German environment minister Carsten Schneider has called on carmakers to source their input materials from domestic producers.
“We should expect more patriotism from the automotive groups for their home location,” he told daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. With domestic, Schneider is referring in particular to Germany, but also to the larger European Union, Kallanish understands. “In Europe, we should prefer purchasing from European suppliers,” he is quoted as saying.
He added that Germany needs a functional steel industry of its own, to be independent and strong. He dismissed proposals to relocate the upstream phases of steel production to offshore places like Saudi Arabia and have only processing and refinement done in Germany.
“I favour lead markets for steel made from green hydrogen,” he said and expressed regret that carmakers are still reserved in that respect. He proposed that plug-in hybrid cars could offset their higher emissions if low-emission steel is used in their assembly. He noted this is the German position in Brussels, and “I am aware that not everybody in the industry likes that”.
German car production fell by 9% on-year in January to some 306,000 passenger cars, partly due to there being one fewer working day than last year. However, registrations of fully and partially electric cars rose by almost 23% to just over 64,000 units, according to carmakers federation VDA.
