As an ICE age nears its end, a whole web of auto component makers stare at a bleak future
The scale and pace of change are rising relentlessly. It is evident in everything from how things are produced and marketed, how nations interact with one another and how people move across borders to how political pressures are reshaping trade and finance. The imperative of climate action is forcing a clean transition even upon those who resist being wrenched apart from what they deem normal.
Artificial intelligence and low-latency data networks have combined to elevate factory automation to a level that has no direct role for humans, unless something goes wrong and must be fixed. Disruption will mark almost every aspect of our lives before we know it. The future has begun to push the present aside with both elbows in the automobile sector—and with particular aggression.
Last week, the German auto-parts major Bosch said it would have to lay off 13,000 workers. In just two years, Germany’s auto industry has lost 55,000 jobs. Tens of thousands of more roles face an axe as US trade barriers pose headwinds and Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) overcome the EU’s own tariffs to invade European streets.
If this is the state of affairs in what’s arguably the world’s most evolved auto industry, what will happen to India’s large army of small firms that produce automotive components once the future storms in?
We would not need to worry too much about India’s big automakers. They have the scale, technological nous and the financial staying power to go electric even if our market suddenly accelerates its transition.
That cannot be said about our sprawling network of auto part suppliers. The Automotive Component Manufacturers’ Association of India has around 1,000 members. Many of them seem well equipped to identify the roles they must adopt once EVs take over our streets. But these are not the only businesses that will come under pressure to evolve.
Component makers themselves have thousands of smaller suppliers. These would be left adrift once the internal combustion engine (ICE) sputters its last before being consigned to history.
Many seem to think this shift will take ages, given how hard it is to saturate our vast landmass with the charging points needed to go all-electric.
This assumption could prove facile, thanks to an emerging class of EVs that fuel up the same old ICE way, but use these refills solely to generate electricity. They do this with the superior thermal efficiency of a dual-cycle gas power plant, which recycles its own exhaust, and the power thus generated runs their motor.
These ‘extended range’ EVs save more fuel than ICE-cum-battery hybrid vehicles do. Crucially, they do not need to be recharged. They can easily venture into remote areas served only by fuel-filling stations. The existence of this technology could spell faster change than many imagine.
An ICE has well over 1,000 parts. Almost a quarter of the auto components made and sold in India relate to an engine that’s on its way to the graveyard of outdated contraptions, such as horse buggies and kerosene lamps. What will makers of engine pistons, piston rings, spark plugs and the like do when that happens?
The electric motor has far fewer parts. Some companies will have to switch to new lines of production. Additively manufactured drone components, perhaps. The point is to figure all this out now, so that small enterprises and their smaller suppliers can find new livelihoods before obsolescence glares hard at them.
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