Once thought, it cannot be taken back.

Once thought, it cannot be taken back.

2019 is the year in which we are once again reminded of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's quote from "THE PHYSICIAN". 2019 is the year where the first major social and economic tipping point is reached. And at the same time, as we enter the next decade, we become participants and spectators in the most exciting economic thriller of all time.

It is not yet clear whether this economic thriller will become a light-hearted comedy, a drama with a positive outcome or a tragedy. But at least it is in our hands. We are the first generation that can access everything "thought" and that is also in possession of the necessary resources to implement it. By this I mean: it has been thought how transport will become more comfortable, faster and less polluting. It has been thought how electricity costs for companies and private individuals can be drastically reduced, how decentralised value creation in electricity generation can strengthen rural regions that have been lagging behind so far. Thought has been given to how we can grow healthy food in an environmentally friendly way and with better returns for agriculture. It has been thought how buildings generate more energy than they consume, how we replace carbon with hydrogen in steel production, it has been thought how we preserve our habitat and why we need to protect it in the first place. And it has been thought how this benefits the economy, society and each and every one of us. These insights can no longer be taken back. And the fact that we can think about it at all is thanks to the form of government that enables us to shape the 1920s of the 21st century in such a way that by 2030 we will have achieved what many thought was just as impossible as stepping on the moon, inventing penicillin or the idea of the internet.

But what will then become of the German car industry?

What chemists, physicists, IT specialists, engineers, mechanics and business economists have thought of together in recent years means an enormous improvement in comfort, economy and environmental compatibility. Therefore, the end of the combustion engine can no longer be stopped, the technology that has been available for years can no longer be held back. Neither "alternative facts" nor fictitious studies nor influencing politics & administration can change this. This year, Hansjörg Freiherr von Gemmingen-Hornberg reached 1,000,000 kilometres in his Tesla Model S. While at the IAA Commercial Vehicles 2018 there were almost exclusively Asian buses and trucks with electric drives, at BUSWORLD 2019 in Brussels every European manufacturer presented the right vehicles - for emission-free public transport. In view of the model fireworks of European manufacturers in electric vehicles, I am confident that the industry is now accepting the international development and taking up the challenge for transformation.

Can we manage the transformation?

Together we can do it, I'm pretty sure. However, everyone has to pull together. Politics, business and society. But that's what makes it particularly exciting, isn't it? When business associations and environmental organisations work together to find solutions. When works councils and company management pull together. When we use the know-how of each generation. If we listen better to science and let culture inspect us more. If we continue to think what is thought instead of fighting it. And if we realise that neither Greta Thunberg nor Elon Musk are responsible for these changes, but, you guessed it. Which brings us back to the physicists. Oh yes, Elon Musk is not a physicist, but our German Chancellor is.

Together we can do it, I'm pretty sure. However, everyone has to pull together. Politics, business and society. But that's what makes it particularly exciting, isn't it?

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