Maybe Germans are afraid of many things, but none of those listed things in the article have something to do the buying electric vehicles. Regarding "warning the public", from your statement I would have assumed a larger effort than simply mentioning a possible loss of jobs in production in an interview.

The report in the Post may appear soft, however, this is how German media treated the same report: http://www.focus.de/auto/elektroauto/auto-vw-personalchef-we...

The title translated: "The awful truth: Electric cars destroy jobs".

That's just clickbait, it's not something that the guy actually said.

Just two paragraphs in the article says that they expect at least every 4th car to be electric by 2025, and that this of course means different supply requirements which they have to start planning for now. That's just regular market forecast planning.