Paris Motor Show 2024: Europe’s Automakers Putting Up a Brave Front

Japanese automotive supplier THK shows its future-focused special parts featured in a bespoke working prototype.

Its show car at this year’s Paris Motor Show 2024, the LSR05, boasts an array of special parts including wireless-charging battery pack, active leveling control suspension, active fluid-filled dampers and seats that give business-class standard reclining without the need for any floor-mounted railings.

Most impressive of all is that the vehicle, like its LSR04 predecessor that is currently undergoing road testing, is a completely working prototype to the point that customers have asked: ‘Would it be coming to market?’ THK’s CEO, Akihiro Teramachi, tells WardsAuto he’s at the point of considering it, adding, “It’s possible that we may consider building cars to sell but, today, we have not decided!”

It’s an opportunity but also a potential challenge reflecting a similar conundrum facing Europe’s legacy automakers. They are being torn between increasing consumer demand for gas-hybrid vehicles while the European Union is telling them to focus on an electric-vehicle future while leaving the regulatory door ajar to new internal-combustion-engine vehicles using carbon-neutral fuels.

This week’s International Monetary Fund report that a BEV future will see the loss of millions of skilled jobs in the automotive industry will only pour more fuel onto the debate raging among company executives.

At the same time, they watch an army of Chinese battery-electric-vehicle makers at the show ready to shrug off tariffs and undercut their products in just about every market sector.

Let’s face it: With all but BYD and Xpeng of the myriad of Chinese brands losing money, how can anyone compete with companies that can not only build cheaper BEVs, which by the way have a much smaller profit margin than ICE vehicles, do it seemingly without having to make any money?

Recognizing this fact, Stellantis attends the show with its Chinese joint venture Leapmotor International to the show displaying its T03 urban city and the D-segment C10 SUV BEV as they also enter the automaker’s extensive dealership network.

The worry for many industry observers is that this strategy risks the legacy automaker becoming a vassal to another nation’s macroeconomic trade agenda and could weaken its own control of its future as an independent operator.

Several times during the show, WardsAuto hears the claim from senior auto executives that today’s invasion is just like that from Japanese and then Korean automakers that forced western companies to up their game, benefiting the whole industry.

However, while Renault’s boss Luca de Meo may raise an eyebrow over the Korean government’s financial assistance to its fledgling automakers, most of the older invaders traded on a fairly even playing field with their European rivals.

So, it was hardly surprising that BMW’s CEO, Oliver Zipse, who attended this year in a strong contingent of German automakers, uses the show to repeat his call for the EU not to ban internal-combustion-engine technology by the 2035 deadline.

His arguments hold water because, with ICE, the legacy automakers have a reasonable chance to compete against China, which has a history of dumping products into foreign markets to wipe out the domestic industries. Witness the destruction of Europe’s solar panel manufacturing industry decimated by impossibly cheap Chinese imports. A similar story is also being played out over steel imports.

Zipse says: “A correction of the 100% BEV target for 2035 as part of a comprehensive CO2-reduction package would also afford European OEMs less reliance on China for batteries. To maintain the successful course, a strictly technology-agnostic path within the policy framework is essential.”

That said, while Zipse says the mood in Europe is “trending towards one of pessimism,” that was not the mood at the show with French journalists, in particular, obviously pleased over the transformation in vibe compared to the disappointment felt at the last show in Paris in 2022.

There’s a real sense of a fightback among legacy automakers, with even Ford this year fielding a weighty presentation stand loaded with its BEV products. That said, the revived Ford Capri, now an ugly snub-nosed electric SUV, is simply worlds away from the delightfully svelte and sporty 2-door coupé that won the hearts of so many European owners and admirers alike back in the 1970s.

Of course, the automaker aims to milk the market’s appetite for SUVs and it sits below the flagship Mustang Mach-E. However, some may see the use of the old nameplate more capricious than Capri – the beautiful Italian island that lends its name. Mais, c’est la vie!