What does a trade fair organizer do when his workhorse is paralyzed? He changes location, complements the trade fair or does both. Nevertheless, there is always something to complain about. Of course, about other topics as well.
It is well known that friendship ends with money. The old adage may often be correct, but in real life it is more likely the other way around. Friendship only begins with the coal. The latest example: The Geneva Salon discovered his friendship with Qatar. Together with the small but rich Arabian peninsula, they want to have an offshoot of the Geneva Salon in the desert from next year, but no later than 2023. Qatar wants to attract tourists, the Geneva Salon to fill the pecuniary loophole that Corona has torn. If the sheikhs would like to have their own well-known motor show, why not? After all, they also buy a lot of luxury cars.
What is going on in Qatar
So you can do it. Qatar is also buying sports rights, world championships and football clubs just to boost tourism. For the same noble purpose, forced laborers are also employed, or - as it recently came out, Taliban leaders courted and, last but not least, financed. There is probably someone among those responsible for the Geneva Salon who claims that cooperation will improve the human rights situation on the ground. That works really well in football.
Aside from such little things, we actually think it's brave, in times when the trade fair industry is dying around the world, to proclaim a new location for a car show of all things. At least one can assume that - unlike most likely soon in Munich - there will be hardly any local protests.
The ones in Munich are directed less against the fair as such, but against the car itself. This time there are fewer cars represented than ever before in modern times. And some of what is shown at the fair or in the vicinity is not a real car at all, but just a kind of mini-me of one under the approval conditions of a light vehicle. Clever. So you can discreetly point out goodwill and still present new driving stuff. And the sometimes only 45 km / h top speed is easily enough for every inner city area of a major European city.
It becomes difficult when you have to change to faster lanes because you want to leave urban realms. Then such F-stuff is more of an obstacle, if not even dangerous to the public, because of course you do without safety features in the construction under non-car conditions. So not that we misunderstand each other. The boxes are safer than walking along the lane or taking an e-scooter, and it's drier when it rains too. But not much more than that.
Alcohol and e-scooters
Speaking of which - the small spontaneously rentable e-scooters are still considered a real component of inner-city mobility in some places, which then confuses us. They lie around in abundance and like to get in the way. And they are used precisely when the driver, i.e. the user, is no longer able to walk straight ahead. We will leave aside petty interpretations that one should not have consumed alcohol on motorized vehicles. Nobody seems to care anyway.
It doesn't even bother when the users simply throw away the parts instead of parking them somewhere sensible, for example into the Rhine. You can probably find plenty of them on the bottom of the Spree. Hopefully no one will think of putting the Mini-Me-Cars everywhere for sharing. They may float up after being thrown away or they clog the canal, stream, river, or wherever they can lie down or swim in them.
Many of the super sports cars that are often shown as a concept at trade fairs do not clog and, to our knowledge, have no harmful effects on the environment. Mercedes has now presented a particularly environmentally friendly version. Project One, star of the IAA 2017, should actually be assigned to a small group of customers in 2019 and then this year. Apparently, however, there were minor problems with the approval of a Formula 1 drive in road traffic; in any case, we did not hear anything about the start of series production. But the Stuttgart-based company will be presenting the virtual version of the racing car just in time for Gamescom. Against this, even the strictest critics of the car guild will be able to have nothing against it. Is there anything else? Next week again.
