China was never only after our car market. More than 15 years ago it started building the whole battery supply chain, from the mine to the finished cell. Today China controls about 80% of that chain. And everything going electric needs batteries. That was the clever move. And trucks are next.

What China did to the car market is happening again. This time with trucks. 9 of 10 electric trucks sold worldwide last year were sold in China, and a Chinese one costs about 100,000 euros less. I asked a truck expert about the quality. His answer: "That's a bit of the old arrogance talking."

Mercedes says it found the real reason for its crisis: its own employees. The board wants everyone to work more for the same pay. But the workers didn't cause this. The real fix is much bigger: Mercedes has to become a software company, which no old industrial giant has ever done.

Mercedes just told its workers to work more for the same pay. 20,000 protested and want their CEO gone. I worked there almost 10 years: more hours won't fix Mercedes, they'll make it worse. The problem is the culture. A former boss even called HQ a "Bullshit Castle."

German EVs finally got good. For Chinese buyers, they're still dumb cars. China's best-seller in June was a Tesla Model Y. The most expensive car in the top 10. Chinese buyers still buy foreign cars. Just not dumb ones. Smart means software and AI. German brands hold 1.6% of that market.

The world's largest car market is crashing. German brands are getting hit hardest. China's car market shrank 20% in H1 2026. Same 6 months: record exports, record EV share. This isn't a collapse. It's a shakeout. And I don't think China stumbled into it. It engineered it.

I told CNBC VW's overhaul wouldn't be decided that day, just the start of a fight. That night the board voted it down, 12 to 7. Battery, software and AI are now up to 80% of a car's value. That's the race Germany is losing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcKYDvNtOrk

Volkswagen could make Chinese car technology mainstream in Europe. Overnight. In China, VW builds cars with Xpeng. Now it reportedly wants to sell them in Europe. Chinese tech, German logo. Xpeng already sells in Germany. Buyers will figure it out. Then they'll buy the original.

Germany's top economist says BYD will probably buy Volkswagen. Right now at VW: 100,000 jobs at risk, plants on the line, whole divisions for sale. I don't think a takeover is how this ends. I see a scenario nobody is talking about yet.

There's no longer 1 Volkswagen. There are 3. One in Germany builds the car we know. One builds the new car for the West in the US, with Rivian. One builds it for China, with Xpeng. Germany makes its money on the car of yesterday and builds the car of tomorrow elsewhere.

Europe lost the future of the car. So now it's fighting for the past. By 2030, up to 80% of a car's value will be battery, software and AI. The bit Germany is famous for shrinks to about 20%. Behind on the future, Germany is fighting to give the combustion engine a future again.

The real problem with German cars isn't the software. It's how late everything gets tested. 100+ computers, one function across dozens of suppliers, bolted together only at the very end. That's when it doesn't fit. Right before production. A name for it: integration hell.

For the money German carmakers spend to develop a single car, Chinese rivals develop 4. "China is faster." Everyone's tired of hearing it. But it's true. The real question isn't whether. It's why. And the usual answer, that Germans can't do software, is too easy.

In 2023 I started writing about cars online. Often for 3 likes. Yesterday I was on national primetime TV. Looks like success. The real story is less glamorous.

Manfred Weber hat bei #lanz die Chance zum Schlusswort aber schwurbelt von #Innovation, coole Produkte und lenkt dann ab auf Reziprozität, 6G-Netz #china. Leute dieser Kohorte begreifen es einfach nicht. Es bleiben nur noch 20% Wertschöpfung. #auto #automobilindustrie @philipp-raasch.bsky.social

There is no car crisis. There's a German car crisis. The world sold ~90M cars in 2025, heading past 100M. The problem for Germany: almost none of that growth is theirs. China's boom is over, Europe is flat, the US is a tariff-hit niche. All the growth is now in the Rest of World.

Everyone's talking about the car crisis. The numbers say the opposite. In 2025 the world sold ~90M cars, near pre-Covid records. By 2030, past 100M. The pie is growing. Just not in the West. India now builds more cars than Germany. China just passed Japan as the world's #1 car nation.

Bosch and ZF were startups once. German suppliers sell the 2nd most in the world. But the typical one earns just 1.7%. Japan makes 5.9%. China 9.6%. Getting cheaper won't save them this time. They have to rethink what they actually build. That's not an efficiency problem. It's a founder problem.

Your savings account earns more than the world's largest auto supplier. Bosch does $60B in revenue a year. Margin: 1.8%. Japan's suppliers earn 3x what Germany's do. China's earn 5x. The gap isn't random. There's one specific reason for it. And most people haven't heard it.

German cars are the most trusted in the world. Unless they're electric. Only 12% of global buyers would avoid a German car. American cars sit at 25%, Chinese at 44%. With EVs it flips. 23% of German EV owners wouldn't buy German again. Among Chinese EV owners, only 13%.

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