Do cavalo ao carro eléctrico

Ontem, durante a caminhada matinal, tive a oportunidade de ler cerca de metade do segundo capítulo de  "Kaput - The End of the German Miracle" de Wolfgang Munchau. O título é "Neuland". Não, não é sobre a minha marca preferida de marcadores, é sobre a internet e o digital. Em 2013 Merkel terá chamado à internet de "Neuland" como nós na Idade Média usávamos o termo "Terra Incógnita".

O capítulo é outra surpresa. Primeiro o autor defende porque é que a Alemanha é um país digital-unfriendly (em 2020 só 33% dos alunos tinha acesso à internet na escola. BTW, "teachers, as a profession, are among the first to warn about the negative consequences of digitalisation"). Depois, apresenta números que mostram o divórcio dos estudantes alemães com o estudo universitário dos cursos de engenharia, ciência e matemática. Depois, aborda o tema da fraca infraestrutura de suporte ao uso da internet:

"My favourite story about Germany's slow internet came from the deepest Sauerland, a region of rolling hills and dense forests to the south-east of Dortmund. A photographer needed to send a large photo collection to a printer that was 10 kilometres away. The total data volume was 4.5 gigabytes, which is about the size of an average movie. He organised a race - between an internet upload and his horse. He burnt his photos on to a DVD and gave his computer a twenty-minute head start because he had to get the horse ready. The horse not only won the race, but, after riding home and feeding the horse, the photographer found the internet transmission was still uploading."

Depois, o capítulo começa a embrenhar-se no desempenho da indústria automóvel alemã e o seu horror ao carro eléctrico. Até mudei a cor do sublinhado no livro ao chegar a este trecho. Juro que escrevi "Quando o gigante cai: Empresas e nações em risco" antes de ler isto:

"Small countries often have industries that dominate everything. Large countries are more diversified. The US has a very strong high-tech sector, but it constitutes less than 10 per cent of the entire economy. It is hard to calculate the share of the car industry in German GDP. We know that cars and car components make up some 16 per cent of exports, having peaked at 19 per cent in 2016. My favourite measure is value added - because it disentangles the complex supply chains and isolates those parts of manufacturing activity done in the country. According to Germany's Federal Statistics Office, the German car industry alone constitutes almost 20 per cent of the value added in the entire industrial sector - this is massive for a single industry.

The memorable quote by Charles Wilson, President Eisenhower's defence secretary, comes to mind, here: What is good for GM is good for America. That was the 1950s. Nobody in the US would say that anymore, not even about Google or Apple. But they are still saying the equivalent in Germany. The German version has many names: there is Volkswagen, which also owns Audi and Porsche; Mercedes; and BMW. International car makers also have car plants in Germany: Ford, Opel, and nowadays even Tesla.

Of the forty companies now in the German DAX stock index, seven are from the car industry. The industry employs 786,000 people directly. Their future is not looking too bright. Many will lose their jobs, especially in supplier industries. The problem is a skills mismatch. A fuel-driven car is a mechanical-engineering product. An electric vehicle is a digital device at heart. Its engine only has a fraction of the parts of a fuel engine - and they are different parts.

...

There are many problems with corporatist constructs. The biggest one is that when the industry starts to decline, so will the country.

This whole corporatist world lived under the illusion of control - they believed they were in charge and would remain in charge forever. The reality is that, while they were asleep at the wheel in Berlin, Wolfsburg, Stuttgart and Munich, China was busy creating an entire new industry from scratch. The Chinese managed to come from nowhere to become the world's largest car exporter in just a few years."

Volto a mudar de cor no sublinhado aqui acerca da transição para o carro eléctrico:

"What is happening here is not a technical evolution. The electric car works differently and is made by different people. Remember the typewriters? We know how that story ended. Desktop computers and laptops, and the availability of cheap high-quality printers, killed the typewriter industry within a few years. Smartphones, with their sophisticated Al-driven photo software, killed the market for consumer cameras, along with GPS devices, watches, compasses and many more paraphernalia people used to schlep around. When that happens, not only does the product change, but so does the producer. The German car makers are the typewriter champions of our times.

As they used to say in the 1970s: the world will always need typewriters. Until recently, many believed the world would always buy German cars."

Depois, algo que conhecemos muito bem no nosso país:

"The Chinese had increased their market share in Europe from zero to 8 per cent by 2023. The European Commission calculated that this share would go up to 15 per cent by 2025 and has therefore announced protective tariffs of up to 38.1 per cent on imported Chinese electric cars from July 2024.

This is the playbook of how industries decline. After they have manoeuvred themselves into a corner, they start to call for subsidies and for trade barriers. The consequence will be that EU consumers will pay higher prices for the same product compared to Chinese." 

Sabem o que costumo escrever aqui acerca do futuro do calçado e do têxtil? Nichos. 

"I am not saying that the German car industry will go from a hundred to zero in five years. Germany will still produce cars. But the industry will employ fewer people. And, more importantly, German companies will not dominate the industry as they did in the past. Tesla and the Chinese are the global market leaders.

...

I am reminded of what happened to the manual watch industry after the arrival of digital and smart watches. Rolex is still making money, because the product is not simply a watch, but jewellery. The status-symbol end of the car market may well be the biggest niche for Germany, and a profitable one. But it is small."