(GUA) VW - LIFE AFTER DIESELGATE

The body shop of the VW plant at Zwickau, Saxony, Germany. Photograph: Nicole Krueger/The Guardian

Two bronze statues that guard the entrance to Zwickau train station in Saxony tell the tale of Germany’s struggle to wean itself off fossil fuels.

A crouching miner cradles a lamp in a nod to the lignite, a particularly dirty form of coal, that was dug from this part of former East Germany, fuelling its factories and power stations. His companion, an engineer, represents the car industry that dominates Germany’s industrial heartland.

But while mining for coal is on the way out, the country’s influential car industry, which employs more than 830,000 people, is heading in a new direction. Volkswagen’s enormous plant on the outskirts of the medieval town is the first in the German carmaker’s empire to fully embrace the future.

The last internal combustion engine (ICE) car, a VW Golf estate, rolled off the line here in June 2020, as Zwickau became the first factory belonging to a volume car manufacturer to fully switch from building petrol- and diesel-guzzling cars to those powered by lithium-ion batteries.

Six years after the humiliation of its global emissions scandal, the world’s largest carmaker by output is leading the charge for Germany’s carmakers, as they look to end their lengthy and lucrative love affair with hydrocarbons by going electric.

Dieselgate in 2015 – where VW was found to have installed so-called defeat devices in its cars to cheat emissions tests – left an indelible mark on the company. It may also have pushed VW more quickly to a lower-emission strategy than many of its domestic and international rivals, and spurred tough new government rules. The European Union intends to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2035. The Guardian - link - Joanna Partridge - link - more like this - link