Driving Against Net Zero

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1:07You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Chris Bowlby, this week on assignments in Zwickau in eastern Germany.

1:18In Zwickau, the main museum is devoted to the town's driving force.

1:31Each new generation of local children is introduced to this place's proud history of motor manufacturing Before the Second World War it was the birthplace of Audi making the beautiful highly polished saloons we can see here and some of the world's fastest sports cars After the war, history imposed a grating handbrake turn. Tickau became part of communist East Germany, producing the Trabant car, or Trabi, a byword for smelly two-stroke engines and Western jokes about Eastern motoring backwardness. Though there were some Trabi enthusiasts who defiantly raced their cars at Monte Carlo. Or even the rally Monte Carlo.

2:19And then came 1989, the fall of the wall, the end of communism. Huge cheer goes up as the first of the East Berliners come across to the west. I had family here and visited Zwickau soon afterwards. The most immediately visible change was new petrol stations. My relatives still drove a Trabi, but were constantly overtaken by hundreds of second-hand Western cars, swiftly imported as German road reunification raced ahead.

2:50Hopes of a bright new era soared as Volkswagen arrived to build a state-of-the-art new car factory here Followed a couple of decades later by the promise of an even better future in the electric motoring era

3:09German Chancellor Angela Merkel no less visited Zwickau's VW factory as it converted from petrol to electric car production. It was part, she said, of a mobilitätsvende, a big change in mobility, a conscious echo of what people called the political vende or change of 1989.

3:32Zwickau's motor museum duly marked this change, says curator Andre Meyer, presenting it as the latest chapter in the town's manufacturing progress. This is one of the prototypes from Zwickau, and it's from 2018. And then two years later, in 2020, serial production would start, and it would ban the combustion engine from Zwickau entirely, which had shaped production here for more than a century.

4:10But this is where the story suddenly takes on new drama with massive importance for contemporary Europe. This conversion to electric cars, phasing out the petrol combustion engine, is proving hugely controversial today across the continent. Many in Zwickau worry they can't compete in the electric era. André Maier says the future of motor manufacturing here is now full of doubt. No one knows. As a museum, we're dealing with a history. We're not saying this is going to be the future. but you are wondering whether that history might be coming to an end. We are wondering. The fear now is that in an electromobility future dominated by China, Zwickau's motor industry may not survive.

4:54And that kind of fear is creating a potentially new driving force in European politics, hostility towards green policies and defence of the petrol-fuelled car. You can sense Zwickau's political tensions here in the main square in front of the town hall. It's a Monday evening. Most citizens are catching trams to go home from work or stopping for a chat. But at one end of the square, a meeting celebrating international women's rights is packing up. At the other end are very different groups preparing for its small but regular Monday demonstrations. They've got flags, drums and loudspeakers. They're proclaiming friendship with Russia, demanding the resignation of the national government and promising what they call the maintenance of our traditions.

5:39Several police cars are positioned nervously nearby.

5:49This kind of demonstration has threatened at times to drum dream campaigners out of local politics. The biggest hope for me, it was like, we are a thousand people in the city. I'm not alone as a progressive young guy in cities like Zwickau. Green politics has historically been strong in Germany, with Greens joining coalition governments in Berlin. And you might have thought that a place where the main source of employment is producing electric cars would be full of Green enthusiasts, like Jakob Springfeld. His dad works at the VW factory, and he as a teenager helped found a group called Fridays for Future, campaigning on climate change.

6:32Still only in his early 20s, he's become well-known across Germany for his warnings about where politics is heading. He soon found climate change campaigning in Zwickau met sharp local hostility. Yeah, neo-Nazis and also other far-right people was doing demonstrations against our climate demonstrations in Zwickau. They posted my face in social media and neo-Nazis standing in front of our house. Threatening? Yes. A very big feeling of fear for a lot of young people. Some of this threat came from neo-Nazis based in Zwickau, with one member shockingly found guilty in 2018 of the murder of migrants into Germany.

7:19Posters were put up with the slogan, Hang the Greens. All this left campaigners feeling intimidated. People think ten times if they want to be a candidate for the elections in Zwickau for the Green Party, because the people know. If they want to do it, it brings a lot of stress, threatening and all of that stuff. The neo-Nazis are a small, if very alarming, minority lurking in the Zwickau background. But anti-green feeling is now part of a much broader political trend among German parties, including the populists of the AFD, or Alternativa für Deutschland Party. It's had some surprising recruits.

