Amita Choudhary, Finextra
July 14, 2020
Among the many industries that were heavily affected during the Coronavirus pandemic, the auto industry is undoubtedly one of those that were hit the heaviest. The issues came from many sides, and while some companies were able to adapt to the situation and move on with relatively few issues, that wasn’t the case for the majority of players on the market. At this point, it’s clear that something must be done in the longer term to ensure the survival of the auto industry as a whole, but there have been different arguments with regards to what the most adequate options are right now.
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Tech has been at the forefront of making everything possible when it comes to preserving order in the industry, and we’ve already seen a lot of developments that have been in direct assistance to those in troubled situations right now. And yet, even the most active companies don’t seem to be equipped properly to deal with a situation like this at the moment.
This was echoed in sentiments by Colin Dhillon, CTO of the Automotive Parts Manufacturing Association of Canada, who said “The challenge is a lot of these medical companies that manufacture things like ventilators, whether they’re transport types or ICU types, their annual volumes are a fraction of what they need, so a company that might sell 3,000 ICU type ventilators… that’s a large volume order”.