BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s automotive industry association on Wednesday cut its growth forecast for 2021 car sales in Europe’s biggest economy to 3% from 8% citing production hurdles posed by semiconductor shortages.
The Association of German Automobile Manufacturers (VDA) now expects car sales in Germany to be at 3.15 million units this year. It slashed its production forecast on Tuesday.
Presenting the figures at its summer news conference, VDA warned against a possible European Union de facto ban on combustion engines from 2035 and called for more investment in charging stations for electric cars in the bloc.
VDA said a ban on internal combustion engines would take a toll on jobs, innovation and consumers’ freedom.
“People don’t want bans, they want offers: innovative, attractive, networked,” VDA said in a statement.
German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday that the European Commission was drafting a law, to be proposed next week, to reduce allocations for CO2 rights to zero by 2035 “at the earliest”.
Germany’s carmakers have been accelerating a shift to electric vehicles but charging infrastructure expansion has been a hurdle to the mass adoption of battery-powered vehicles.
(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa and Ilona Wissenbach)
