German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters
(ft.com)47 points by tchalla 3 hours ago
47 points by tchalla 3 hours ago
Germany desperately needs a wake-up call in the form of recession. German car industry has been non-competitive for multiple years now. Instead of letting it fail, the government kept on flushing money down the toilet and prolonging the inevitable.
For a business, there's no incentive anymore to choose Germany over other EU countries. Cheap energy is gone. Germany is literally collapsing under its own weight: endless bureaucratic structures that just keep on growing.
Cheap russian gas is gone, so now all industry sectors (not only cars) are not as competetive as before.
They are now downsizing, etc in order to save themselves.
Sure but we are talking about german industrial output, and one of the main reasons for problems here is the absence of the cheap energy that was available until the russian invasion of ukraine.
A story from a german town: We have an 200 year old bridge, which can't be used anymore. It's a small bridge only about 100m long and 5m high i would guess. The state owned railroad wants to replace it. Everybody agrees. Local people are happy. They simple want to build the new one right next to the old one and then take the old one down. But still in spite of everybody agreeing it took 20 years!! to get the permit. They have finally started construction 5 years ago and the costs have doubled multiple times and are now in the hundreds of millions. They say that hopefully in another 5 years from now they might be finished with construction. For all those years the locals have to take a long detour because the bridge can't be used. I have recently read how in china they finished the tallest bridge of the world in a 3 year construction and the cost was less than our little bridge here. After hearing about this i realized how doomed we are. We have regulated our selfs into a total standstill. I can understand if we are maybe 10-30% slower due to better environmental protection, but if me are slower and more expensive by a factor 10, then we are just not competitive at all. This reads like satire but it is actually happening.
Why is output falling? Are there other countries taking the market share? Or is there more to it?
Article says:
> But a profit warning by German carmaker BMW late on Tuesday was the latest reminder of the industry’s structural challenges as it struggles with the transition to battery cars, weak sales in China and US import duties.
My gut feeling is that the Chinese are now buying locally made EVs. Other nations are buying Chinese made EVs. Except the Americans, who can't afford anything without paying extra money to their Mad King. (This is generalized, obviously there'll be American or Chinese BMW buyers, but a lot less).
Damn, look at that graph of registrations: https://carnewschina.com/2025/10/08/byd-sales-surged-2225-in...
Many reasons.
1) Ever since the Cold War ended, German companies have been shifting production to cheaper places in Europe, so less and less "German" cars are actually built in Germany and show up as German industrial production.
2) Germany used to sell a lot to China, but Chinese companies are upping their game and shifting to EVs, and Germany is losing Chinese market share as a result.
3) Those same Chinese companies are increasingly selling overseas and starting to kick German butt. I went to an EV car show recently, and while Volkswagen Group had a large presence (VW, Audi, Cupra, etc) and some of their EVs looked pretty good, the prices were consistently 20-50% above the equivalent Chinese models.
A fourth reason that is overlooked is that rubber component prices (if you don't import from Asia) have almost doubled in the Eurozone since 2019. I haven't worked in a company whose products use many rubber components in their supply chain since late 2024 but a single seal, gasket or vibration absorber with a single coating of a wear or friction modifying polymer could have had quoted prices rise from 11,000€ per batch to the neighbourhood of 18,000-20,000€. Smaller price rises have also hit non-imported thermoplastics, fiberglass and plastic textiles, presumably because of structural component lead time and cash flow issues in petrochemicals as a whole.
The German industrial sector might be shy at importing most of their parts from Asian developing countries and China in order to keep friendly relations with their domestic supply chain, keep friendly relations with their domestic political system, reduce IP cloning and keep some semblance of national pride, all of which combine to impact their prices. Also, there may be legal or tax requirements about domestic or EU component origin percentages, but I wouldn't know, since my business was in medical appliances.
Export markets for European cars are cratering. The Chinese and Koreans are taking over with really decent, affordable EVs. And while the likes of VW are producing good EVs, it's at the cost of their ICE vehicles and those losses aren't offset by their EV sales.
In general the ICE car market is not just car manufacturers but many thousands of companies all over the place that make parts and components. Quite a few of those are becoming redundant and quite a few more are facing stiff competition from abroad. Anything to do with components for petrol or diesel engines is going to face year on year declines.
What's currently happening in the market is price parity before incentives, before considering benefits from lower maintenance, and before considering benefits from lower energy cost. An EV is simply becoming the cheaper vehicle to buy. And with all that included, EVs are far cheaper overall. That's not a trend that's ever going to revert. It's only going to get worse and it's going to have some obvious effects.
