The global car industry, analyzed from Germany

In 2019, my life looked perfect from the outside: a secure job at Mercedes, a company car, a promotion every year.

But I was getting more and more unhappy. I sat in the same meetings as 5 years earlier. We discussed the same problems. Only the names in the calendar had changed.

My answer: work even harder. 60-hour weeks became normal. I slept worse and worse. Until my body said stop.

So I took 2 months of unpaid leave and flew to Japan with a backpack. In Tokyo, it felt like my life had slammed on the brakes. I came back and quit.

My last day was in February 2020. I had a partner and a plan: our own consultancy for carmakers. 2 weeks later, the first Covid lockdown hit.

So we started a bike company instead. We made every mistake founders can make. After 12 months without a salary, we had to figure out what came next.

In 2021 a carmaker asked us for help. That one project turned into a company. By 2022 we had more than 10 consultants working for clients. Then in 2023, the car industry’s crisis hit us too. We lost 2 big projects, and I was back to zero.

At Christmas 2023 I was looking for a name for a newsletter. I knew nothing about newsletters, but I started anyway. In mid-2024 I stopped consulting.

Today more than 50,000 people subscribe to my German newsletter. Looking back, it sounds like a plan. It wasn’t.

What drives me is simple: I want the German car industry to still matter in 20 years. For that, it has to change from the ground up. That’s what I work on, every week.