// industry disruption

Source: NYT > Business (paywall)

Germany's car sector—which has underwritten the country's postwar prosperity, engineering prestige, and manufacturing identity—faces three concurrent pressures: Trump's tariffs closing the U.S. market, the EV transition eroding the combustion-engine expertise that made German cars synonymous with performance, and Chinese manufacturers out-competing them on both price and battery technology. The sector must choose between defending legacy strengths or ceding entire market segments, with consequences for its export economy, regional employment, and the national mythology built around Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen.

Source: NYT > Business (paywall)

Ford, GM, and Stellantis are scaling back EV investments and production targets. They frame it as market pragmatism. The real drivers are battery costs, charging infrastructure gaps, and Chinese competition—partly the result of their own delayed electrification. By ceding mass-market EV sales to Tesla and BYD while retreating to ICE profitability, the Big Three are betting they can survive as legacy automakers in a shrinking gasoline market. That calculation ignores how fast EV adoption is accelerating globally and the capital required to catch up once consumer preference fully shifts. Chinese manufacturers are flooding global markets with affordable EVs the American companies can no longer afford to compete against.