A lot of this applies to US car manufacturers as well BTW. The current tariffs are distorting the market dynamics. But that's unlikely to last very long. GM and Ford will need to keep up internationally if they want to stay relevant in foreign markets.
Germany is merely ripping off the band-aid right now (or having it ripped off for them). Short term disruptive but it needs to happen at some point.
A lot of the industrial economy was based on cheap pipeline gas from Russia and there have been some issues with that policy recently
Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reportedly observed that the purpose of the Alliance was to keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down.
Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Ukraine "was flirting with NATO". Why does that justify an invasion? Why do you think Ukraine or NATO or the US are at fault here?
Accepting that trying to get closer to NATO justifies this invasion, usually with the term "legitimate Russian security interests" denies Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia does not have the right to impose its will on its neighbours.
> Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Ukraine "was flirting with NATO". Why does that justify an invasion? Why do you think Ukraine or NATO or the US are at fault here?
Read up on Cuban missile crisis, it might provide some context.
No superpower has the right to impose its will on its neighbours, yet here we are : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
> but after multiple warnings and casus belli about Ukraine not flirting with NATO
Putin invaded in 2014 after Ukraine deposed of their dictator over his failure to commit to EU alignment, the Nato stuff is a post-hoc excuse developed by the Russian government. This isn't about Nato it's about Putin being afraid of having working democracies next door.
Like many traditional car makers they are struggling with the EV question. Presumably they want to switch to EVs, but in a company built on building ICE vehicles that comes with a lot of resistance from inside the company.
All things considered they aren't doing too bad, both Volkswagen and BMW are in the global top 7 EV brands by sales. But BYD is far ahead of everyone else, selling nearly an order of magnitude more EVs than any German brand. Which hurts Germany especially since they used to sell a lot of cars in China, BYD's home turf
Keep in mind that the ICE market is still huge. Even in China 50% of new cars are still ICEs, 30% are Plugin Hybrids and only 20% are BEVs. On the EV market, especially in China, there is a brutal price war going on, with falling profits even for giants like BYD, so trying to milk the ICE market for a little more could give German car makers some air while trying to catch up (which they do if you look at the new Mercedes and BMW models).
Porsche (having the same CEO as Volkswagen) went all-in with EVs too early with offering their bread-and-butter model "Macan" as an EV exclusively, and they had to find out that it's not what their customers what at the moment, so they are currently trying to backpaddle.
They seppukued by walking away from cheap RU gas.
Cheap RU gas isn't just power, it's cheap industrial feedstock/inputs. Renewable/nuclear does not replace this. So all the wank about their energy policy is distraction. TLDR:
Competitive Germany industry needs cheap RU gas.
Healthy German economy with 40% trade GDP needs US + PRC, then RoW markets.
PRC market going away.
Germany "chose" (maybe pressured) into expensive US gas to keep US market, because doesn't matter manufacturing cost if you lose biggest future market, and can't manufacture without reliable source of gas. The lockin is DE gets US gas and US market access.
But Germany with expensive US gas = will eventually lose competitiveness in most other markets, so sectors will crater. Double whammy of other (PRC) being more competitive and DE making it self even less competitive.
Reasons I can think of (as a German) from the top of my head:
- Crumbling infrastructure
- Decades of missing investments in education and the public sector
- no digitization
- Unwillingness to move away from ICE vehicles
- Slow internet access and slow build out of fiber network
- Killing future industries (solar, battery ...) by cutting funding/subsidies early
- low wages in European comparison
What makes German cars uncompetitive in the world market are actually high production costs. Which is due to high energy, labour cost and social tax. Combined with a lack of innovation. This is impossible to fix with a state subsidy.
> This is impossible to fix with a state subsidy.
Is it? Because that's definitely how China is doing it:
https://rhg.com/research/chinas-subsidies-are-fueling-involu...
Those are consumer subsidies, they make buying a cheaply produced car cheaper, they don't make producing a car cheaper. Of course you can industrial policy for that as well, if you have the right conditions, cheap industrial inputs, and can eat domestic politics shit, i.e. automate the workforce. But DE probably don't have the domestic politics to automate the workforce nor future access to cheap gas.
So their industrial problem can't be fixed with subsidies, as in subsidies not capable of improving long term DE competitiveness without subsidies. Even if they automate workfroce and remove social benefits, lack of access to cheap industrial feedstock is precluding, i.e can't offset structurally disadvantage of being more expensive producer on input level.