7:59How old is this cello? This is from 1679. And is it one of the famous manufacturers? It's from Cremona. Cremona, yeah. In an elegant, high-ceilinged flat in Leipzig, a city famous for its music, I'm being shown a vintage cello by Matthias Moorsdorf. He was a leading local chamber musician, until, that is, he decided to go into politics. I joined the party in 2016, and in the beginning I thought it would be possible to do a few hours a day in politics, and of course I could play concerts still. But then the atmosphere in the society changed after each concert or sometimes before the concerts. There were people outside of the halls and waiting for me and screaming and it was a terrible situation.

8:52Big protests against you. Big protests against me. There were protests because the party he joined was the AFD, described by Germany's constitutional authorities last year as right-wing extremist. That view was largely based on the party's attitudes towards migrants. It's now increasingly focused on opposing net zero. Mr Moorsdorf, who became an AFD MP representing Zwickau in the German parliament, talks about the German economy needing re-industrialisation. He wants it to be powered by fossil fuels and nuclear energy, mistakenly abandoned, he says, by Angela Merkel's government. It was our decision under Angela Merkel to cut off all the nuclear power plants.

9:33and it was one of the biggest mistakes for the industrialisation that we now focus. I think I saw you quoted as saying not just a political mistake, a crime against the German people. I would say it was a crime against the German people. Isn't this exaggerated language? No, it's just describing reality. But if you use a word like crime, that's really getting people in a very aggressive mood, isn't it? I think the politics have to face that we are responsible for our people in the countries. Of course, migration policies in Europe are a crime. And of course, our engagement in Ukraine is a crime.

10:11Can we have a healthy political debate if people are accusing each other of crimes? If we debate with the words, it's just one thing. On the other hand, you have people, they are facing all the problems that they got from the kind of politics. they pay energy prices, they lose prosperity, they lose income for the kids. We start a debate with the politics but we don't get any answer.

10:41Many regret the use of the harsh language of crime to heat up the debate but it still resonates in a country deeply worried about the future of high quality jobs once the mainstay of German prosperity. The debate's happening everywhere in Zwickau, including among those at the huge Volkswagen factory, now making only electric cars. Exactly. I was really happy. I always say when I tell someone that that was my lottery win. Peter Springfield is about to retire from VW. He still remembers vividly the joy he felt in the early 1990s when he got one of the prized jobs at Zwickau's new car factory. He showed me old photos of the production line.

11:28But as production shifted to electric vehicles a little under a decade ago, he and his colleagues began to have doubts about the quality and overall appeal of electric cars, especially to those who see themselves as lovers of the internal combustion engine. What do the cars look like? Cars don't look nice. and inside there's just a small display here and there. There was also a problem, especially with the Volkswagen cars, there were problems with the software. But with the Chinese cars, they seemed to work better somehow. An early sense then that these new cars would lack appeal and that Chinese competition might completely undermine that electric change promoted by Angela Merkel.

12:14Peter Son Jakob, the climate change campaigner, has watched how the AFD has exploited this anxiety among the workforce, challenging the power of traditional trade unions. And that, he says, also raises painful questions for green campaigners about losing touch with working people. The AFD becomes more and more a party for the workers. A lot of democratic party people don't go in the factories and speak with the people, and we speak over the people and a lot of time not with the people. It sounds from what you're saying as if you've been through personal experiences since you got involved in politics that have made you rethink a lot of your views.

12:57Of course. I don't want to make politics only for my own bubble. There's been a lot of focus on the idea of petrol cars and the idea that it will be illegal to own a petrol car is the claim that's made. Do you think this is a big issue? Especially in Zwickau, the people see the cars as a symbol of freedom. And now it becomes a sign for economic wealth and good living in Zwickau. For us, it is a question of freedom. Local AFD MP Matthias Moorsdorf is also alert to cars' symbolic power. We don't like Brussels with all the law restrictions. Brussels is the EU. It's the EU, yes, of course. So the car is a powerful symbol, you think?

13:45The petrol car? The petrol car? Every kind of car is a symbol. If we had the infrastructure like in China, of course, maybe people would think different. So there was a lot of new infrastructure after 1989 in eastern Germany, but it was before the electric revolution. So you're now talking about a whole new phase of infrastructure to make the electric revolution work. In Germany, every electric car is a car that works with coal in reality, because our power is coming not from gas plants, not from nuclear power plants. They are coming from old coal plants. So it's a fake. German power generation from coal has been as high as a third of output a few years ago, but has recently declined.

