美国汽车制造业将如何生存

American car manufacturers must consider major restructuring and producing new vehicles in order to regain the American market. Chrysler aims to return to profits in 2008 but the US auto industry faces major hurdles. Manoush Zomorodi reports.

The announcement that DaimierChrysler will sell off its Chrysler stake to the private equity firm Cerberus just confirmed what a challenge the American market has become for US automakers. Faced with undiminishing pension and healthcare expenses, rising costs of manufacturing at home and thinning profit margins because of Asian competition, US automakers are struggling to say the least. The answer to revitalizing the industry, “restructure and get costs in lines”, Said Kevin Tynan, an auto analyst with Argus Research.

“And I’m not saying we need bankruptcies. But we need more than just 10,000 headcount reduction and closing five plants. This has to be a rollback to where it makes sense to manufacture in the US. If not, they’ll basically push manufacturing to the South, to Mexico, to Canada, to China, wherever it makes sense to do so.”

American car manufacturers are also being pressured by a changing political climate. High prices at the petrol pump, growing fears about US dependence on the Middle East for oil, and worries about global warming mean American consumers want smaller cars with greater fuel efficiency. But US companies just aren’t making them.

“General Motor has fallen in crisis. Those, those portfolios are at the very truck heavy. Their car structure requires them to build the vehicles with the greatest profit margin in it. They, they have to. You can’t build small vehicles with no margin in them even if it is what the public wants.”

But Tynan says US automakers will have to start making smaller cars, or risk losing even more market share. Manufacturing new types of vehicles, completely restructuring, none of these solutions are easy or quick. So why would Cerberus bother taking on Chrysler?

“Where there is confusion, there is profit. And there is obviously a lot of confusion going on, not only in, at Chrysler, but in the auto industry, the domestic manufacturers specifically.”

Cerberus says it will take a long-term approach to revitalizing Chrysler and the Chrysler will benefit from dropping out of the public spotlight for a time.