Whenever you hear a German entrepreneur talk about the biggest obstacles they have and are facing, it's never crumbling infrastructure or slow internet. The number one complaint is always excessive bureaucracy and crippling regulations.
> Slow internet access and slow build out of fiber network
We don't have dial-up anymore. High-speed access is not a problem for commercial and industrial sites, and rarely a problem for remote work in residential areas. Despite what some commentators like to imply, you don't need 1 Gbit/s for productive work. 100 Mbit/s is usually fast enough, and if your browsing experience is still slow, it's most likely caused by round-trip delay, not bandwidth.
> low wages in European comparison
That would actually help commercial output and competitive position, not lower it.
At my former company we paid 900€/month for 1Gbit/s, which we required. That's definitely a problem when the same performance is available for ~50€/month a few kilometers over the border (in the Netherlands).
In rural regions workshops output is limited by their internet speed as the can only download that many CAD files from customer per day.
IDK man... the rental market in German cities is "beggars can't be choosers" market and you are very likely ending up with 16Mbit DSL on 2 years contract.
Other countries like Poland, Czechia, Slovakia "diversified" by pushing into German automotive supply chain and are sinking along Germany. German automotive was so self confident still 15 years ago that you can see this confidence in drivers of their cars until today on roads worldwide.
Most of it caused by "Mama Merkel":
* She inherited a booming economy with very good reforms and plenty of budget surplus
* Let infrastructure to rot
* Energy production cratered and shifted to Russian gas dependency (high profile politicians related) showering Putin with billions every year
* Then tricking Puting to a peace agreement to quietly "rearm" Ukraine to prepare for war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements)
* Nuclear reactor dismantling
* Poisoned relationships with peripheral EU countries by forcing her brand of politics
* Persecution of opposition, branding "far right" anything right of center
* Destroying German identity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8PNgxbTE0o)
* Pushing police state and against free speech
* Failing upwards her protégé von der Leyen to the top of the EU, an incompetent, and unelected nepo-baby
* Forcing Germany and the EU to take in tens of millions (at least) of "refugees" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wir_schaffen_das ("we can take them", open doors, family "reunification", etc)
* Anti family hard-line feminist
TBF, at the time, I also fell to the propaganda of Merkel being the best and smartest stateswoman ever.
Sure, not everything she did was bad. But her legacy is now Germany's nightmare. And EU's, too. Untangling this mess will be very difficult.
Also, she did not initiate a single structural reform in her 16 years of being chancellor. The public sector has become a huge burden for our country. It is just too expensive and just like AI is currently propping up the US economy, the growing public sector is what keeps Germany's economy afloat.
A failed attempt at Catherine the Great II. I don't understand how everyone could be so blind in regards of relations of top leaders with Russia, like Merkel and Schroeder.
"TBF, at the time, I also fell to the propaganda of Merkel being the best and smartest stateswoman ever."
to be honest, this is what enrages me. I feel like I was in a madhouse; the mass media were pushing an image of Merkel as the only adult in the room and the patron saint of liberalism.
I saw, live, how she mismanaged the Eurocrisis, turning a banking crisis into a humanitarian crisis, and how her reaction to the invasion of Crimea was meek.
but if you dared to say something about this, you were seen as a dangerous communist or worse.
I hated her flawed politics for 15 years. But now, surprisingly, I kind of miss her. not because she was good; she was terrible as i said, but the new leadership, especially in Germany, is far worse: Friedrich Merz is a zero, and von der Leyen seems utterly retarded, and i don't mean it in a mocking way, but literally: they are always choosing the worst option for Europe at every step.
dark clouds over europe... but mostly, of our own making.
> Cutting cheap Russian gas was a suicidal move for European manufacturing (and households)
Brussels checkmated itself trying to maintain industrial power while appeasing its anti-nuke reactionaries.
Europe cedes sovereignty with gas. (Whether it buys from America or Russia isn’t structurally relevant. Militarily the distant and rich master is obviously preferable.) The answers are solar, wind and nuclear. Germany is singularly responsible for fucking up the last, and with its Russian gas appeasement, undermining the former.
Rising energy costs and green policies make European manufacturing non-competitive.
Politicians ruining their countries.
basically, you are right. as the other commented said, "Europe cedes sovereignty with gas" be it Russian or American. The continent should be laser focused with renewables and other forms of energy generation (also nuclear, if necessary, even if i am not too happy about it)
Green is likely sponsored by Putin as a way of keeping Europe away from Nuclear and any other viable alternatives to Russian gas. (proof: Former German chancellor on board with Russian energy companies.) Not investing enough in Nuclear and solar is Germany’s biggest mistake.
