Is there no alternative to electromobility?
Clearly no - there are a lot of alternatives!
Given the uncertain availability of the required electricity from renewable energies, which, due to Germany's nuclear and coal phase-out, is likely to lead to massive energy imports from neighboring EU countries without coal and nuclear phase-out laws in the near future, we believe that focusing on “e-only” will result in considerable environmental pollution in the form of incalculable global CO2 emissions during production. In our view, electromobility makes sense for reducing local pollutant emissions in city centers—but electromobility concepts that go beyond this urgently need process optimization if electric drives are to be dependent on a reliable power supply across the board.
Globally, there are approximately 1.4–1.5 bn vehicles with gasoline or diesel engines on the world's roads.
The trend is currently still rising. A complete switch to purely electric drives is therefore not feasible in the long term, especially since the raw materials required for battery production are unlikely to be available. The combustion engine therefore remains the most widely used drive system for all applications in transport, logistics, construction, and private transport.
Since the automotive industry has come under public scrutiny and the focus of climate and environmental NGOs in the past due to software manipulation in the exhaust gas aftertreatment of diesel vehicles, it lacks the reputation to be accepted by all stakeholders as a reliable partner in the defossilization of drive types alongside electromobility. The engineering spirit of this key German industry is thus hampered for the foreseeable future, even if the failures of an e-only strategy to date are slowly leading to a rethink. This now needs to be changed within the framework of the market economy and physics.
What possibilities are there to counteract climate change openly and - above all - quickly, without
simply shifting CO2 emissions to neighboring countries and at the same time increasing the problems caused by wrong strategies?
How do we also manage to save the climate not only in our urban industrial societies in the western world, but also in areas where growth and massive industrialization are currently the national focus and climate protection means luxury for a small upper class: In emerging and developing countries?
The answer is as clear as it is logical: We need a mix of all types of drive systems, known as “multi-pathway.”
