The funniest argument and the reason I share this is that since the utilities company that provides the tram service has a ratified goal of becoming CO2-Neutral eventually, they’ve elected to not buy ACs since they’d consume about 7 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year and ACs aren’t sustainable. I assume the 50°C tram is gonna be a big hit as per transportation in the upcoming summers.
I think in this specific case it’s more the deeply entrenched thought that AC = bad. Cars were always an exception here once AC became a standard thing but the country is still building new hospitals without AC.
the reason this line of thinking is so entrenched is because all major german societal organisations and political parties are so deep in the car industry’s pockets that they might as well be front groups.