Quo Vadis European Auto Industry?

Folks, having read through some of the posts that are coming through the social (and not so social) media feeds on the subject matter, I had to add my 10 cents to the debate. The reason I feel called to do so is that I worry about the misunderstandings, disinformation and sometimes plain lies that are being conveyed relative to the future of the industry. One can speculate whether it’s by ignorance, or if it’s deliberate. It’s a cruel world with a raging trade war and, like in other wars, truth tends to be the first victim. In some cases, the messages I read bear the fingerprints of unfriendly powers, who wish their doom-and-gloom prophecies will become self-fulfilling.

De-bunking the bankruptcy myth

To start: The entire European auto industry is NOT about to go bankrupt! At least not in the near term. Despite over-investment in BEV technologies that don’t sell, recent revenue drops, mounting inventory, and EU politicians that unintelligently are trying their best to kill off the very industry that still is the backbone of the European economy, the automakers are surprisingly healthy financially.

To back that up: Even VW, who right now tends to be the poster child for everything gone wrong in the European auto industry, reports very healthy cash flows and an even healthier liquidity position. And, as you may know, it’s the shortage of cash, not the shortage of attractive BEV’s that makes companies go bankrupt. VW margins are uninspiring but no worse than what has been normal in the past.

Stellantis, who has caught a lot of press lately due to its leadership turmoil, reports very survivable margins with an EBIT of 6.6% (9.9% adjusted) for the first half of 2024, and while that may seem pale to someone who is used to non-vehicle related businesses, it’s actually relatively good. A car OEM rarely reaches above 8% even in a good year. Their net cash flow is less than a year ago on the back of rising inventories but still comfortably positive. And this is the OEM who most flagrantly ignored the electrification trend, with perhaps the worst brand management and the most watered-down product offer in the Western hemisphere right now. But anywhere close to bankruptcy they are not!

I could go on. Mercedes Group reported lower margins in Q3 than a year ago but that’s from levels that were exceptionally high, and net cash flow is healthy. Volvo Cars margins increased in Q3 over last year and financial performance is better than what we have seen consistently from them, and if the (struggling) Chinese owners can refrain from tapping the company for too much dividend, they will also have the muscles to take on the future.

If you want to look for near-bankrupt companies in the European auto industry, you need to look to the tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers, which nobody is talking or writing about. Much of the R&D spend and fixed asset investments connected to electrification have been born by the suppliers. Due to a combination of absent volume growth, already drained liquidity since the pandemic, soaring cost of labour and materials, with little to no compensation from the OEM’s, here’s where you will see the real crisis in the near term. And, yes, that will also be costly for the OEM’s who, in many cases, will have to bail out suppliers they are depending on. But will it sink the entire industry ship? No!

Dealers are also increasingly struggling but not from Chinese competition but from changes in how consumers buy cars and OEM’s prefer to distribute them.

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Is there a problem? Yes!

So, is all well then and nothing to worry about? Of course not! The European auto industry is facing monumental challenges in the years to come. Some are generated by self-destructive policies introduced by sloppy and populistic politicians in Brussels, some by militant and very short-sighted (mostly German) trade unions, but many are also home cooked in the board rooms of the industry itself. Let’s start with the latter.

The sideline experts who blame the European auto industry for being slow adopters of electrification are mostly right. Even if there were advanced BEV concept cars and engineering studies already 20 years ago, of which I had the pleasure of being involved in some, real BEV offers didn’t hit showrooms until after Tesla had already taken top spot for top selling models. Political pressure in the form of a 2035 ban on ICE’s and aggressive fleet CO2 legislation was obviously necessary for OEM leaders to seriously start kicking engineering butts to force credible BEV adds to the model line-up. Even worse, battery technology, which is the make-or-break factor for BEV success wasn’t seen as critical until very recently, and maybe this is the biggest tragedy of all. A couple of successful Northvolts would have made the Chinese battery leash a little longer. But we all know that Northvolt was everything but a success, and Europe stands without a large-scale regional battery production. Shame on us.

