Awareness of the challenges of climate change has led to the gradual introduction of complex regulations.
These include achieving climate neutrality by 2050, reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 55% by 2030 (FIT for 55) and limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
These new regulations are bringing about a profound transformation in behaviour, and therefore in the economy, habits, products and production processes that will have to adapt.
What is happening in the automotive industry is a good illustration of the scale of the work to be done and the efforts required: the ongoing switch from internal combustion engines to electric motors, the problem of vehicle weight, the capacity to manufacture batteries, access to the necessary metals and the establishment of a network of recharging stations, the purchase of a service – getting around – and no longer of an object – a car – are just a few examples of the transformation under way that is reshuffling the cards.
What is striking is the advantage gained by manufacturers that were non-existent or little known ten years ago, and who have managed to create decisive advantages for themselves, often supported by long-term, broad-based national strategies backed up by colossal resources.
First of all, they have been able to gain a decisive advantage by understanding at an early stage what could happen and by making the most of it. This has enabled them not to anticipate change, but to play an active role in it and appropriate the decisive technical advantages.
In China, for example, there are now more than 170 automobile manufacturers, most of whom are expanding rapidly, while the ‘traditional’ manufacturers, mainly European and North American – with the exception of TESLA – seem to be lagging behind.
The second striking point is that the markets in these countries are adapting much more quickly and on a much larger scale. The result is a much more coherent ‘native’ approach, in which battery factories and the roll-out of the network of recharging points have coincided with the introduction of electric vehicles, erasing the inconsistencies and delays seen in the countries that followed. Massive sales were then possible to give these new players the resources they needed to finance this transformation.
What we can learn from this is that relevant strategic analyses confer decisive advantages on those who do not shy away from being agents of change through coherent, global implementation. This is exactly the sense we are giving to the development of our service offering, which aims to support our customers in their strategic thinking and the implementation of their action plans.
