So the car industry like many has shut down and will be reflecting on what to do when it gets going again. How do people think it will change?
IMHO western world real GDP will drop a sixth to a quarter in the next few months and then have a bit of bounce but taking another 12/18 months to get back to where we were as a flat line and longer to make up the growth we lost. Fair enough but is a perpetual focus on quarterly real GDP growth what life is about and will western capitalism survive as it was? I doubt it as it is a broken model but I have a huge believe in collective human behaviour and we will come out of it in reasonable shape - I do not subscribe to the end of the (economic) world theories but it will be ugly for a while.
The car industry was on its knees a 25/30 years ago but has had a massive margin expansion (2008/10 blip aside) to where we were last month. This is over, the car market was already changing, there are too many product ranges, too many big, heavy cars, too many polluting engines etc etc. The future will be very different with much less consumer choice, more more government intervention and much less per capita car ownership in the west.
For me I have recently taxed and MOT'd my two summer toys (Maserati GranTurismo GTS Auto, Audi mark II TT V6 manual Roadster) and now realise I need to keep them and enjoy them for years to come whilst realising that most of my journeys in a handful of years will be in a battery buzz box. So be it.
IMHO western world real GDP will drop a sixth to a quarter in the next few months and then have a bit of bounce but taking another 12/18 months to get back to where we were as a flat line and longer to make up the growth we lost. Fair enough but is a perpetual focus on quarterly real GDP growth what life is about and will western capitalism survive as it was? I doubt it as it is a broken model but I have a huge believe in collective human behaviour and we will come out of it in reasonable shape - I do not subscribe to the end of the (economic) world theories but it will be ugly for a while.
The car industry was on its knees a 25/30 years ago but has had a massive margin expansion (2008/10 blip aside) to where we were last month. This is over, the car market was already changing, there are too many product ranges, too many big, heavy cars, too many polluting engines etc etc. The future will be very different with much less consumer choice, more more government intervention and much less per capita car ownership in the west.
For me I have recently taxed and MOT'd my two summer toys (Maserati GranTurismo GTS Auto, Audi mark II TT V6 manual Roadster) and now realise I need to keep them and enjoy them for years to come whilst realising that most of my journeys in a handful of years will be in a battery buzz box. So be it.