Extending the scope of partnerships in the automotive industry between competition and cooperation

Abstract

Faced with a drastically modified social and economic context and a highly competitive global market, the automotive industry must redefine its strategy but is struggling to find the right positioning. While cooperation with traditional players is necessary, carmakers find themselves obliged to form alliances with new entrants, often far removed from their core business. The automotive sector currently faces numerous challenges, i.e. master and develop new technologies to respond to new usages, and ensure steady production volumes to make their activity long-lasting, while adapting to an uncertain, globalized economic world. In this situation, an analysis of carmaker strategies should consider the mobility ecosystem, which results in new partnership approaches. The scope of partnerships is widening, the automotive industry’s former production models are no longer suitable and new economic models are emerging. Car manufacturers’ traditional strategic choices, fluctuating between competition and cooperation, are already outmoded because the automotive sector needs to anticipate a future ecosystem whose epicenter will be the intelligent and autonomous car. In this respect, the challenge of capturing value remains crucial and worrisome, in particular when most profits are made from mobility services. A reorganization of all players in the industry is currently taking place, and one of the features of this transformation is the emergence of coopetition strategies, presented in this chapter. This is a new era in which value creation fits not just into the relationship dynamics between partners in innovation ecosystems, but also into a system jointly built with other allies, from outside the automotive industry. Will this interweaving of companies be profitable for all in the long run?