Editorial: Convergence and Divergence of Trajectories of Changes. The End of the Case Paradigm in the Automotive Industry?

Résumé:

The 2024 Gerpisa International Colloquium in Bordeaux focused on the so-called connected autonomous share electric (CASE) paradigm. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the global automotive industry seemed on the verge of converging toward the CASE paradigm promoted by GAFAM, Silicon Valley and digital companies: four disruptive technological changes joining forces to radically transform the automotive sector.
The hegemony of OEMs over products, markets, value and technology appeared to be in danger. It was contested by digital companies entering the automotive sector and taking control of:

• the data generated by connected vehicles and connected machines and factories (Google and Amazon)
• the software and technologies required to drive autonomous vehicles (Waymo, Uber, Tesla, and Apple)
• the platforms promoting and orchestrating shared mobility (Uber, Lyft, and Didi)
• the development of the electric vehicles (EVs) conceived as a new type of vehicle that would bring together all these technological changes (Tesla and Apple).

Five years later, the landscape of the global automotive industry has changed dramatically, but not along these lines.
Electrification has accelerated much more than it was expected, but it appears somehow disconnected from the other technological ‘disruptions’. Many of the EVs sold in the market are clones of the internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and no longer carry the promise of an imminent mobility revolution. The autonomous vehicle in particular has faded away, even if by different degrees depending on countries’ and companies’ trajectories. If shared mobility and connectivity remain a growing reality, they are both struggling to fulfil the technological expectations raised by their initial possibilities. They also do no longer seem disruptive for traditional automotive business, but rather complementary – people do not stop owning and driving a car because they use Uber or Blablacar.
This also seems to be the case for digitalisation more generally. While there is no doubt that digitalisation keeps spreading in both products (ADAS, software updates) and processes (digital assistance, digital twin, big data analytics, artificial intelligence), it does not seem to represent a significant source of instability to OEMs. Rather than being incorporated or substituted by digital companies, OEMs are bringing these technologies within their perimeter, either through acquisitions, in-house development, traditional OEM-supplier relations, MoUs, R&D collaborations or joint ventures. So far, it does not seem that the different degrees of digital integration and development had important consequences on the relative cost and non-cost competitiveness of automotive companies.
Does this mean that “dinosaurs will keep ruling the auto industry” (MacDuffie and Fujimoto, 2010)?
Past forecast errors invite caution, also because ‘dinosaurs’ are now threatened by another, more familiar, type of foe: new entrant OEMs making better, cheaper and different cars. If Tesla has become the global market leader of BEVs it is not only because of its digital company status – though it has certainly helped in carrying losses for a long period of time – but because it has become a mass producer of cars with higher vertical integration in the battery electric value chain, higher economies of scale and more efficient manufacturing processes than its competitors. Tesla is now in the process of being supplanted at the top of the BEV industry by Chinese New Energy Vehicles makers (BYD, Geely, NIO, XPeng, Cherry, SAIC, etc.) who follow a similar pattern of development and have turned China into the main exporter of BEVs and of light-vehicles in general.
Furthermore, the CASE paradigm is not dead. If the 2010s scenarios that announced level 4–5 autonomous cars as mainstream by the late 2020s are now a thing of the past, yet the perspective of a later breakthrough remains possible. And if this is case, then its disruptive impacts on OEMs will be only delayed.

The contributions to this special number explore these possibilities from different angles, but also provide stimulating answers to why the CASE paradigm has not materialised yet.