Like any economy, Germany has its strengths and weaknesses. The advantage of the corporate structures is that there are many family owned businesses, often medium sized companies but some of them rather large and highly competitive. How will these business models survive? This is a big challenge! Many German companies are rather carbon-intensive. For instance, for the automotive industry, the combustion engine is still important, much more than most people think. The transition towards electric mobility is under way but not easy.
Three years ago, we carried out a very interesting study on this issue in the German automotive industry, where we examined know how in driving technologies. We found that German car manufacturers are world leaders in knowledge about combustion engines, but they also own a large number of patents in electric mobility. German car manufacturers are in the process of shifting production towards electric vehicles. But at the same time production of combustion engines continues. Due to these parallel structures, productivity in this sector has been declining during the past three years.
Copyright: Ronny Hartmann / AFP
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