Environmental activists plan to disrupt the IAA auto show in Munich next month under the slogan "#blockIAA -- disempower car companies, protect the climate."
The protests will be a further blow to the organizers, the VDA, after they switched the show’s venue to Munich from its longtime home in Frankfurt following demonstrations by climate activists.
The VDA has been forced to scale back the show, which takes place from Sept. 7-12, because of the pandemic and the absence of major automakers including Toyota, Opel, Peugeot and Fiat.
The VDA had hoped to avoid protests by broadening the event's focus beyond cars to cover forms of individual mobility.
Environmental activists are unimpressed by the changes.
A spokeswoman for the "Sand in the Gears" protest group said: "In September, we stand in the way of the destructive car madness."
The auto industry may be trying to "keep its future-less business model going" but "neither from a social nor an ecological point of view are electric cars a solution," the spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
"We are heading unchecked toward a climate catastrophe. Despite this, Germany continues to press the accelerator: ever bigger and fatter cars are clogging up our roads, taking away the air we breathe and heating up the climate,” the statement said.
The alliance calls for "a radical turnaround in transport" with car-free cities and free public transport.
Activists from the group were among protestors that blocked the main entrance to the IAA in Frankfurt in 2019.
The alliance is composed of various climate, transport policy and globalization-critical groups and was founded at the beginning of 2019.
The VDA was not immediately available for comment.
