It's Not Just Detroit

Providing more perspective on global market share shifts

Recently, I wrote about the global retreat of the Detroit 2/3 (precise count depends on where you put Stellantis), showing a chart of their decline. (From work done by Bernstein SG using IHS data. My thanks as always.)

I stand by the chart, but it perhaps unfairly singled out the D 2/3. Let’s look at the bigger picture, from the same source:

The US decline has indeed been pronounced, but the European firms have lost about the same amount of share since 2000, both down somewhere in the mid-teens, percentage-wise. And even the Japanese have now lost some steam, thanks primarily to share declines in China and SE Asia. (Within the Japanese average I should point out that Suzuki - and yes, the eternal powerhouse that is Toyota - both gained share slightly over this period.) And of course the big winner in this story is China, first from market expansion at home and latterly from share gains abroad. But note that the Koreans are hanging in there, during the Chinese onslaught, and have in fact gained share.

If one were to look at this from a very big picture perspective, and over the very long run, from say 1900 onward, you could say:

• Europe invented the motor car, as a luxury good

• America transformed it, into a mass-market product

• And East Asia figured out how to build it, inexpensively

Spinning the globe to follow those waves of development, there has been a steady march westward.

Could that imply that it is finally South Asia, India’s turn? Discuss.