The Automobile Sector Can Overcome This Crisis

EVs will continue to grow and supply chain resilience will gain ground post Covid-19

- V Sumantran

By now it is apparent that the pandemic has dealt a setback to human society and the global economy that is unparalleled in living memory.

Crises can alter human society and values for decades to come. Germany’s devastating hyperinflation in the 1920s still shapes the inflation averse monetary policy of Angela Merkel’s administration. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that pulled the US economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s relied on interventions such as financial sector regulations, savings insurance, and social security, and these continue to serve US citizens to this day.

The 9/11 attacks on New York’s Twin Towers, and India’s 26/11 experience with terror in Mumbai, have persuaded a modern society to accept the reality of security screening and gun-toting guards in public spaces.

One may logically expect that as we recover from Covid-19, we will experience life “in a new normal”, to borrow a tired but never more appropriate cliché. So, how may we expect the world of mobility and automobiles to change in the forthcoming era?

Short-term responses