The future of the car

Despite its title, much of the talk at the Financial Times Future of the Car summit, held over three days last week in the City of London, revolved around the car industry’s bewildering present.

And despite the contributions of 10 car maker CEOs – the kind of hyper-alpha executives you’d expect to have clear views on everything – there was a lot of shoulder-shrugging, bemused looks and eye-rolling when asked about the present, such as what effect tariffs and trade wars would have on their profits, whether the adjustments to where their cars and parts are made would be short-term and tactical or more permanent and costly, and how much of that extra cost will be passed onto customers. They weren’t being entirely coy or political with those shrugs: it was often just impossible to answer when, as one put it, the rules change on an almost daily basis.

The image you get is of a cartoon-style punch-up with arms and legs emerging from a cloud of dust but no clear idea of what is going on or who will emerge victorious. But when talk got back to the future there was surprising clarity and consensus on what the European car industry and its regulators need to do, perhaps more than ever before and regardless of the outcome of that scrap. Nine of the 10 CEOs who spoke are in charge of predominantly European marques or groups. Either the immediacy and severity of the Trump tariff avalanche has prompted a sudden wake-up among the European car makers that their more gradual decline in China has not, or maybe these views are now being expressed more openly and honestly and urgently.