Emissions debate: Why VW boss Diess has no right to complain - although he is right

If you want to find out more about the car industry in Germany, you should listen to the talks at the main tables or in the coffee kitchens. It was not that long ago that you just had to suggest that you think about buying a new car to trigger intense discussions about this and that technical sophistication.

Today, less and less pride resonates with the undertone when mentioning the choice for the more powerful engine or the next larger car class. "Consumption is much lower!" is rather a common argument. And it almost sounds like an apology. No question: the image of the car in society has changed.

How painful the development in the executive floors of the car companies is perceived, can be seen in the speech by VW CEO Herbert Diess on the International Suppliers Fair on Tuesday in Wolfsburg. "The campaign against the individual mobility and thus against the car takes existence-threatening proportions," scolded the manager - to then fall into the threat.

"If you look at former high-rise cars like Detroit (Oxford, Cowley, Oxford) or Torino (Fiat), you know what happens to cities where once-powerful corporations and leading industries falter," Diess said. A few days ago he had already warned that hundreds of thousands of German jobs were at stake.

The rage speech from Diess is remarkable. Scenarios of imminent collapse are usually not part of the repertoire of the sober and serene manager.

This is in some respects quite right: The structural change, which is imminent to the industry with the turn to electric propulsion, in itself has so many uncertainties and dislocations that hardly leaves room for other problems.

And he would be hard to manage if the money for the necessary development work is missing - which, moreover, extends far beyond the single car. The key words here are the batteries, the power supply and the charging infrastructure.

The money for such innovations must still be earned in the next few years with the cars that are on the road with conventional gasoline and diesel engines. It also takes time to build a system that meets the high standards of our mobility-oriented society.

Strict limits

But it is precisely this society that has developed an impatience that drives industry to despair. Between 2021 and 2030, according to the EU's environment ministers, car emissions of carbon dioxide will be reduced by another 35 percent. German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze makes no secret that she would have agreed to even stricter limits.

Added to this is the case with nitric oxide, which has been perceived as a threat in a whole new dimension since the disclosure of the diesel scandal by US environmentalists. And although the NO2 pollution has steadily declined since 1995 (see chart), environmental activists may call diesel drivers "poison gas murderers" without causing much public opposition.

Federal Environment Agency

Nitrogen Oxides 1990 - 2015 UBA

A sober, factual discussion on the topic is no longer possible, as evidenced by the debate on retrofitting older diesel vehicles at the expense of the auto industry and on exchange premiums as an incentive to purchase state-of-the-art vehicles.

The fact that the older Euro 5 cars are regularly registered, plays no role in the public debate. Neither the argument that the old cars could probably still be used up if enough modern diesel would provide for the corresponding reduction of the total NO2 emissions.

The bad reputation of diesel vehicles is still problematic for another reason. Without the fuel-efficient, but NO2-emitting diesel, the new CO2 target can certainly not be achieved. Unless the manufacturers succeed in delivering a third of their fleet of electric motors soon - which seems utopian.

Scandals make you untrustworthy

This would still not solve the CO2 problem - also in this point Diess - still. A high proportion of e-vehicles would initially worsen the environmental balance, because electricity is still generated to a large extent from coal. Only when the share of renewable energy continues to increase, electric cars become cleaner.

That Diess and his colleagues can not penetrate with such arguments, they can not blame the car critics. For it is the automakers who blame the loss of image, especially Volkswagen. They have made themselves unbelievable - through fraud and manipulation in the exhaust gas cleaning, by common agreements that no one with particularly clean cars vorprescht, by halting tactics in the investigation of the whole process and by the knickrige treatment of many victims of the diesel affair.

And the bad news does not stop. Only on Monday investigators searched the offices and development departments of Opel on suspicion of exhaust manipulation of 95,000 cars. Various prosecutors are still investigating Daimler, VW, Porsche, Audi and BMW.

An industry that makes so many bad headlines should not be surprised if society perceives it as a threat rather than a prosperity keeper.

And the corporate executives should not be surprised if their arguments are regularly branded as lies, although arguing with them would be worthwhile.