Auto Company Strategy in 2025 - Part 2

3. What about the EV charging infrastructure?

Ford are testing some alternative strategic rethinking that offers a free home charger kit on the purchase or lease of a new Ford EV. This has helped Ford achieve its best-ever EV sales result in the last quarter in 2024.

However, the main issue in the march to electrify the vehicle landscape has been the slowness to invest in the charging infrastructure required to support EV owners. This has continued to put doubt in the mind for those looking to make the change from petrol/diesel power to pure electric power. This is especially true for both inner city users without home charging and commercial users driving long distances and carting heavy loads. As hybrid sales grow and the driving range of EVs increases due to improved battery chemistries, the billions of dollars in investment commitments to build out new EV charging infrastructure may be less of a factor holding back adoption.

The auto companies know that the lack of public charging infrastructure is a factor that creates a barrier to EV adoption. The most obvious solution to charging has been the at-home solution. It may be more beneficial to target some of those funds, that have been traditionally earmarked for public charging infrastructure, into helping people that are genuinely interested in buying an EV. This would make it easier for them to install a charger at home. Of course, that’s if they live at a location with vehicle access and don’t have to park on the road at night. Those users will continue to rely on the public charging infrastructure.

4. Could China’s automakers reshape the global markets?

The largest group of auto companies, like Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Stellantis, and even Tesla, have relied on the Chinese market for volume sales, it’s the world’s biggest, and has provided profits year after year. But with ongoing price wars and the growth of EV sales in China by the many of China’s domestic brands, especially BYD, means these auto companies are now acing fierce competition and an uphill struggle to maintain their market share.

The Chinese market is hyper-competitive and ferocious with a price war that’s playing out over the last 18 months to two years. Not only within the Chinese market, but BYD are competing in the Western markets and doing extremely well. In fact, the latest sales figures have shown that BYD is now ahead of Tesla for pure EV sales globally.

You have these compelling products at the price point that Chinese consumers expect. As more China-based automakers launch new electrified, connected and software-based vehicles appealing to tech-savvy car buyers, it may further erode the market share of the mainstream auto companies. During the August 2024 earnings call, General Motors CEO Mary Barra referred to the Chinese market as a “price race to the bottom” after reporting big losses in the market in 2024.

5. What impact will AI have on the auto markets?

The ongoing rollout of Tesla’s highly controversial Full Self-Driving feature, other automakers continue to develop their own hands-free driving technology including GM, Ford, Lucid Group and Rivian. The Super Cruise and BlueCruise hands-free highway driving features developed by GM and Ford currently work on hundreds of thousands of miles of roads in the U.S.

But experts say continuous improvements in AI, hardware and vision technologies is likely to make these types of systems, robust and safe, in the upcoming years, which could increase their usage. However, we’ve heard these predictions before and are still waiting real world examples.

The general thinking is that we are getting closer to where we’re going to see more widespread adoption and application of these AI technologies. Clearly there are continuing advancements in AI-powered automated driving systems, which may support the rollout of more self-driving tech by automakers in 2025 and beyond.

Predictions are that most consumers will be introduced to more advanced automated driving technology gradually through more advanced driver assist systems, such as lane keep assist, automatic emergency braking, automatic lane change features and greater safety features, which are showing up in vehicles now.

February 2025