Holding merely 36 percent of European market, German automakers have to compete with traditional rivals of Japan, France, Britain, South Korea and the United States on the one hand, and with electric vehicle manufacturers, including Tesla, on the other.
Germans are still proud of a sector that is key to the country's identity as "Exportweltmeister": VW, Mercedes-Benz and BMW account for half the country's trade surplus. Yet it is precisely this dominance that is under threat.
Germany's reactions to the unveiling of Tesla 3 were equally fascination, envy and panic. Britain has joined France in committing to fully phasing out fossil-fuelled cars by 2040, dealing a potential blow for the Germans, as some 10 percent of the country's industrial workforce depends on the internal combustion engine.
Doom-laden prophesies warn of national decline. One Bild columnist said the car sector could suffer the same fate as the coal industry and consumer electronics. Could Daimler follow Grundig and Blaupunkt?
SUPERVISION LOOPHOLES
For a faded "Made in Germany", the government, which has close relations with automakers, can not shirk its responsibility.
The government connives at automotive industry for good reasons. Providing 800,000 jobs, the industry is Germany's largest export sector. Tantamount to 20 percent of its share, the industry also stands as the icon of "Made in Germany".
Meanwhile, government's chumminess with the auto industry is strengthened by powerful auto lobbyist groups.
Everything is born, according to Bild, from a chart showing that the federal transport office was already aware of the fact that the Porsche Macan diesel gas abatement devices were irregular one year ago.
In a first version of the Motorization report, the device is definitely defined as a "shutdown system." But in the second, after an exchange of views with Porsche, it is referred to simply as "a change of behavior in terms of emissions of the system abatement of exhaust gases."
In this sense, the just-concluded "Diesel Summit" is a governmental crisis management. For New York Times, Wednesday's meeting between ministers, state leaders and car company chiefs was an attempt to contain a crisis of confidence that threatens Germany's most important industry, and perhaps even its national identity, ahead of elections next month.
Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, a car industry analyst at the University of Duisburg-Essen Center for Automotive Research, called the agreement a farce and said that political leaders had squandered the opportunity to force a more meaningful change on the carmakers.
"The biggest losers are the politicians and their credibility," he said, calling for more reforms and stricter supervision from the government.
