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5 AutoData | March 2019 Bruno de Oliveira collaborated GOIABINHAS TIME 4 And what is the current imbricate of business that is not exactly sympathetic to the Brazilians interests and needs? Well, the world has changed, and in the specific area of vehicles, it is right there, up ahead, a period of massive investment in new things, the so-called innovation, perhaps as the segment has never experienced another one like that before. Since the electrification of vehicles and their autonomous virtue will require such an amount of money that the industry itself is afraid to calculate. At this moment, all operations have to be necessarily very profitable to sustain new needs and continue to support the current ones. With what eagle eyes over the magnifying glass will financial executives of the companies see the results of an unknown region known as Brazil, 2,6% market share and in the red? BY THE WAY On Tuesday morning, 19, the mayor of Sao Bernardo do Campo, SP, aimed at his industrial future: “We have plans to attract employment, with incentive by the way”. The happy face gave way when the subject became Ford and the future of its operation in the region: “Here in the cabinet all the presidents come and go. Ford? Never”. BY THE WAY 2 In the afternoon, an announcement in which Ford made official its departure from the South American truck market and the factory closure, the mayor’s scowl became an ice skiff, such the surprise caused by the news, said interlocutors in the City Hall. And a cry coming from the cabinet came to cut the air like a new razor: “Cowards!” He couldn’t maintain the cordiality in the text of the official note that he would have to release at night. A press representative rushed to justify his cancellation: “He wrote with the liver”. The solution was to record a video in which, calmer, he promised to maintain the Ford workers’ jobs. GOIABINHAS TIME 5 There is no doubt that GM logic and Ford logic regarding Brazil follow the fundamental logic of the capitalist business - which is neither worse nor better than any other. It is, of course, dust with which it is reasonable to live with under normal circumstances - but there are no normal circumstances in this field today. It is necessary to pay the trillion dollars that, it is estimated, will cost the general vehicles’ electrification process and to make them autonomous. There is nothing evil in the process, nothing bad, nothing personal: it’s just business. GOIABINHAS TIME 6 I know less about the General Motors case, which for very good reasons sold its crown jewel, Opel, to the PSA Groupe, and a little more about Ford’s case. Ford has announced, for more than a year, a powerful business restructuring around the world, following the logic of the need for trends it has detected by its old experience and that go beyond electrification and vehicle autonomy: they hit the new ground known as mobility, which only a few fully understand it. And in that great game of which we are all witnesses, every company gets ready as it can or how it can figure: that company desperately needs every cents that its subsidiaries can generate. Because as the clever Herbert Hubert Demel, former Volkswagen in Brazil, former Fiat in the world, among other things, and that knows everything, this is a battle of giants - and having 2,6% market share in the world’s industry business is too little. a n n d i i d i k / S h u t t e r s t o c k . c o m