That's not due to incompetent politicians for once. The crisis of the German car industry is entirely of its own doing - they completely ignored electric power for years, and instead focused on lobbying to get rid of emission limits, which obviously left them stranded in a ditch after Dieselgate. On top of that, everyone but Volkswagen was/is focused on high-margin SUVs and luxury vehicles, which aren't really a thing outside of corporate "luxury" for upper level management and new-rich in China, and Volkswagen completely dropped the ball in software quality.

It's a disgrace that we're not able to buy cheap and light cars in the EU anymore. I just want a ~2010 Fiat Panda :(

Renaults Zoe also seems great, I see quite a lot of them on German streets.

The Zoe is EOL and IIRC replaced by the Clio E-Tech. Also, Renault is french?

(Not to talk badly about the specific car or the move to BEV in general - I applaud that and am at the same time disappointed how our [German] manufacturers ignored the shift)

The Zoe has pretty horrendous crash ratings, sadly.

There are cute little things like the Citroen Ami: https://www.citroen.co.uk/ami

They're nearly compelling enough for me to learn to drive. Nearly..!

just fyi, a citroen ami (2020+) is not a car is a quadricycle; it does not need a driving license, is like a electric bike.

id not want to use it to stay in traffic tho, crashing that does not seem safe

Even in Europe cars are becoming bloated and shoving everyone else off the streets. The Economist had a piece about the death of small cars in Europe a few months ago. https://archive.ph/KxzUK

There's really no escape, it seems.

That’s only part of it (China is eating and will continue Germany’s EV’s lunch), the other part is energy prices. Like it or not, cheap natural gas from a certain country was the backbone of a competitive German industrial economy. Can’t make an Bosch appliance or VW with solar power that can compete with Koreas LG or Chinese brands. Energy is EVERYTHING.

Thenonly EV lunch Chinese OEMs aren't eating is Hyundais.

Hopefully not, really looking to the competition!

Germany could have cheap own energy, but usually any new infrastructure or whatever attracts huge opposition.