Comment on resignation of ADAC Vice President for Transport:He was misunderstood

Contents

ADAC Vice President for Transport Gerhard Hillebrand has resigned. The official, who usually operates in the background, had shown understanding for the CO₂ price in an interview at the end of 2025 in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. Because this increases fuel prices, there are said to have been 60,000 resignations from the club after a shitstorm on social media. Many members are said to have understood this to mean that their club is now forcing them to switch to electric cars together with the EU.

A commentary by Florian Pillau

Screwdriver and long-distance car traveler, linguist, phonetician, and technical writer who found his niche in the right environment.

• Autorenprofil

The template for this misunderstanding is well known: with the Building Energy Act, unscrupulous politicians, with the help of the Bild newspaper (“Heiz-Hammer”), had stirred up citizens against “the Greens,” even though it enables them to switch to cheaper heating. Under a coalition that wanted to abolish this law as one of the first, the number of currently sold heat pumps clearly shows how well it works. No one except a few stubborn individuals intends to implement the demands made in the election campaign and to scrap the law. The climate bonus, which has been demanded since 2021 and can socially cushion the burden of a CO₂ price, has at least been promised meanwhile.

Simple Reality

Hillebrand was misunderstood. If the resigned members had intellectually grasped the interview, they could not have found anything objectionable in it. The ADAC official merely confirmed that higher fuel prices can promote the switch to other driving energies. That is a fact. However, he explicitly advocated for his clientele to moderately increase the CO₂ price so that a sufficiently large and affordable supply of new and used electric cars plus a sufficiently dense charging infrastructure can be created beforehand. In doing so, he demanded an alternative that deserves its name. However, for some, even these simple connections are apparently no longer conveyable.

As with the Building Energy Act, this time too, the person who speaks the simple truth that our reality of life is changing is met with a concentrated rage. A club as large as the ADAC finds itself in a similar situation to the federal government. There will always be a minority in the population, or among the 22 million members of Germany's largest club, who perceive any change as an existential threat. Anyone who offers them a different solution will be treated as a traitor, even if that solution only offers advantages.

Polarization Solves No Problem

“Traitor”? Really? Yes, it quickly gets that extreme today because the amplification mechanisms, which have long been used by the boulevard press and have been perversely perfected by the so-called social media today, use emotion and simplification for maximum polarization. However, this is not a basis on which the rapidly changing challenges can be met, but only fertile ground for populist parties and agitators who are only concerned with division to build their own power agenda on it.

Fortunately, the ADAC is big. Really big. It is a mirror of a cross-section of the population, in which, of course, no majority demands “free driving for free citizens.” That was not even the case in 1973, when this slogan was put into the ADAC's mouth by agitators after some fellow citizens, with the help of the boulevard press, had indignantly protested against temporary driving bans and a speed limit of 100 km/h. At that time, the aim was to save fuel to overcome the so-called oil crisis.

Today, the ADAC is incomparably more colorful and diverse compared to then, and there is no danger that a few angry citizens on the barricades could significantly influence the club's course. Hillebrand did not resign because he said something wrong. He had to do so because, in the interest of the majority, he should not have spoken at all, where he could be so tragically misunderstood. One can assume that as a man of reasonable arguments (he is a lawyer), this danger was simply not present enough for him at the moment of the interview.

The fact that these 60,000 resignations, which allegedly occurred due to this statement, are matched by at least as many new members should be considered a good sign. This will result in more moderate individuals interested in mobility and conscious of climate change and fewer loudmouths in the club who can elect the top personnel. In this respect, the Hillebrand case has even benefited the ADAC.

Reason Has the Best Chance in the ADAC

There is well-founded hope that, despite all the shrill tones, factual reason will continue to prevail in the ADAC. For over ten years, forces have prevailed there with astonishing consistency and speed, which have moved the club from excessive closeness to a healthier distance from the automotive industry. Also observable is the self-evidence and calm with which all mobility topics, alongside motorized individual mobility, are increasingly coming to the fore, and this - as with electromobility - with appropriately factual justifications. The Hillebrand personnel matter is likely to remain a footnote, despite all possible personal tragedy.

(fpi)