. This is happening at a time when the industry is on an expansion course, with rising sales, growing employment, and increasing exports. Our mobility is undergoing change from strong and globally relevant megatrends, new mobility needs in urbanising transport markets, and hitherto unknown forms of competition, for instance from the up-and-coming IT sector, but also from China's industrial policy objectives. The concomitant trends towards electrification, networking, automation, and sharing are revolutionising the automotive industry and will lead to a new form of automobility. Fossil-fuel based propulsion is being replaced by electromotive motors and batteries; the notion of driving the car yourself is being replaced by concepts of assisted, automated, and autonomous driving, and ownership is being replaced by a digital platform ecology with new business models and forms of distribution. The cumulative effect of those developments on the automotive industry in Germany and Europe has been dramatic changes in supply and demand, which have cast doubt on previous business models. These transformation processes can no longer be managed with automotive policy regulation and internal corporate self-transformation. Governments, companies, trade unions, and consumers must work together to promote change in the automotive sector. That can only succeed with a mobility pact for the future that combines entrepreneurial, political, and social strategies with the aim of transforming transport in society as a whole. It stands in the tradition of cooperative management of economic, social, and societal change. The guiding political principle behind this shift must be to create a sustainable and integrated overall transport system that includes the automobile as a building block in intermodal transport and action chains. The onus is on the federal government as the central state actor to coordinate and moderate the processes in concert with the German states and municipalities. It must create the regulatory, fiscal, and structural policy framework for action, while private enterprise and policymakers should encourage society at large to discuss a future mobility pact through a transparent consultation mechanism. As a first step, a politically moderated and regulated consumer-side market transformation programme for electric mobility should be set up and implemented. The key concern here is to shape consumer behaviour in such a way as to generate demand for new and future-oriented products. At the European level, for example, the pact for the future should involve initiating a project aimed at making the technological leap towards electric mobility. In addition, as part of the market transformation programme, municipalities must be more strongly and comprehensively empowered to promote communal laboratories in which both the car industry and public transport operators can develop new forms of cooperation with a view to new mobility