“The rapid ramp-up of electric mobility must take priority”

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“The rapid ramp-up of electric mobility must take priority”

A substantial and immediate reduction in CO

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emissions is needed more urgently than ever according to a judgment by the German Federal Constitutional Court and the resulting amendments to tighten up the Climate Change Act. The mobility sector will have to play its part in this, but what form its role will take is the subject of debate. In the interview, Hildegard Müller, President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), evaluates the various technologies available and describes the political and economic conditions that she believes will be necessary to achieve climate-neutral mobility.

Interview

MTZ _ You took over the presidency of the VDA at an extremely challenging time. In the light of all the crisis management measures that were needed over the last 18 months, were you able to launch any new initiatives?

MÜLLER _ It goes without saying that the coronavirus pandemic required exten

sive crisis management measures. But, at the same time, the situation made it

possible for us to start new initiatives.

We introduced a comprehensive reform of the structure of the VDA and this has now been completed. We digitized the organization almost overnight, like many companies which had the same experience. This also applied to our daily work with our member firms, which has functioned extremely well

in the crisis. This interaction is, of course, essential for my work as Pre sident of the VDA. Alongside the pandemic, the automotive industry is un dergoing perhaps the biggest trans

formation in its history. Climate neu

trality and digitization are the key

wordsin this respect. Over the last 18 months, we have held indepth

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Interview

con sultations with our members and, as a result, we have identified new po sitions and paved the way for a success

ful trans formation. Our joint commit

ment as an industry to climateneutral mobility by 2050, which was drawn up last fall, is just one example of this.

You are familiar with the energy industry.

What is the most important factor in the rapid changeover to renewable energy?

Which fuels are most promising?

We are relying on the fast expansion of renewable energy. Electric vehicles will need a growing quantity of green elec

tricity and, of course, a corresponding charging infrastructure. But hydrogen and efuels, in other words liquid fuels based on renewable energy, will also be important. They will enable vehicles with combustion engines to play their part in climateneutral mobility – I’m thinking in particular of the many vehi

cles that are already on our roads.

Will Germany continue to be an importer of primary energy? Or is it conceivable and feasible for us to become self-sufficient in energy in the long term?

The good thing about liquid fuels is that they are easy to transport and store. This means that they can be imported from regions where renewable energy is read

ily available and cheap. As a global trad

ing partner, Germany can benefit from this. Energy autonomy, in other words, complete independence from external energy supplies, is unrealistic. We need some sort of energy raw material policy.

What do you think is the potential for im port- ing e-crude or green hydrogen from the Middle East or North Africa, for example?

In order to manufacture hydrogen cost

effectively, electrolysis plants need to be in operation for as many hours in the year as possible. For this reason, hydro

gen can be produced most cheaply in countries where there is an aboveaver

age number of sunny days. The African continent is the ideal location. Because of the high levels of sunshine in many regions of Africa, renewable energy can be produced there at a relatively low cost. The decisive factor is establishing the right con ditions to make it econo

mically viable. The VDA has recently launched a joint project on an equal footing with the African Asso ciation of Automotive Manufacturers (AAAM) as part of the Partner Africa project be ing run by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Develop

ment (BMZ). Our cooperation with Afri

can countries will focus among other things on exploiting new sour ces of energy in the form of efuels. Other areas of the initiative include devel oping the automotive industry on the Af rican con tinent and gaining access to markets for our manufac turers and sup pliers so that we can help to create apprenticeships and jobs. As part of a winwin partnership be tween Africa and Europe, the African countries will benefit from technology alliances, job creation and energy independence, and this will also help to protect the climate on the African continent.

Should products manufactured using renew- able energy such as e-fuels be given tax advantages and offset against the fleet CO₂ emissions of the vehicle manufacturers?

We support a change in the energy tax on the basis of the carbon content of fos

sil fuels. If the tax on efuels is reduced and they are offset against fleet CO2 emis sions, this will send out a clear signal in their favor. We are also calling for a 30 % renewable fuel quota for 2030 in the Re newable Energy Directive (RED) II to en sure a steady rampup of production.

According to the experts, if we are to achieve our climate targets, we need to take the available CO₂ budget into consideration. Do you share this view?

From a scientific perspective, the focus on a global CO2 budget is correct and this has also been laid down in the Paris

Agreement. It is important that the in stru ments we use are appropriate for this approach. This is why we are putting the emphasis on EU emissions trading, which will include transport in the future.

