Pure focus on electric mobility wrong – German transport minister

German transport minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) doesn’t want a decision for “transport technology of the future” to be made prematurely, Henrik Mortsiefer writes in Tagesspiegel. “To only focus on electric mobility is a too narrow way of thinking. We need combined solutions that are open to new technologies and that are cross-modal,” Scheuer said on Monday at Tagesspiegel’s Future Mobility Summit in Berlin. VW head Herbert Diess previously said that “technology openness” was the wrong way, instead suggesting a focus on e-mobility. Scheuer disagreed, saying he thought this approach to be “completely wrong”. Shaping opportunities was better than introducing bans, he added.

At the end of March, a multi-stakeholder commission tasked with finding solutions to cutting traffic emissions managed only to find a consensus on measures that will lower emissions by two-thirds of the necessary amount. Many commentators blamed Scheuer for this failure, saying his attitude of only allowing measures that hurt no one was preventing changes that had any real climate effect.