Mexican Media Brands
Europe Faces Commercial Vehicle Shake-Up
The auto brands struggling the most in Europe's brutal passenger-car slump also will be hardest hit in a coming shakeout of the region's light-commercial-vehicle market, Automotive News Europe predicts.
#economics
Share
The auto brands struggling the most in Europe's brutal passenger-car slump also will be hardest hit in a coming shakeout of the region's light-commercial-vehicle market, Automotive News Europe predicts.
Analysts tell the online newspaper that new alliances and rising competition from Asian companies pose a big risk to Fiat, General Motors' Opel unit, PSA and Renault. Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen also are vulnerable, ANE says.
Bernstein Research estimates that profits from lucrative LCV sales have been offsetting passenger-vehicle losses at many of those companies. But the research firm opines that last year's alliance of GM and PSA and the 2010 tie-up of Renault-Nissan and Daimler are destabilizing longtime supply agreement among automakers in Europe.
Toyota and Hyundai are becoming more aggressive sellers of LCVs in the region, ANE notes. The EU's free trade pact agreement with South Korea is reducing tariffs on Korean LCV imports. Japan and the EU are in talks about a similar agreement.
RELATED CONTENT
-
Fuel Economy Gains in July
What you’re looking at here is a sales-weighted fuel economy chart (the numbers in the white boxes represent miles per gallon) that was put together by two diligent researchers, Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.
-
Enterprise Edges into Self-Driving Car Market
U.S. rental car giant Enterprise Holdings Inc. is the latest company to venture into the world of self-driving vehicles.
-
On Quantum Navigation, EVs, Auto Industry Sales and more
Sandia’s quantum navi, three things about EVs, transporting iron ore in an EV during the winter, going underwater in an EV (OK, it is a sub), state of the UK auto industry (sad), why the Big Three likes Big Vehicles, and the future of logistics.