How much mobility can we still afford - and what must we do to have it?

The carbon emissions discussion already made a deep impression in 2007. In 2008 we had another horror story: the price of oil as an object of speculation. For a while a barrel of crude oil cost 160 US dollars. Prices have fallen again since then, but this can barely be felt at the petrol pump. Car drivers are shocked. And the experts are discussing whether or not the oil production peak has been reached - or whether this will not be the case until 2010.

Nevertheless, every German citizen consumes five litres of oil every day on average: as fuel, as packing material or for heating. The tremendous demand for energy in growing markets such as China or India will continue to cause crude oil consumption to rise. Oil resources are becoming scarcer. The automotive industry seems to have understood this sign of the times. "We are working towards becoming independent of oil," says Volkswagen head, Martin Winterkorn. "We urgently need to decouple from fossil fuels in favour of using more renewable energy." As Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche underscores, "in the end, the automotive industry's path will lead to emission-free vehicles which are not powered by crude oil-based fuels."

Alternatives are currently the central topic. Ethanol could provide a substitute for crude oil. But producing ethanol from corn (maize), for example, interferes directly with the feed and foodstuff production chain. Mobility at the cost of basic food supplies? That is the wrong strategy. And ethanol from Brazil? Not such a good way out of the energy squeeze either. As demand for ethanol increases, in countries such as Sweden, for example, the rainforests will be forced to make way for sugar cane plantation, which is hardly conducive to reducing carbon emissions.

The automotive industry long ago rediscovered the electric car in its efforts to find alternatives to fossil fuels. It is common knowledge that Ferdinand Porsche was already developing an electric car at the turn of the previous century. Even back then, problems with the battery contributed to the internal combustion engine asserting itself. The breakthrough appears to have come with the advent of the lithium ion battery. Car makers and their suppliers are now working flat out on the new technology. In 2009, the first cars with the new battery technology will go into mass production. Yet many question marks still remain: they apply to the costs, which are still far too high, and also to the product's short lifespan. But there are also questions which cannot yet be answered conclusively. What happens, for example, in a large metropolis when many thousands of "E-mobile" citizens plug their cars into the national grid to recharge them in the evening? Will the grid collapse under the strain? And are we simply swapping an addiction to oil for an addiction to electricity? In Germany, we are moving away from atomic power, but the number of new atomic energy plants being built around us is growing. Is electricity the right solution to dependence on fossil fuels?

These are the topics that we wish to discuss on 28 January, 2009 at the World Mobility Forum in Stuttgart. The themes of the two panel discussions will be: "Eat or drive?" and "Is the electric car our motoring future?"

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