Frankfurt Motor Show: Love, hate and electric cars

I have a love-hate relationship with international auto shows such as this week's extravagance in Frankfurt.

On one side, if you like cars, if you have a single drop of gasoline in your veins, it's impossible not to be impressed by the impressive number of exposed engineers. And that is of course the general idea.

Manufacturers are spending huge amounts of money to develop their latest four-wheeled fantasies, loaded with last-minute electronic gadgets, which apparently will do everything for you, with the exception of brushing your teeth. They want you to be impressed.

But there is also a very big disadvantage. The magnitude of these events is staggering. Hundreds of exhibitors and hundreds of thousands of visitors are piling up in a series of giant pavilions, the size of a large number of football fields.

On press day, each manufacturer has its own presentation, with turn signals, video wall-to-wall and a booming soundtrack. Many of them occur at the same time.

It's hot, stuffy and very very noisy. Getting around is a major chore, especially in Frankfurt, where it can take 20 minutes to go from one side to the other of the show. Yesterday I traveled over 13 kilometers (eight miles), between two As a colleague said, "why does BMW have to figure in another bloody postal code?".

So why bother to go there? Well, for starters, it's a great way to take the pulse of the industry, see what people are thinking and worrying about. I have attended these shows too much during my career, but everyone has been different.

For many years, electrification and automation are the dominant themes.

At major European fairs in Frankfurt, Geneva and Paris, there has been much speculative debate about the need to develop battery-powered cars and how we will live with stand-alone machines.

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But here in Frankfurt, what was once speculation becomes a reality. The launch of Volkswagen's ID.3 is considered a defining moment. Not because it looks particularly flashy or exotic – it's not the case – but because it's the first electric car built for this purpose by the German giant, the first fruit from an investment program of 30 billion euros (27 billion euros), designed to transform the company. in a leader of the electric car market.

There is an irony here, of course. Four years ago, Volkswagen was a very different company. It is during the 2015 show in Frankfurt that US environmental authorities have dropped their bombs, accusing the German company of deliberately manipulating emissions tests. CEOs rolled over, fines of several billion dollars were paid and the company embarked on a very different corporate strategy.

The VW Group is now well positioned to take center stage in a race for electric car production, which other manufacturers had no choice but to join. However, one can look forward to established players in the market for affordable electric vehicles, such as Renault, Nissan and Kia. fight for each sale.

The new EU rules, which will come into force from next year, will require automakers to significantly reduce the average emissions of their vehicle fleets, on pain of heavy fines. As the rules will apply to new car registrations, they will not be able to design some low symbolic emission models and leave them somewhere in a dark garage. They will have to sell them.

It is fair to say that this makes some car companies nervous. At present, one of the problems with electric cars, aside from arguments such as charging points, is that their construction costs more than conventional cars. This means that prices are higher, but they are less profitable to sell. This may change as the market grows and economies of scale come into play, but for the moment it is a problem.

Manufacturers have therefore spent a lot of money developing new cars, the profits of which will probably be lower than those of existing models, while the entire industry is facing a slowdown in the global economy, lower sales major markets and the effects of growing trade tensions. Ralf Speth, managing director of Jaguar Land Rover, told me that all of this helped to create a "perfect storm" for the sector.

So it's perhaps not surprising that this show has seen fewer eye-catching concept cars than other recent events. I'm used to seeing fanciful whimsical models claiming to show how self-driving cars are going to be integrated into our lives – like the Renault car in your living room.

Not so this time. At the present time, automakers are more concerned with the production and sale of electric cars than by their futuristic dreams. Of course, automated technology is still growing at a breakneck pace – and advanced systems, such as track maintenance assistance, end up in cars in showrooms. But most really sci-fi creations have been abandoned.

Not all though. Audi has always brought its AI: Trail, a concept for a future autonomous off-road vehicle. That sounds pretty daunting – a cross between a lunar buggy and something coming out of a Mad Max movie. With drones for lighthouses.

If the future is really dystopian, Audi will be at least ready.