14:34The AFD now tries to sell itself as a new version of the 1989 revolutionaries. Brussels' leading net zero change is likened to the old communist hierarchy, with so-called climate dictators denying the population freedom and mobility. For many in his community, says Peter Springfield, voting is shaped most by gut reaction to what's seen as change imposed by distant elites. A lot of people say that they want to be left in peace. They don't want to be told by them up there what sort of car to drive, what heating system to install. They want to decide everything for themselves. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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16:29Zwickau, a town I first visited when it was part of communist East Germany, has improved hugely in many ways. Buildings have been restored, there's been much new investment. The generations who came of age after 1989 have welcomed new opportunities. So we're here in a car park near the centre of Zwickau with the town's mayor, Constance Arndt, and you're showing us your official car. What sort of a car is this? This is my company car and I drive it everywhere, every day. And it's an electric car. Was it made nearby here in the VW factory? Of course, of course. Made in Zwickau.

17:21Constant Arndt was born in the communist GDR. After a career in fashion sales, she became the enterprising mayor of Tverkau, representing a local citizens' group keen to shape its future.

17:36I've always been a politically interested person. In my job as branch manager here for the fashion business, I was part of the city centre. And of course, in this context, I was also more interested in topics such as city development, retail locations, parking fees. And that just always bothered me when others decided about things that concerned me. She too hasn't escaped the growing polarisation and rancour needing personal protection after an anonymous death threat. She sees one of her key roles as trying to hold things together as the town faces necessary change. You have to be able to develop a city, to develop society.

18:18And of course you always have to do it in such a way that everybody who lives in the city feels accepted. But we must not stop modernising our city or modernising society. Are women better at understanding this future? Is it men who cling more to the idea of the petrol car, the old-style motoring?

18:41Is this primarily a male discussion? Definitely yes. Men have a completely different relationship with their cars. I really like driving my electric car. It really suits me. But I think women are a bit more pragmatic when it comes to this kind of car, as in the first place, it's a way of getting from A to B. Constance Arnt has seen a compelling vision of this attractive electric mobility future, but in her travels to China, not locally in Germany. That, she believes, has frightening implications for Zwickau.

19:15The Chinese are much, much further on. They are very clever. And if we don't stick to this, then in ten years there will be no German or European car industry. Then we'll buy, just as we buy phones that are made in Asia, also cars that are produced in Asia. That's extraordinary what you're saying. You worry that in 10 years time it's possible there could be no German car industry if we carry on like this. That's not what I'm hoping for. But I was in Shanghai in China in 2024 and I just saw what was going on on the streets there. And we all know how it was in the textile industry, household appliances, entertainment technology.

19:58There are no relevant European manufacturers anymore. And for a town like Zwickau, a motor town with a history going back over a century, that must be especially worrying. Certainly, if we no longer have the car industry here, then a large part of our regional economy will collapse for us. People are fearful about what they're losing and believe if we continue to make petrol cars, we can stop this process.

20:30That fear of manufacturing collapse in a place like Zwickau shows how the future of the car is growing in political prominence. If you want to know why this might matter so much politically, there's a striking European example not far from Zwickau in the Czech Republic. We're heading now for a place where motor politics is already much more advanced.

20:59Ever since the end of communist rule in what was Czechoslovakia, the roads have become much busier. At this junction in Prague, there are cars, vans, tourist buses I can see, clanking trams, competing for space. And I can also see a cycle lane introduced by the city authorities a few years ago. and that prompted one ambitious politician to attack what he called green fanatics, campaign for the abolition of cycle lanes and encourage all non-drivers to use the metro. That movement swiftly became a political party called Motorists for Themselves, which now has three ministers in the Czech national government.

21:38Right now! Right here! Right now! Right here! Right now!

21:46The party's figurehead is Filip Turek, a lover of fast British cars and eye-catching controversial appearances on social media. They may have won only just under 7 % of the national vote, but thanks to the coalition needs of Prime Minister Andrei Babiš, the motorists now wield governmental power. Journalist Marketa Bubinova has watched their rise. We are in the time of the social media, so let's find some influencer who is, like, big in the motorist world. So they found Filip Turek. And he'd made his reputation as an influencer talking about fast cars, that kind of thing. Exactly, like I am a car racer.

22:22I really had a lot of people on Instagram. Motorists had a lot of younger voters, and that was actually a surprise. Such parties like to see themselves as disruptors, and the motorists prompted a constitutional row recently when the Czech president refused to accept Filip Turek as environment minister due to social media pronouncements and behaviour seen as xenophobic and unacceptable. Turek called the allegations absurd. He's now an outspoken advisor to the ministry. The good condition of the European automotive industry is an economic priority for us. It employs hundreds of thousands of people in the Czech Republic.