EVs spur more vertical integration: back to the future?

Through the 1990s especially some major global OEMs outsourced component production and sold off in-house activities in many areas. GM created and sold off Delphi; Ford did the same with Visteon. To a lesser degree, PSA (as it then was) pushed some of its component business into ECIA (later Faurecia) and Sommer Allibert (later absorbed into Faurecia as well). But elsewhere significant component operations remained within the car companies: Volkswagen kept producing a proportion of its seats and only recently sold a stake in its SITECH unit to Brose. But as a sign of the times, Volkswagen’s powertrain and chassis components factory at Braunschweig has recently expanded into battery systems.

Meanwhile, major Japanese companies retained dashboard, bumper, and some other component product in-house, notably at Nissan, Toyota, and Honda. Toyota also makes some of its own aluminium wheels. The Japanese automakers also kept much of their component production close by through the keiretsu system, as did the Korean OEMs with their chaebols; Hyundai kept much of its component production effectively in-house with the creation of Hyundai Mobis and in Europe this company has begun to win business with other OEMs.