A German Auto Parts Manufacturer supplies Electric Vehicles

Descended from the company who made the Zeppelin Hindenburg

Which famously burst into flames above Lakehurst New Jersey

In Nineteen Thirty Seven. After that the ZF airship business collapsed.

But the company had a side business making gears for cars and trucks.

The competition with China is intense with ZF around electric car parts

The far right AfD party calls for promoting internal combustion engines

but nearly half of Germans who registered a new car in September chose

an electric vehicle or a plug-in hybrid. ZF in Germany does not manufacture

complete cars under its own brand ZF Friedrichshafen AG ZF Group as

a supplier and technology company that designs and builds critical components

and systems for carmakers worldwide. Conventional, hybrid, and electric vehicles,

construction and agricultural machinery, rail drives, marine propulsion, and wind-turbine

gearboxes. ZF is best known for engineering and producing Electric and Hybrid Drives.

The downturn in the automotive industry has done away with benefits that residents

of Friedrichshafen, a lakeside city, once enjoyed. In good years, profits from ZF

supplied the city with more than a hundred million euros annually for swimming pools,

kindergartens and even a bridge. Friedrichshafen, where tourists stroll the banks of the lake

that sits between Germany and Switzerland, cut back services that people took for granted.

The problems of the auto industry feed into a general economic malaise, which has fueled

popular support for far right political parties. In the state of Saxony-Anhalt to the east,

the right-wing Alternative for Germany has become the largest party. The AfD’s appeal

in Friedrichshafen has been held back by the party’s failure, so far, to articulate a cohesive

and appealing plan for the car industry. The AfD party calls for promoting internal combustion

engines but nearly half of Germans who registered a new car in September chose

an electric vehicle or a plug-in hybrid. Still, in March the AfD doubled its vote in

Friedrichshafen from the previous elections to Twenty percent, behind the Christian Democrats

and Greens but ahead of the Social Democrats, traditionally a champion of workers.

ZF stands for Zahnradfabrik, or gear factory. The company grew to become one of the world’s

largest automotive suppliers, known for selling transmissions to BMW and others.

ZF has One Hundred Fifty Thousand employees worldwide, including almost Nine Thousand

in the United States. In Two Thousand Eighteen, the Zeppelin Foundation funneled

One Hundred Ninety Two Million Euros to the city. Though formally separate from the municipal

budget, the foundation underwrote projects that would normally be financed by tax revenue.

But the pandemic undercut car sales in Europe, which have yet to completely recover.

ZF is focusing on paying down its Ten Billion Euro debt, which it accumulated during an

acquisition binge that included the Thirteen Billion Dollar purchase, in Two Thousand Fourteen,

of the US parts maker TRW. The expansion has left ZF in a precarious financial position.

A division that produces motors for electric vehicles, is ZF’s largest unit by revenue

but has struggled with uneven demand. In a blow to German prestige, the company has transferred research and development for electric vehicles to China. The growth of Chinese automakers has not been all bad for ZF. The company supplies Chinese manufacturers and benefits from their increasing sales around the world. But ZF also faces competition from Chinese suppliers. In Friedrichshafen, ZF employs Eight Thousand Seven Hundred people. ZF’s workers absorb the brunt of cost cuts.

Pay cuts, including a reduction in the workweek for midlevel managers, made it difficult to afford housing in Friedrichshafen, where prices are already high because of the city’s appeal to second-home buyers. We used to be a wealthy tourist city but in winter you might as well roll up the sidewalks.