There was de facto no investment into nuclear energy across all countries since the early 80s and it's beyond tiring to see online commenters adamantly trying to blame that on a scheming cabal of Green politicians, when Green parties never got beyond 10% of the vote in the elections. Yes, Germany prohibited the ban of new reactors in the earyl 2000s, but the truth is no one wanted to build them anyway and hadn't for a long time. Under the Schröder government, only two or three reactors were shut down and they were the oldest, had a meager output and weren't even profitable anymore. And the only way Russia influenced that was by mishandling Chernobyl. It's laughable to claim a country whose only high-technology export is nuclear technology is pushing others to abandon it.
The trend is fairly consistent since 2018, though, according to the graph in the article.
> as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to meet the bosses of the country’s carmakers on Thursday in Berlin to discuss the woes of the struggling sector.
Consumers will definitely profit from that, there's no way they will tax Chinese imports even more, no way i tell's ya!
Germany (and the EU generally) import 98% of their oil-derived products..
Before sanctions the leading import source was Russia.
EVs could have helped a lot more as China has demonstrated but people like the brum-brum noise and all the right-wing parties with mysterious ties to Russia and other fossil fuel producers didn't think they'd work for some reason.
Beyond the points you made about petrol cars, the price is also a big factor.
In the EU, car companies only sell large (and very expensive) SUVs.
If you want to have a fully electric car on top of that, the bill will be far too high for most people.
This is also why the EU is seeing a switch where people can't buy their cars anymore and have to lease them or hope their employer will do it for them as part of a company car package.
> In the EU, car companies only sell large (and very expensive) SUVs.
News to me. Did you mean in the US? Or did you mean the most famous German brands like BMW and Audi?
For the EU as a whole, there's e.g. Dacia which is Romanian and therefore EU: https://shop.dacia.de/offer/257/235286/0/0 this is clearly neither an SUV, nor particularly expensive — even 18 years ago I was seeing things for about this price new, and there's been a lot of inflation since then.
Yeah meanwhile China installs record breaking amounts of Solar and Nuclear
They need their own AI bubble...
Their public media broadcaster has ever increasing and absurd budget, these temporary bubbles are nothing in comparison.
The number you are looking for is 10. ARD is made out of 9 different stations, which each has its own oversight based on the state they are from. While there are valid areas of criticism, they are overall quite good.
(And then two more, Deutschlandradio and Deutsche Welle)
So now they are broadcasting TWO competing series about mountain doctor driving Mercedes and investigating that most rare disease?!
The problem are leftist policies that have completely destroyed any economic dynamism and that have created such high tax burdens that working full-time and trying to advance in your career is basically not worth it for many professionals. I know a lot of people who have either left the country or who have switched to part-time, because doing four days a week gives you 50% more weekend, but only costs you a little bit of money if you are reasonably well paid.
If anything, we need more economically liberal policies, because those actually do stimulate innovation and growth. Instead, leftists are completely focused on how they can extract even more money from the productive part of the population to give to the unproductive.
> liberal agenda
It is quite the opposite of a liberal agenda. German policy is very illiberal in that it is heavy on bureaucracy, strict on regulations, and nowadays firmly stuck in a green-at-any-cost course. All that leads to high energy prices, sky-high barriers for industrial development and entrepreneurship and therefore high prices of german-produced goods.
Liberal would mean it's on the car producers to get out of this situation again, but instead the government tries to comfort that industry and financially support them. What about that is liberal? Or maybe you mean something else than what most of the world interprets this word as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
It's the American duopoly in these peoples head man. If you're a Republican everything bad is "Liberal" and if you're a Democrat everything bad is "Conservative". Always quite entertaining when it is used as a measuring stick for policies developed in a multi-party democracy which does not fall along the party lines as cleanly as it does in the US. The fact that Merkel voted against gay marriage always seems to break brains.
I didn't know it was in the liberal agenda to give automanufacturers protectionist mechanisms against competitors making products more aligned with customer demand to artificially prop up a major industry sector.
What kind of liberal are you talking about though? The American version or the European one? They mean very different things.
Morganthau is smilling from heaven or hell seeing the americans making his plan for Germany a reality.
Read history what will happen when Germany enters depression.
But also their cars can cost too much. They're doing a lot of sharing with Ford. Take for example the T7 platform. Why pay VW prices for a Ford?