Europe: The Idiocy of the Combustion Engine Ban

Cloud Cuckoo Land has an embassy on Earth. In Strasbourg, France. To be precise: in the European Parliament. Nowhere else in the world have such intentionally out-of-touch decisions been made.

This brings us to the ban on the combustion engine. In February 2023, the European Parliament decided that the production of cars fueled by gasoline or diesel would no longer be allowed starting in 2035. The profoundly flawed analysis of technological capabilities, paired with contempt for industry interests and customer needs in Europe, led not only to the ill-advised decision but also to the false report by Tagesschau, the leading German news program:

“The EU Parliament has voted for the definitive end of combustion engines,” the anchor reported on February 14, 2023, at 4:48 pm.

However, the assumed finality of the ban needs to be clarified. In reality, it is far from being set in stone. After the election in June 2024, the European Parliament will be compelled to reconsider the 2035 combustion engine ban.

The change will be painful but inevitable for those steering this mission and for those reporting on it. But Cloud Cuckoo Land is not a place where anyone can thrive.

Here are the five reasons why the European Parliament's intervention in the European automobile market is fundamentally flawed and could not possibly succeed.

1. Electromobility is a Niche Product

Electromobility will not prevail anytime soon. Approximately 1.4 billion vehicles are on the roads, and almost 98 percent of them have a combustion engine.

With only 90 million new electric vehicles (EVs) annually, the rapid electrification of transportation remains a mirage. Bosch CEO Stefan Hartung estimates:

This thought experiment will stay just that: thought but not feasible. It is out of this world to think that the entire production output of the global automotive industry, from China to Detroit, will be electric anytime soon.

In most countries, the share of electric vehicles is not measurable, and the charging infrastructure is almost entirely absent.

Bosch CEO Hartung told us how he sees the market:

2. No EV Boom in Germany

On German roads, 97 percent of vehicles are powered by combustion engines. The growth in electromobility has not picked up pace but instead slowed down. In 2022, there was still a 30 percent increase in new registrations; in 2023, only 11.4 percent; and in 2024, there will be a decrease of 14 percent, according to a forecast by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).

Demand vanished when the federal government canceled its rebate program for EV buyers. In December 2023, almost 55,000 new electric cars were registered—a decrease of 47 percent compared to the same month of the previous year. Currently, this places the market share of electric vehicles in new registrations at just below 11 percent.

Unrealistic: On paper, the federal government wants to see at least 15 million electric cars on German roads in six years. According to a forecast by the think tank Agora, this would require around 5,500 EVs to be registered in Germany every day. In March, there were just over 1,000 daily.

3. Charging Infrastructure is Hardly Progressing

„In Germany, we will create the leading market for electromobility,” This is one of the goals explicitly stated in the coalition agreement. Two years later, the truth is that the development of charging infrastructure is barely progressing. A program initially set to invest approximately €200 million in private charging stations, solar panels and energy storage systems in 2024 was scrapped. Consequently, electric car owners are left to their own devices to figure out how to charge their vehicles.

Disappointing: By 2030, around 15 million electric cars are supposed to be able to be charged at about one million charging stations.

Reality: According to the VDA, the expansion rate would have to triple to achieve the federal government's goal.

4. China First

With the planned market intervention, the European Commission would harm the centerpiece of the German industrial society.

Remember: German car manufacturers began developing electric cars at a time when EV pioneer Tesla was already miles ahead.

Then again, China is becoming the leader in electric and battery technology. No other country is building electric cars in such quantities that are as well-developed and, above all, affordable as the Chinese.

The Chinese age of electromobility has begun. And suddenly, the combustion engine market leader, Volkswagen, is far behind. The Wolfsburg-based company has so far been unable to capture even three percent of the Chinese electricity market.

A combustion engine ban in Europe would primarily benefit the Chinese electric car industry. Chinese manufacturers are poised to outclass the European competition with their cheaper models. Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission have never understood the geostrategic dimension of their decision. With the combustion engine ban in 2035, they would become valuable idiots for China.

5. The German Auto Industry is Rerouting

The lukewarm customer interest is reflected in automotive companies' model policies and production plans.

For example, Volkswagen is scaling down its electric car production in Germany; the ID.3 will not be produced at the main plant in Wolfsburg due to insufficient demand.

Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius once declared "electric only" as their corporate strategy. By 2025, fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids were supposed to account for half of the sales. After his predecessor Dieter Zetsche (2006–2019) failed to bring a single electric car onto the roads, Källenius wanted to strike a real breakthrough.

A New Realism: Today, Källenius only commits to the target of “up to 50 percent electric" in the second half of the decade. Not out of reluctance. It merely reflects the actual market situation.

Conclusion: Future mobility is probably electric – but not everywhere, not exclusively, and not now. The good news: With its decision to be revoked sooner rather than later, the European Parliament has emitted the only truly carbon-free energy: hot air. This will not get us on the road, but at least on the evening news.

