From OEMs to garage owners : why Africa, Southeast Asia and South America are the three emergency exits that no one is using fast enough.
OEMs : forced pivot, timing errors and Chinese pressure
Stellantis: €22.3B net loss in 2025 from over-investing in electrification at the wrong pace. The CEO admitted it himself: “Our results reflect the cost of overestimating the pace of the energy transition.”
New vehicle sales in France: from 2.2M in 2019 to 1.6M in 2025 (-27%). EVs represent 20% of new registrations in 2025, but 91% of the total fleet on the road remains ICE-powered.
BYD is attacking Europe from its Hungarian factory at €19,990. China holds 40% of global EV market share in Q1 2025, on track for 60% in 2026. 83% of global battery production is concentrated in China.
Tier 1 & Tier 2 Suppliers : the industrial washing machine
330,000 people in France’s upstream automotive industry across 4,000 sites. Already 38,600 jobs lost between 2020 and 2025. Xerfi projects -75,000 additional jobs by 2035 — one third of 2019 headcount gone in under 20 years.
ZF cuts 7,600 positions in its transmission division. Bosch, Valeo, Forvia and Continental are all restructuring. 10% of suppliers are considering closing a French site within 6 months.
The emblematic case: Fonderie de Bretagne (In France) with 95% of revenue from Renault, which refuses to commit to volumes through 2028 and is putting the site in competition with Turkish and Spanish suppliers. This is the scenario threatening hundreds of French SMEs too dependent on a single OEM for ICE components that are structurally condemned.
Garages & Aftermarket : ICE is still keeping them afloat, but for how long?
French auto repair market: €26.74B in revenue in 2025 with 145,000 employees, 97% micro-businesses. An ageing fleet (average age: 11.2 years) sustains demand in the short term.
An ICE engine is ~2,000 parts to service and an electric motor is ~20 parts. No more oil changes, head gaskets or fuel injectors. The economics are irrefutable.
Projection: 1,500 to 3,000 jobs lost per year in auto repair by 2035. Aftersales accounts for 70% of dealers’ fixed costs : this business model collapses as the fleet shifts
Three growth zones : where ICE will reign for another 15 to 20 years
The geopolitical reality: while Europe bans new ICE sales in 2035, these three regions represent hundreds of millions of ICE vehicles still in circulation : demanding maintenance, parts and local assembly. European suppliers and tier-2 manufacturers who are not present in these markets by 2026 will be too late by 2030.
The Strategy : 4 non-negotiable levers for Tier 1 & Tier 2 suppliers
The question every industrial SME leader must ask today:
In which markets, with which clients, on which technologies can my current capabilities still create value in 5 years? In 10 years ?
Those who survive will have answered this question with data and not with hope.