Afterword

Germans invented the car. Americans created the automotive lifestyle. The Japanese perfected the production process of cars. Yet their reputations were of no use when it came to saving them; as an example, a sterling reputation didn’t help the great coach builder Carl Marius in 1920. Kodak could no longer benefit from making the best film in the world when it went bankrupt in 2012. Nokia and RIM/Blackberry no longer drew any profit from producing the best cell phones with hardware keyboards. Ampex had the best audio and video recorders, and filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Eumig made the best super-8 film cameras and projectors and held 100 percent market shares—in a market that shrank to zero.

The signs of a turning point are obvious: the diesel emissions scandal, the bans on vehicles, great sales results for Tesla, sports cars left behind by electric vehicles (EVs), digital user interfaces that demonstrate how far behind we are compared with some tech companies, young adults who no longer buy cars and do not want a driver’s license, traffic jams that worsen every day, automobile pioneers appearing from completely different industries, hundreds of companies developing technologies for autonomous cars, and billions of dollars redirected to new types of transportation by investors.

Max, Sofie, Julian, and my three sons won’t have to sit behind the wheel themselves. Nor will they want to. They will be driven electrically, and perhaps they won’t even have their own car. Being a father, I am relieved not only because in this way they are less likely to do something stupid but also because they are less likely to be put in danger by others. Who will provide the dominant technologies for the next automobile generation is not quite so obvious. However, there are clear signals that traditional carmakers are probably not going to be among the leading global players. Based on the facts presented in this book, I would place my money on companies from Silicon Valley and Asia.

So are the automotive engineers who work in the development departments of automobile companies in Silicon Valley and in China the smart ones, whereas those who stayed at home the incapable ones without ambition? Of course not. The situation is due to the companies themselves. Their success made traditional manufacturers content and sated. A success story with millions of cars sold is not conducive to embracing a change, especially a change from a success model that is earning a lot of money to a mainly unknown, untested driving experience one needs to learn from scratch just like everyone else.

However, success should never be taken for granted. Just as Germany won the soccer World Cup in 2014 but failed miserably in the UEFA European Championship in 2016 and even more miserably in the World Cup in 2018, past heydays are no guarantee of future survival. Examples such as Nokia and Kodak should be warning enough. The staff at all companies should maintain a certain degree of paranoia. Remember that at some point—usually earlier than later—somebody might come along and blow you out of the water with a new technology, a new business model, or better execution. Some companies have had this kind of “near-death experience” and turned it into a fixed part of their corporate DNA, whereas others have rested on their laurels and disappeared. There is no need to look across the ocean to find examples of this.

These signals are not isolated, pale dots in the sky; they radiate like bright comets that could fall from the sky right onto our heads. Sticking our heads in the sand pretending that this has nothing to do with us or—worse even, telling everyone else that there is no danger if you simply ignore it—is negligent. Naturally, not all the signals I described will have the same impact or the same intensity or will strike at precisely the predicted moment. Yet there are more than enough of them that the effects—even if only a few of them come true—will be so significant that we will be torn and shaken.

The second automobile revolution is in full swing, and it requires courageous action with no ifs, ands, or buts. The discussion has long been over; now it is time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Defaming electric mobility and refusing to accept autonomous driving and sharing models due to misconceived protectionism for the national economy are going to backfire and in the end only benefit the competition.

I will say it once more, loud and clear: the era of combustion motors for vehicles is over. End of story! Done! Finished! Politicians and car manufacturers claiming otherwise are doing a disservice to everyone and to themselves. We have to work on competencies for alternative propulsion drives now, hoping that it isn’t already too late. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in those old professions will be lost. Not maybe lost, definitely lost. Digital competency, expertise in AI, and the ability to handle and master new technologies as well as create conducive framework conditions are part of the most important objectives of our time. We should build the structures to prepare people for jobs in new professions that will come out of those new technologies and support a new wave of startups now rather than later.

We cannot justify it to our children and grandchildren if we leave them a rundown nation with a ruined economy. Even today, we are not making their lives easier because it will be increasingly difficult for them to find permanent jobs and create financial security for themselves. This is why sharing models are so popular with the younger generation. With Brexit, the older generation flipped the younger one the bird. So where does that lead us?

Whichever way you twist and turn the numbers forging the change, we are looking at hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in a best-case scenario or possibly more than a million jobs. In one industry alone! This will look like a drop in the bucket compared with the changes in the past. In all this, countries have access to the same technologies and resources as the companies that are driving the second automobile revolution forward. Some countries actually often have better know-how than the companies that are disrupting have. But all that counts for nothing if managers in those companies continue with a mindset that is arrogant, afraid of risks, and without ambition and have a smart-aleck comment about everything. Then we will deserve what we get. The right mindset is not magic. Every country has countless examples of how its sons and daughters can be innovative and successful. All we need to do is follow that example.

There is no excuse for not doing anything: if we cannot make it, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Tesla, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Uber are not “happening” to us; rather, it is the future that is putting pressure on us. Yet we allow this pressure to be put on us because we dream of past glory and are oblivious to what is fast approaching. We are no longer shaping our fate. To put it in soccer terms, you could say that our style is catenaccio compared with the competition: defensive, destructive, just trying to block the game. We want to increase our advantage, but the rules of the games are changing as we speak, and the audience is on its way to a different stadium. There is nothing left from the era when we had to catch up with Great Britain, the industrial powerhouse of the time.

To make things worse, our problem is not Chinese or American companies but German, English, French, and Japanese engineers in foreign companies who pull the rug from under the feet of German, English, French, and Japanese engineers in domestic enterprises. They have boarded the electric train, while we are still running to catch it. So let’s change our mindset. The mindset of employees in the companies, of our politicians, of civil servants, and of our entire society! We need fewer administrators and apologists telling people what customers should want (big, showy cars), what doesn’t work (self-driving vehicles), what nobody wants (electric cars), and who is to support them in this (politicians). People like this never solve problems; they only create them.

This work is the result of three years of research and more than two decades of exploring human behavior. I did not write this book to pick on Germany, France, or Japan or on the companies there and not even on those countries’ societies and politics in general, ranting about their alleged ignorance and incapacity, although it may sometimes appear that way. I have lived in Silicon Valley for years, my sons are Americans, and I could simply say “I don’t care!” But I don’t say that, and I won’t, because my parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, other relatives, and many, many friends live in some of these countries, and I am a European citizen, too. I cannot simply look on, especially when it is the automobile industry that is at stake, because it is just too important for many countries, and so are our children. Far too important to continue endangering their lives in potential traffic accidents and by exposing them to environmental pollution. I am presenting no secrets here: all the facts are public and available. The new “element” here is probably the intensity of the overview I provide.

That is because I want you to wake up and help shape the future! What are you waiting for?