1st ICAI 2020

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2020

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

for European automotive sector, which are growing world share of Chinese automotive sector, adaptation of new technologies and environmental policy restrictions. Main research method employed is critical review of the literature, international reports and analysis. Moreover, comparative studies are used for data presentation. Statistical data is from European Automotive Manufacturing Association. 2. Economic development of the automobile sector in the CEE region Since mid-2018, it has become clear that the global automotive industry is slowing down. The results fell last year and there are not many signs of recovery in 2019 or 2020. Part of the decline is due to the introduction of more stringent emissions tests, which took longer than expected for European manufacturers to adapt, reducing the supply of new vehicles. funds while a broader slowdown in the global economy weakens demand (Pavlínek, 2015) In the near future, the effect of the weakened industry in Central and Eastern Europe will be slower economic growth, fewer new jobs and weakening exports. Earlier this month, the EBRD lowered its forecasts for Slovakia’s economic growth to 2.5% for 2019 and 2020, respectively, from previous forecasts of 3.6% and 3.3%, citing a slowdown in the automotive industry. Of course, there are other long-term challenges for the automotive sector, such as signals that some markets are saturated, as well as the growing trend of using shared travel services, preferred by the younger generation (Pavlínek, 2017). Increasing production automation is also having an impact in the automotive sector. Countries like Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic are the main car producers in the CEE region as Slovakia is the leader taking into account the ratio of newly produced cars to the size of population. In this parameter Slovakia is beating even countries as the US and Germany (see table 1). Moreover, in the recent years Volkswagen Group after acquiring Skoda has invested in opening new production capacities across the CEE region, which boosted the economy in the region. Furthermore, countries like Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland became very strong OEM suppliers for many automobile producers, as they have established many small and medium sized companies and automobile clusters, which cooperate with the global car producers.

Table 1: Top car producers -number of cars per 1000 capita

Production of vehicles. per 1000 capita

Population

#World Ranking

Country

1 2 3

Slovakia

183.93 133.61

5,445,087 10,627,794 2,070,050

Czech Republic

Slovenia

91.71

Source: Statista 2018 Central and Eastern Europe is particularly preferred by car manufacturers. The automotive industry highly contributes to GDP growth (13% growth rate in 2017). The region keeps on developing high-quality, low-cost manufacturing operations

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