It’s no secret that the car biz employs a lot of conservative thinkers and traditionalists. It’s no surprise, either—building cars is a colossally complex enterprise, and changes are both challenging and costly. But I recently had the chance to sit down with Jörg Grotendorst, Senior VP of R&D at Magna, one of the world’s largest auto suppliers, and as he spoke I felt my head tilting like my dog’s does when she hears a new sound. He’s not only bullish on electric cars—he believes government regulation is the only catalyst that can clean up the automobile industry.
"To make transportation safe and sustainable, we need legislation," Grotendorst said to me and other writers in a media briefing roundtable. "People are not self-motivated. If we [were] self-motivated, we would all compromise right now, nowadays already, and pay the extra cost to drive electric cars."
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