Against this background, does it make sense to put new infrastructure in place? What is the main trend identified by your most recent VDA charging network ranking in May?

The public charging infrastructure in Germany and across the rest of Europe is being developed far too slowly and currently cannot keep pace with the dy namic growth in the electric vehicle mar ket. Germany alone will need more than

Dipl.-Kffr. Hildegard Müller (born 1967) completed an apprenticeship in banking and then a degree in business administration at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. From 1995 to 2008 she was Head of Department at Dresdner Bank AG and in October 2002 she was elected to the German Parliament (Bundestag). She was then appointed Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor in 2005.

In 2008 she became CeO of the German Association of energy and water Industries and in 2016 moved to Innogy Se as Chief Operating Officer Grid & Infrastruc-

ture. Since February 2020 she has been President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry.

“We support a change in the energy tax on the basis of the carbon content of fossil fuels”

MTZ worldwide 09|2021

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one million charging points for electric cars and vans by 2030. To achieve this, we need to install more than 2000 new charging points per week. However, at the moment only 250 are being crea

ted every week in public spaces. In our recently published 15point plan for accelerating the expansion of electric mobility, we are therefore calling for a highspeed nationwide program with specific targets for the federal states and municipalities so that we can catch up with the backlog. The same thing is needed for the EU as a whole. We have evaluated the charging infrastructure in 31 European countries. Our evaluation shows how many publicly accessible charging points there are in each coun

try in relation to the total number of cars (gasoline, diesel, electric and other).

It is clear that the more public charging points there are, the more attractive it is to consumers to buy an electric car.

The Netherlands has one charging point for every 109 cars in its entire fleet, while Germany with 1014 cars per charging point is well above the European average of 887. We need to make rapid improvements.

What part can car and household batteries play in storing and supplying energy in a smart grid?

For a successful rampup of electric mobility, we are calling for what the National Platform Future of Mobility (NPM) recommends in its report, which is for electric cars to be used to store electricity, because the batter

ies can function as storage facilities for the grid. The necessary legal re gulations and financial incentives for the owners of electric cars need to be put in place quickly. This will allow electric car owners to help the grid and to benefit from it. We also need far more solutions like this which highlight interesting oppor

tunities for consumers.

Life cycle assessments of BEVs which include production and recycling indicate that they are no better than vehicles with

conventional powertrains. In light of this, does it make sense to put all the emphasis on promoting battery-powered electric cars?

In a comparison of the different power

trains across their entire life cycle, elec

tric cars have the smallest carbon foot

print in most cases. However, an individ

ual vehicle’s carbon footprint depends on a range of different conditions, such as the powertrain technology, for example BEV, PHEV or FCEV. The size of the bat

teries and the electricity mix in each country are also decisive factors. Elec

tric cars should always be charged with 100 % green electricity, but in 2019, re newable energy unfortunately made up only 43 % of Germany’s total energy consumption and the demand for elec

tricity is growing. It is true, though, that to decarbonize BEVs the main emphasis must be put on battery technology and manufacturing along the entire value chain from the extraction of the raw materials to the production of the cells.

Is the competition between the technolo- gies really fair or are OEMs becoming locked in to one technology following their invest- ments in electric mobility over recent years?

The rapid rampup of electric mobility must take priority if we are to meet our highly ambitious climate targets, par

ticularly for cars. But it is clear that we will need all the available technologies to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 at

the latest. This is why we must estab

lish the conditions for a rapid rampup of electric mobility across the whole of Europe and make hydrogen and e

fuels available in the necessary quan

tities. I am also calling on everyone to ensure that they include commercial vehicles, which are very important, in all their considerations.

Plug-in hybrids can only save significant amounts of CO₂ if the battery is frequently charged from an external power source.

You drive a PHEV yourself. What proportion of your journeys are electric?

Like many other people, I find the combined solution of a hybrid car ide al. Plugin hybrids give you the best of both worlds. On short journeys, in the city for example, I drive in electric mode. If I have to cover long distances on business or when I’m visiting rela

tives in smaller towns where there are no charging points available, I use the efficient combustion engine or travel by train. Overall I would say that a very large proportion of my journeys are electric. Unfortunately, there are far too few charging points, which means that with the electric range I am restricted to shorter trips. But the latest hybrid cars have an electric range of up to 100 km, which means that it is possible to make longer zeroemission journeys.

Hildegard Müller, thank you for the interesting Interview.

“Germany alone will need more than one million charging points for electric cars and vans by 2030,”

says Müller

INTERVIEW: Marc Ziegler