Global Auto Industry Facts
- U.S. auto industry manufacturers and suppliers support nearly 3.4 million direct, indirect and induced jobs
- When auto industry innovations are announced, Rockwell Automation, the leading global factory automation supplier, is frequently delivering the technology behind it. RapidLaunch is one example
- Today, North American auto brands and suppliers are facing unparalleled competition…
- In the past five years, Chinese-brand auto sales increased 106%. The rest of world brand sales are up 4%
- Based on the country, Chinese auto manufacturers own up to 25% of the market share in Latin America. They have double-digit share in Europe and Australia. They captured nearly 10% of the 2025 new car market in the UK.
Speed has always mattered in automotive manufacturing.
But today, speed, on its own, is no longer enough.
“U.S. auto suppliers need to adopt a fusion of technology domains,” says Bill Sarver. “Collaborative engineering workflow. Virtual product testing and commissioning. Differentiating user experiences. Innovating faster. Reducing production downtime.”
He also says it’s unlikely that trade protection and pre-AI technology strategies will restore U.S. global automotive leadership.
“What differentiates manufacturers now is their ability to adapt. In real time – as products, technologies, people and production environments change,” explains Sarver. He would know. Sarver has nearly four decades of auto industry experience and is Director - Global Industry Consulting, Automotive & Tire at Rockwell Automation.
This is not a theoretical challenge.
“Just by itself, unplanned downtime costs manufacturers billions of dollars annually,” he adds. “Downtime creates critical instability during launch and early production, extends product introductions and reduces profitability. It’s not just an operational issue, but also a material business risk.”
That reality is especially acute during new line introductions, when systems are under the most stress and teams are working to tight timelines.
At the same time, much of the automotive industry is operating on aging infrastructure.
Data suggests that a significant portion of North American auto industry plants were built more than two decades ago. Many companies are still highly dependent on mainframe monolithic technologies and the risk to change is too high.
Sarver says that the larger risk to an organization is not to change versus the change itself. “The new OEM brands, primarily out of Asia, were not saddled with legacy technology, systems and processes, and they leapfrogged established car companies. What was once a legacy company’s strength is now their Achilles heel – less adaptable, more complex, higher cost, less efficient.”
Now this aging infrastructure is being asked to support shorter development times, mass customization, electric, alternative propulsion and ICE platforms, adjust production and supply chains on the fly, connected and software-defined vehicle programs.
Those demands place additional pressure on development, launch readiness, engineering and IT support, operations and logistics. Under these conditions, treating every new production program as a custom engineering effort is difficult to justify.
