The auto industry’s profit party is winding down, imperiling jobs, plants and products in a scramble to embrace electrified and self-driving vehicles. “This industry is about to enter what could be a multi-year profit desert,” says Mark Wakefield, global co-leader of AlixPartners’ automotive and industrial practice. In large part, that’s because industry leaders are investing in a future that is neither certain nor generating revenue and profit. And the decade-long sales boom is losing steam, predicted to bottom at 15.1 million vehicles sold annually by 2021. And break-even points, a crucial barometer of financial vulnerability in slower economic times, closed last year at 15 million vehicles up from 10 million vehicles at the end of the Great Recession.

Source: thestar June 29, 2019 22:18 UTC