So, here we are. Finally, a line-up of European made BEV’s is actually available. You can buy a European made BEV in any segment. But technologically, they are like yesterday’s fish. They are mostly built on ICE intended platforms and, thus, the value-to-cost ratio is bad, making them uncompetitive. ICE’s with or without hybridization, are still the bread and butter for most European automakers and that’s where they make the money.

According to a recent study by UBS, the VW ID.3 is 27% more expensive to make than the BYD Seal, despite that the Seal has more functionality and content, and is undoubtedly better looking, and has a higher sticker price than the ID.3. We can bet every European OEM CEO would die to have a Seal equivalent in their line-up today.

But let’s ask ourselves the question what would have happened if the European OEM’s had been faster, let’s say two years faster, and shunned ICE development, doubled up on BEV engineering and capacity investments and started scrapping engine plants several years ago, where would they have been today? Well, chances are, they would have been a lot worse. I’ll explain why.

Part of the issue is outlined in the famous Draghi report. When the EU embarked on its kill-the-ICE journey, the politicians looked at the OEM’s, telling them to go fix the CO2 problem by replacing ICE’s with electric powertrains. In 2035 it will be game over for ICE’s anyway. Better hurry up! Then they all went back to sleep in Brussels. They totally and completely ignored the fact that transportation, both manufacturing and operation of vehicles is a very complex eco-system that has developed over 100+ years. And it doesn’t change overnight because Ursula von der Leyen tells it to. Actually, much of that eco-system, for instance provision of competitively priced and sufficiently available electricity, can only be changed through government action. But governments had their heads up their a***s. And this part of the equation happens to be, by all means, the restricting factor for BEV sales in Europe, unless you want to throw tons of government funded purchase incentives at it, which is unsustainable and unfair in any case. Consumers aren’t stupid. They buy what makes sense and right now, judging from the BEV market share, buying a BEV makes sense for about 15% of car consumers in Europe. Not because of unavailability of BEV’s, not even of European made BEV’s, but because of the business case for buying one. For the Chinese to eat into that 15% isn’t exactly wiping the Europeans off their own map.

The European auto industry is currently suffering from under-utilization of BEV capacity. (BtW, so are the Chinese.) Tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers are the ones that are suffering, by far, the most. What if those investments were twice as big and what if ICE capacities had been undone the same way politicians have scrapped electrical power capacity? Then, I am convinced, we would have had a real financial crisis in the European auto industry today. Thankfully, the slow adoption of the all-electric paradigm seems to have saved the backbone of the European economy this time.

Looking forward, it’s a completely different story! The migration from ICEV to BEV is there. What we are experiencing now is a temporary drop in the curve. Thankfully, that drop is well-timed for the Europeans and gives them a bit of breathing space to rally the troops and start closing the gap to the Chinese. Both at the battery level, and complete vehicle level. And the house is on fire. A lot has to change to have a fighting chance to save it! And here’s my take on what needs to change:

What’s critical to future success

1.??????? Speed

Time to market has been a buzz expression for decades but, to be honest, lead times to bring new product to market by European OEM’s is still pretty much the same today as in the 1980’s, if it involves any significant change to mechanical or digital architecture. Ambitions can be high but reality often gets in the way. Taking 4-5 years from program kick-off to start of production may have been survivable before but not anymore, when battery chemistries, ADAS enabling sensor tech, HMI expectations etc etc develops quicker than you can summon a cross functional meeting in Europe. New bumper facias or a new upholstery in a new nuance of grey don’t sell cars anymore. New technology does.

