German car supplier ZF says e-car orders can 'overcompensate' combustion engine losses

Germany's third largest car parts supplier ZF Friedrichshafen believes new orders for electric cars will more than make up for losses sustained by the shift away from combustion engines. "With the new orders, we want to more than compensate for the declines in conventional drive technologies in the next few years", management board member Stephan von Schuckmann, who is in charge of electrified powertrain technology, told business daily Handelsblatt. ZF has so far earned most of its money with eight-speed automatic transmissions, but electrification means it is also becoming an engine manufacturer.

ZF is Germany's third largest car industry supplier, behind Bosch and Continental. Its new "Electrified Powertrain Technology" unit already has more than 30,000 employees, 42 plants and makes around ten billion euros in sales, according to the article. The company said last year it would no longer develop components for combustion engines and focus on plug-in hybrids and purely electric vehicles.

Schuckmann said 2021 is a key year for the supplier industry. "It is about the next generation of electric cars. Whoever comes onto the market from 2025 onwards has to get the technologies for it off the ground now." He said his company is not worried about the EU's new climate targets, which will result in stricter car fleet emission limits. "So far, this does not scare us - in our transformation process, we regularly evaluate different electrification scenarios that already take into account the EU Commission's stricter CO2 targets."