Bochum Southern German automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen is accelerating its departure for combustion engines and wants to more quickly replace electromobility. “We are in talks about producing high quality electrical components at our transmission plant in the Saarland,” said ZF CEO Wolf-Henning Scheider at the CAR symposium in Bochum on Wednesday.

With approximately 9,000 employees, the factory in Saarbrücken is the largest and most important transmission site in the entire ZF Group. The transition from internal combustion engines to electric drives is a sometimes painful process, especially for automotive suppliers, with jobs being repeatedly lost.

For its largest factory in Saarland, ZF has to develop a viable future concept for the time being without combustion engines. CEO Scheider’s statement is the first concrete indication that the supplier group will certainly hold onto this position and manufacture drive components over the long term.