2.??????? Ditch the platform paradigm

To achieve the speed, the traditional platform thinking which was taught from Toyota decades ago and that is still religion among European OEM’s to this day, has to go! To design chassis, under-body structure, electrical/digital architecture and powertrain, freeze it for 7-10 years and give the top hat 2-3 freshening cycles will not work. Tesla turned this thinking upside down and has kept the A surfaces, the interior and exterior trim the same and then constantly changed the “unchangeable”; chassis, software, under-body structures and powertrain to incorporate new technology. And they do it fast, and it works! By constantly introducing significant running changes, they also eliminate risk. A good example is the mega-castings which were done as a running mid-cycle change, with massive cost advantages, while having the incumbent steel structure as a fallback. Brilliant! But unthinkable with the traditional platform mindset.

After years as a supplier to OEM’s in all parts of the world, I can testify to the fundamentally different mindsets of automakers winning market share today, and those who lose. When presenting new value-add technology to the winners, the first question is “how fast can you deliver this?” And they will almost always push for even faster introduction. The Chinese are exceptionally good with this. When doing the same to traditional European OEM’s, the answer is often “no, we have frozen the platform design, come back in 5 years when we have a change window”. I have myself been subscribing to that exact mindset during my OEM career. But we have to realize that it’s obsolete and potentially lethal in the current competitive environment. This is largely a culture change, which is why it is so difficult. The people who have been paid to say no all their lives, now have to be motivated to say yes and produce a plan that delivers.

3.??????? Control the battery

The battery of a BEV corresponds to about 40% of the total vehicle cost and is, apart from the infotainment system, what sets one BEV apart from the other, much like the engines have done for ICE cars up until now. To not control the innovations, the chemical secrets to the performance characteristics, and the delicate manufacturing processes of this paramount element of the car is not a good place to be. Most Chinese automakers don’t control it either, to be fair, since they too have outsourced it to the likes of BYD and CATL. But to be so out of control as the Europeans are today will shackle them to a guaranteed uncompetitive 40% of the material cost and getting new technology last, until the industry, politics and academia in Europe put their heads together and decide to take control. For a while, normally angry competitors will have to hold their fire and cooperate. The industry has proven before that they can cooperate, like when natural disasters strike the supply chain, and this should be treated like one of those moments.

4.??????? Sweat

Here’s where it becomes even more difficult. The entire Western society has to realize that competition is no longer next door. Working for a car company in Cologne, does no longer mean that competition has license plates beginning with WOB and with a similar lifestyle and economic situation. No, in addition to all the factors mentioned above, competition is now in a place where engineers work 80 hours per week, get heavily rewarded for success and heavily penalized for under-performance, and are producing thousands of patents each year in areas crucial to BEV attractiveness. Where factory workers earn a fraction of their equivalents in the free world and are disappointed if not given the chance to work overtime to earn more money. Competition also has in excess of 50% over-capacity in their manufacturing plants, and a government that have handed out big checks for tooling and equipment investments, and pushing OEM’s hard to export their products.

How do we make up for that difference? I don’t know. In the short term, maybe trade barriers like the ones implemented by the EU will help somewhat. But it’s not more than a band aid on a splintered femur. Ultimately, we have to call in the surgeon. And chances are that the treatment and recovery will be painful.

We are only starting to scratch the surface of what’s needed to bring Europe as a continent back to strength, and it’s not just an auto industry problem. What it will take is an unknown right now but I know that the solution is definitely not an 8% annual pay increase while going to 27-hour work weeks!

It can be done

Just like Europe managed to re-build itself after half a decade of wars, we can do this. There is still time, while European OEM’s, contrary to troll disinformation, have healthy profits and balance sheets. The war is not lost and we should not roll over and sell our auto industry to the Chinese, as suggested by some of the same trolls.

But trade unions, industry and politicians have to come together to prevent de-industrialization of the West. And it’s not going to come without sacrifice on our part. Let’s be honest about that!

Remember, the auto industry is still the backbone of the European economy. Without it, Europe as we know it will quickly cease to exist. It’s not like when shipyards got shut down in the 70’s and replaced through creative destruction. Europe has nothing to replace the auto industry with. But only with that realization will we be willing to make the right choices.