Guide to Economic Development in the Global Auto Industry - S4

EDITOR'S LETTER

Swirling global
trends stimulate
local investment
T

he world sometimes gets the impression that the auto
industry is slowing down, or even receding. Onlookers
assume that the entire economic sector is moving
collectively in the same direction, or reacting with the same
responses.
But rarely does such a thing happen. Rarely does the global
auto business move in tandem when chasing opportunity.
No single track of behavior can explain the movement of
automotive capital spending. Individual manufacturers
and
supply
chains
invest
according to their own plans,
pursuing individual strategies,
seeking different opportunities,
introducing unique technologies,
answering to distinct shareholders
and customers with unique
outlooks.
At this moment, regardless of
what new-vehicle sales are doing
in any given month, diverse
trends are generating jobs and
investment and local economic
development activity around the world.
* The push for lighter-weight parts, materials and vehicles
is causing manufacturers to invest in new processes, new
plants and often new locations.
* The awakening of electrification, still in its infancy, is
sending producers scrambling - not merely for electrified
components and vehicles, but for entire electric vehicle
strategies. In which country should they be produced, and
with what supply chain?
* The plunge into advanced autonomous-drive technologies
is requiring a new universe of research and development
resources. Automakers and their supply chains are hungry

for pools of new engineers, and opening new tech centers
where they are available.
* The disruption of industry business models - the sobering
notion that future mobility services could render ordinary
components like steering wheels and instrument panels
obsolete - has manufacturers rethinking their entire
product portfolios. Producers are designing the next
decade's revenue generators, while urgently imagining
ways to rethink production of their older technologies.
How might declining products
be made with less cost? Where
could they be outsourced? Might
their supply chain be redesigned
to allow manufacturing in a new
location, with new tools?
When it comes to investment,
a delightful swirl of investors,
inventors,
innovators
and
marketing wizards is taking
place around the world, all of it
predicated on creating wealth.
One manufacturing plant slows
down, another plant speeds up. An unused industrial building
attracts a new owner in a new segment. One global
company changes its course and another company steps
into its vacancy to make a go of it.
Nations, states, provinces and municipalities know this.
Governments and local authorities and utilities understand
that there is always opportunity. For every force in the
industry, there is a contrarian, competing force. And for
cities and nations, benefiting from the activity is only a
matter of resolving to be part of it and making themselves
ready for it.

"At this moment, regardless

of what new-vehicle sales are
doing in any given month,
diverse trends are generating
jobs and investment and
local economic development
activity around the world."

lindsay chappell
lchappell@crain.com

4

E C O N O M I C D E V E L O P M E N T G U I D E / J U LY 2 0 1 8
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Guide to Economic Development in the Global Auto Industry
