A big reason for this is probably to ease the way to government regulations. Germany is very strict on these regulations and compared to, e.g. Arizona, reluctant to give experimental technology a pass for the street. If they pull on the same string, they have a much better chance to lobby for the required legislation to actually test and finally sell their self-driving technology in the important domestic market.
Historically the German auto industry has held a lot of influence over politicians. They've successfully lobbied against things like a national speed limit and for weakened emissions rules in the past.
More recently, they have blocked and delayed the EU's proposed emissions targets for 2025 and 2030 which would have required 40% fleet-wide CO2 reductions by 2030 and set minimum targets for zero emission vehicles.
(It should be noted Sweden, France, and Spain - who also have significant auto industries - are in favour of the new rules).
Not to mention that germany did absolutely fucking nothing against VW when dieselgate happened. Still waiting to see Winterkorn & friends under the guillotine for scamming the entire world.
What happened instead? Normal engineers got blamed instead of executives. Fucking capitalism and fucking CDU, SPD and FDP. The sole reason for their existence is to sack money from lobbyists.
When you have people like Schäuble, a piece of shit that was convicted for corruption in 1999, who was the minister of finance for the past couple of years in germany, it makes sense that germany does nothing against big corporate.
> Not to mention that germany did absolutely fucking nothing against VW when dieselgate happened.
VW (and Audi etc.) top executives are under criminal investigations. Their houses and offices have been searched multiple times.
> Still waiting to see Winterkorn & friends under the guillotine for scamming the entire world.
Sorry, we don't have capital punishment. And the guillotine is a bit too French for our taste, anyway (also, it was used by the GDR, so not a good role model).
While it is true that Germany has legalized and not so legalized corruption in politics, it makes no sense to single out VW. All large companies have "government affairs" departments which sadly provide great return on investment. If only the people had a government affairs department...
He failed to do anything about cum-cum/cum-ex.
He came up with a tax on fuel for nuclear power plants, that I am convinced was deliberately designed to be in violation of the constitution, leading to a 7 billion tax-revenue loss.
Not to speak of his views law and order and how the wrecked Greece because he doesn't understand economics.
