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This year many engineers in the automotive electronics business had a little bit a queasy feeling in their stomach when they decamped for their holidays. Papers and TV continuously have news from the automotive industry on their front pages and headlines. GM: Huge loss, BMW shocks with a drastic earnings warning, Daimler puts its S-class production in Sindelfingen on hold. And even Toyota, the world's most reliable vendor when it comes to growth and sales figures, had to report a hefty profit decline.
This all does unsettle even people whose fate only indirectly depends on the production numbers of the big automotive OEMs. Does a slowdown in automotive sales translate into more or less electronics content? The most straightforward idea would be it will directly lead to lower semiconductor content and thus to a slow-down in the automotive electronics business. But things are never that easy. After all, it was electronic controllers that helped to reduce fuel consumption, it was electronics that improved the driving experience and it was electronic — or mechatronic — solutions that helped to keep the costs for many subsystems in the vehicles down. So the OEMs might counteract the slowing tendency by adding more electronics. Plus, one of the factors that made the consumers hit the brake was the rising fuel costs — and now, the industry hopes to counter with electric cars or hybrid drives. Both concepts ask for changes in the automotive electronics landscape, perhaps their deployment will even stimulate the demand for in-car electronic controllers etc.
The problem is that nobody has an exact idea of how these factors will finally affect the electronics industry. Uncertainty is what makes us feel uneasy when we leave our offices for vacation. But feeling bad does not help. Exactly this uncertainty should be a good reason to peg out and relax for a few days or weeks. So why don't you just turn the key and head south — and don't allow these bad news to spoil your vacations.
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