Rapid adoption of a electric cars would disrupt such a country’s industrial base, prompting a major social issue.
That was a view that was strongly put forward during a recent visit by Machinery to one of Germany’s pre-eminent cutting tool specialists for whom the majority of sales are to the automotive industry. And the automotive sector worldwide is the largest consumer of machine tools and associated tooling.
It is all well and good a country like Norway trumpeting its pro-electric car policies; Norway doesn’t make cars, it was said. There, battery-powered cars and hybrids together accounted for 29% of all new car sales last year, and by 2020
70% of new sales are predicted by that country to be zero-emission cars, with an end to the sales of fossil fuel-powered cars considered realistic by 2025.
But even Germany’s Bundesrat last year passed a resolution saying “latest in 2030, only zero-emission passenger vehicles will be approved” for use on EU roads. The resolution has no legislative effect, but demonstrates a direction of travel. And the EU is relentlessly driving down vehicle-emitted pollution. Although not yet finalised, the fleet average carbon dioxide figure may be as low as 68 g/km by 2025, compared to 130 g/km today and 95 g/km in 2021. And although diesel cars emit much less CO2, the NOx emission levels may see them disappear by 2025, a report earlier this year in The Economist suggested. Indeed, major cities around the world are already considering a ban on diesel vehicles. The World Health Organisation in 2012 declared diesel exhaust carcinogenic, after all.
Machinery was told that German auto industrialists are engaging with government on, for example, making cleaner diesel cars, and that China is rowing back on its electric car push, because of the likely impact on employment.
The cutting tool expert observed also that Germany’s present electricity consumption is 75 GW and that that would need to double to run a fleet of electric cars equivalent to the current stock (electricity and heat generation are the largest global producers of greenhouse gases – https://is.gd/ebekoy).
So it was suggested that hybrid technology vehicles – those combining internal combustion engines and electric drive capability – will likely be the green vehicle technology going forward for up to 20 years yet.
In safeguarding health and the environment, industrial job protection and the maintenance of social order are clearly also in the mix.