• Celebrated author Jenny Erpenbeck visited us at the Pioneer Studio to discuss East Germany, the challenges encountered during reunification, and the lasting scars it left on society.

• Fact Check: We analyze Chancellor Scholz's claims about Germany's work performance.

• We remember American author and screenwriter Paul Auster.

Labor Day is typically a busy day for the police, especially in the Kreuzberg/Neukölln area of Berlin where violent clashes between protesters and police are a shockingly routine occurrence.

However, this year was different. According to police reports, May 1st was largely peaceful, which might be attributed to the heavy police presence. Over 6,000 officers accompanied the roughly 11,600 participants of the left-wing extremist "Revolutionary May 1st" demonstration.

The police anticipated more violence at this demonstration, partly due to the situation in the Middle East. Police assessments suggest that the route of the demonstration was strategically chosen to attract a large turnout of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, which, however, did not occur.

Author Jenny Erpenbeck is being celebrated on the international stage. She has been nominated for this year's International Booker Prize and the award ceremony is on May 21st. The New Yorker describes her as a "legitimate candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature."

In her novel "Kairos," Jenny Erpenbeck explores the downfall of East Germany. The 57-year-old East Berlin native discusses the upheavals of the transitional period and the wounds carried by society.

Jenny Erpenbeck visited us at the Pioneer Studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg. We talked about her fellow countrymen, whom she affectionately describes as "transitional damage." She explains:

Because the euphoria after the fall of the Berlin Wall was significant:

But it did not turn out that way:

Citizens in the East no longer have control over the environment in which they live, says Erpenbeck. The West dominated the reconstruction of the East:

Angela Merkel, as an East German, made it to the top of the Federal Republic. But not because of, but in spite of her origin, says Erpenbeck:

Key excerpts from the 60-minute conversation are available in German on this morning’s Pioneer Podcast. The full conversation will be published as a special Pioneer Podcast this weekend.

Yesterday was Labor Day, making it the perfect time for an SPD (Social Democratic Party) Chancellor to score points with his core voters. In a video address, Olaf Scholz stated:

However, this statement does not hold up under scrutiny. It is true that last year, approximately 55 billion hours were worked, the most since reunification. This is due to an increase in the number of employees, which rose from about 39 million in 1991 to approximately 46 million.

But Scholz omits that the average annual working hours for full and part-time employees per worker have steadily decreased. Since 1991, there has been a 13 percent decline.

Therefore, the claim that workers have never worked as much as they did last year is false for the average individual worker and conceals the Federal Republic's international decline in work performance.

Conclusion: The Federal Republic is not an amusement park. However, given the shortage of workers, continually shortening the working week is not a solution but part of the problem. A serious Chancellor would have discussed this with his voters.

Exceeding expectations: The US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer exceeded analysts' expectations for the first quarter of 2024. According to an LSEG survey, revenue for the past three months was $14.88 billion, while analysts had anticipated only $14.01 billion. Net profit was $3.12 billion, or 82 cents per share, surpassing analysts' expectations of just 52 cents.

COVID-19 impact lingers: Compared to the first quarter of 2023, revenue decreased by 20 percent and net profit by 44 percent. This decline is due to reduced demand for the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and the COVID-19 medication Paxlovid. Excluding these items, operational revenue rose by 11 percent.

Forecast: Pfizer continues to expect 2024 revenue to fall between $58.5 and $61.5 billion. The company has increased its projection for adjusted earnings per share to a range of $2.15 to $2.35, up from the earlier estimate of $2.05 to $2.25.

Today, we honor the novelist Paul Auster. The American writer died on Tuesday at the age of 77 in New York.

Born in 1947 in a family of Jewish immigrants, Auster was outspoken about his dream to become a writer at a very young age.

Auster studied Literature in New York and France and made ends meet with smaller teaching and translation jobs. It took him almost 40 years to finally get his big break: In 1985, he published his breakthrough novel "City of Glass."

The novel was the first of three detective stories he later published titled "The New York Trilogy." The New York Times Style Magazine praised it as one of the 25 most influential New York novels of the past 100 years.

Even as Auster continued to write books in rapid succession, they seemed to always remain in the shadow of his famous trilogy. In "A Life in Words," Auster said:

Following notable success in the film industry as a screenwriter and director, Auster achieved renewed popularity in the US in 2017 with his novel "4 3 2 1." In this novel, which spans over a thousand pages, he recounts his youth and college years in New Jersey and New York during the 1960s and early 1970s, a time marked by student unrest against the Vietnam War.

The FAZ sums it up:

By the end of his career, Auster had written more than 30 books, translated into 40 languages. The Times Literary Supplement of Britain hailed him during his lifetime as "one of America's most spectacular, inventive writers."

Yet, Paul Auster reminded his readers not to be overwhelmed by reverence for him or other literary greats, but rather take their own lives into their hands:

Wishing you a wonderful start to your day. Stay informed. Stay with me.

Best wishes,

Gabor