From Dieselgate to e-Vehicles. The new industrial commons in East-Central Europe

Abstract

In 2015 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found disturbing data from many Volkswagen Group vehicles. The analyzed cars had a special device which controlled the vehicle’s gas emission during the tests but after that it automatically shut down. After these news reports the trust disappeared away from the diesel-car industry. The former Comecon countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Poland) had a difficult time after the Diesel incident, because their industry relied on vehicle manufacturing and exporting. In the same year the British vote about the European Union membership (so called „Brexit”) also became a threat to the automobile industries around the world. The new global and European green polices also challenged the diesel-fuelled vehicles status in the automobile sector. Old competitors (petrol-fuelled cars) and new challengers (electric cars, hybrid cars, ethanol-fuelled cars) came into play as the market and the customers decide. According to the latest surveys the East-Central European Region (“Visegrad Countries”) will have a dedicated place in the new “e-engine” production and in the accumulator production. These surveys also show, that the region will be the 2^nd largest electric car accumulator producers by 2025. In my presentation I would like to show how outsourced technologies and methods can be settled down in other countries and what are the possible ways to improve them to a different economic scene.