“Which 18-year old still dreams of their own car?”

Mobility in Germany used to be equated with auto-mobility but an increasing number of young people never own a car or even get a driving licence, Green Party MP Matthias Gastel writes in a guest article on Zeit Online. Young Germans preferred to use a combination of options to get around, including  shared driving, train, bus or bicycle. “Policy has to pick up this societal change” and work towards a better connection of different means of transportation, Gastel says. This would at once improve the tansport sector’s sluggish emissions reduction, abate congestion problems and protect natural resources, he argues. “But the decisive argument is that unnecessary waiting threatens hundreds of thousands of jobs,” he says. The end of the combustion engine will come one way or another and Germany risks losing market share “if we cling to old transport concepts”.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW dossier The energy transition and Germany’s transport sector for background.