The European automotive components industry lost close to 80,000 jobs over 18 months, with more than 54,000 of those cuts falling in 2024. Our new industry insight looks at what sits behind that number and argues it is a permanent shift in how value is distributed across the supply chain, not a downturn that will correct itself.
Three things changed at once. RFQ packages grew from under 100 pages to tender documents of 300 to 500 pages and more, loading CO₂, ESG and IT security requirements onto suppliers regardless of feasibility. OEMs began using greenfield cost models built on theoretical best-case assumptions, so what arrives at the supplier is a target price set elsewhere rather than an opening position. And volume risk moved downstream: business cases run on five to seven year volume assumptions that routinely miss by 30 to 50 percent, while the price reductions stay fixed.
The article also names the profile of company under the most pressure. Tier-2 and Tier-3 manufacturers between €50M and €500M in revenue are too small to influence OEM terms and too exposed to avoid them.
None of that is mismanagement. It is how the system is currently designed, which is why the article ends on what a supplier can do inside it. A supplier that rebuilds its cost position from its own technical data can meet a greenfield model with a counter-calculation instead of simply signing up to it.
