#merkel

After a lot of back and forth on citywide diesel bans and loads of corporate scandal, the German automotive industry has taken a public beating. However, with a few politicians still left in its corner, it’s managed to avoid some of Europe’s anti-combustion wrath. Proposed diesel bans haven’t yet come into effect, but there remains a strong contingent to force change with Chancellor Angela Merkel suddenly taking a greener stance as an election looms.

There’s no shortage of controversy surrounding Europe’s automotive industry, and much of it surrounds environmental issues. The public solution is to move away from fossil fuels and promote electric vehicles through regulatory action within the next few decades — an idea Merkel now openly supports.

“I don’t want to name an exact year,” she said in a recent interview with SUPERillu. But she also believes Britain and France’s plans to phase out internal-combustion cars by 2040 is “the right approach.”

With the possible exception of the United States in the near future, emission regulations are getting harsher everywhere. Nowhere is that more true than China. Not only does Asia’s most populous country have some of the most stringent emission requirements for new cars, it also has the strictest sales quotas for electrically powered vehicles on the planet. Too strict, according to some automakers.

A Chinese draft regulation issued last week stipulates automakers must sell enough electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles to comprise 8 percent of total volume by 2018, 10 percent by 2019, and 12 percent by 2020. This comes after talks between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that hinted China might have mercy on Germany manufacturers.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel made appreciative noises o ver the 4 billion EUR GM wants to invest into Opel through 2016, but gave no indication that she is willing to chip in.

GM CEO Dan Akerson and freshly minted Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann will receive a one hour audience with German Chancellor Angela Merkel this Thursday “to discuss the rejection of a plant closure timetable by workers which could speed the factory’s shutdown,” as Reuters reports.

Day 2 of the Opel rumor mill, and it keeps on grinding. Is Opel up for sale or is it not? Opel, their works council and regional governments close to the labor unions dismissed yesterday’s reports of a possible sale of Opel by GM as pure speculation. Yesterday, Opel chief Karl-Friedrich Stracke sent a letter to all employees. Today, he called an all hands meeting in Rüsselsheim and appealed to his workforce to ignore the nasty rumors. What is missing: A clear denial from Detroit. Today, Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel demanded that GM should “provide clarity regarding the future of Opel,” writes Der Stern. And the magazine adds: “GM however continues to take cover.”

Yesterday, as predicted by TTAC on many occasions, Germany’s Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle denied state aid for Opel. Even before the announcement, his boss Angela Merkel called a pow-wow of the premiers of the Opel states to find out what can and should be done now. The pow-wow will take place today. Yesterday’s statements by Brüderle and his boss are quite telling. Here they are, unedited (German version courtesy of Automobilwoche [sub], translation by yours truly.)