About this column:
In a weekly column written alternately by Eveline van Zeeland, Eugene Franken, Katleen Gabriels, PG Kroeger, Bernd Maier-Leppla, Willemijn Brouwer and Colinda de Beer, Innovation Origins tries to figure out what the future will look like. These columnists, sometimes joined by guest bloggers, are all working in their own way to find solutions to the problems of our time. Please read previous episodes here.
September brought a rare sense of achievement to the German car market. At last, it saw moderate growth for internal combustion engines (including diesel vehicles).
The “real” news, however, concerned the growth in electric vehicles compared to the same month last year. This amounted to almost 32%, due to one brand alone: Tesla. The Americans excelled with sales of 9,846 Model Y, a real record for the German market because the previous top dog and best-selling passenger car was actually always the Golf. In September, it sold “only” 7,095 units.
What does this have to do with clickedy-clickbait? Quite a lot, actually.
Naturally, Tesla and electric car fans were delighted. For them, the sales of the US eSUVs clearly showed that electric mobility had already triumphed. The headlines went wild in many publications. The U.S. portal “Teslarati” ran the headline, “Tesla Model Y is the best-selling car in Germany, period.”
You had to read the first paragraph to get the explanation. “In September,” it specified.
This clickbaiting annoyed a lot of insiders, of course, and certainly some managers in the classic German OEMs also raised their eyebrows. In fact, Tesla’s result is not as surprising as perhaps assumed. September marked the end of the 3rd quarter. Typically, Americans then boost their delivery figures come hell or high water. This was also the case this time – with one striking difference.
Tesla is preparing to enter the German mainstream
The Center of Automotive Management expects American automakers to sell over 1.3 million units worldwide in 2022. That’s because Tesla’s Texas plant in the U.S. and its Gigafactory Berlin in good old Germany are now ramping up production.
The Americans are thus demonstrating that they are ideally prepared for the transformation of the automotive markets, including an exemplary supply chain.
And the German OEMs?
As the famous German saying goes, if you arrive late, life will punish you – or in this case, the market. Although PR departments are trying to salvage what can be saved, years of misjudgment have hindered the ramp-up of electric cars from German factories. Only Germany’s largest automaker, VW, seems ready for the transformation.
Getting back to the topic
The opportunity to be well informed has never been better, provided you take the trouble to read beyond the headline. This would also prevent one or the other misjudgment, which is often based on gut feeling.
But it is also a fact that Europe’s traffic is on its way to being sustainably electrified. The only question is whether there will be enough energy for this in the future. That, however, is a headline for another commentary.
