26 October 2020, Lower Saxony, Wolfsburg: The new Volkswagen electric cars ID.3 (above) and ID.4 are standing on a transport platform in a Autostadt car tower during a press event. Photo Credit: Picture Alliance via Getty Images
Environment GermanyMajor Car Supplier Waves Goodbye to Combustion Engines
Germany’s third largest car supplier has decided to stop developing combustion engines in favor of new technologies such as electric, hydrogen fuel cells, and synthetic fuels made from renewable hydrogen.
“We are preparing ourselves for the fact that in 2035, hardly any internal combustion engines will still be sold in Europe, and perhaps none at all in the passenger car sector,” says Wolf-Henning Scheider, CEO of the German car supplier ZF Friedrichshafen.
The EU is expected to be among the biggest markets for e-cars in the coming years, and China’s production of electric vehicles is on the rise. In 2020, there were some 18,000 Chinese battery-powered vehicle registered in Europe, compared with 391 the previous year. “In 2025, we expect China to produce two million battery-powered vehicles per year, compared with four to five million in Europe,” says management consultant Jochen Siebert. The German car industry has vowed to achieve climate-neutral mobility by 2050.
