Stephan von Schuckmann, on the board of ZF, is in charge of the company's drive division. ZF is the third largest auto supplier in the world. He told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung what the Friedrichshafen group was hoping for in terms of electric mobility.
Von Schuckmann thinks that by the middle of this decade, the market for electric cars will be bigger than that for vehicles with petrol engines. ZF believes that 47 percent of cars will be fully electric by 2030. That is a lot more than what the people in charge of strategy thought two years ago. In particular, the change of president in the United States is putting a tremendous amount of money into the electronics market. Even though high energy prices would "slow the brakes down in some places," they were not a global problem.
The manager thought that China's market for electronics would continue to grow. This is because funding is "more coherent" there than in Europe. "The Chinese work on all kinds of technologies, such as fuel cells." In rural China, there are still a lot of roads where electric cars are not yet used. "Europe has put too much of its attention on electric cars too fast. "I'd like to see people be more open to technology," von Schuckmann says.
Many people now think that hybrids are no longer helpful. The boss of ZF drive is bothered by the bad name of partial electrification in this country because it is a step toward full electrification. This is how people learned to drive and charge electric cars.
The manager doesn't think it's likely that laws could be made even stricter for the automotive industry. "If CO2 rules were stricter, we would have to take tougher steps. We can still change our plants in ways that are okay with society," he said.
Due to their past focus on gasoline and diesel engines, many suppliers are finding it hard to make the switch to electric mobility. Von Schuckmann says that things are looking good at ZF and that the company can "more than make up for" the drop in combustion engines. By 2030, the company had more than 25 billion euros worth of high-voltage orders for electric cars and plug-in hybrids. We have a "very high backlog of orders," and we keep getting more orders.
When asked to compare the infotainment systems in electric cars from Germany and China, Schuckmann said that the Germans have a lot of work to do to catch up. If not, the newest generation of German Stromer could "easily beat the competition around the world." Also, people would want to buy the models. The efficiency and performance of the German cars are "excellent." @via Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
