The Greens are at fault for the downfall of the German car industry.

It's a comfortable story. It is also wrong.

I keep hearing it, from newspaper columnists to former colleagues. The numbers tell a different story.

In the second quarter of this year, China sales at Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz AG, BMW Group and Porsche AG fell by 30 to 41 per cent. In the same quarter, Volkswagen's deliveries grew in Europe and in the Americas.

The German car industry didn't miss the boat in Europe. It missed it in China.

China used to deliver roughly a third of these companies' sales, and a much bigger share of their profits. Volkswagen was number one there for a quarter of a century. BYD overtook it in 2024, GEELY in 2025. No German party had a vote in any of that.

European politics made mistakes, no doubt. Ending the German purchase bonus overnight in December 2023 hurt. But the profit engine didn't stall in Berlin. It stalled in Shanghai.

I have seen this pattern before. In China, years ago, the navigation system in our cars could not properly handle what Chinese customers needed. The fix had to go through the full validation cycle at headquarters, which could take two years. The market moved in months.

Everybody inside the headquarters gates, and everybody within 10 km of them, shares the same ideas about the car and its customer. But the market is further away, and that is what the whole discussion in Europe misses. The market that decided this was more than 8,000 km away.

Blaming the Greens keeps the cause close to home. That is exactly why it is the wrong diagnosis. Fixing the wrong cause, however loudly, won't bring back a single customer in Guangzhou.