"The crystal ball is really fuzzy," Krebs said. "We're not even sure what the solution is — let alone who has it."
"We are on the verge of a transformation of the industry we haven't seen since Henry Ford."
...GM is in the process of closing down four US plants, which it hopes will free up $6 billion a year. At the same time, the company has poured money into electric and autonomous cars and invested in a ridesharing platform called Maven. Ford is looking at a similar transformation. It's closing plants but also planning to spend $11 billion on a restructuring its business over the next three to five years. Ford is also in talks with Volkswagen to "investigate" how they can work together to develop electric and self-driving cars.
The promise of self-driving technology and ride sharing has raised the potential that cars will be on the roads for most of the day, rather than sitting in driveways or garages for much of their lives. That could reduce the number of cars that automakers will need to build in the future.
But the automakers say they will benefit from a change in the way people buy and own cars.They could do far better if they can sell rides to their customers rather than the cars themselves, auto industry executives say.
Today, GM makes about $30,000 over the lifetime of every vehicle it sells, said GM's Dan Ammann. But selling rides in driverless cars could balloon that figure to hundreds of thousands of dollars per car.
Ammann recently gave up the position as president of the company to be CEO of its Cruise unit, the part of GM focusing on self-driving cars. The move demonstrates the importance that he and GM see in the future of the business. The company also said it intends to spend $1 billion this year on the division....
Hyundai Motor has failed to keep up with the times. The carmaker missed the shift towards SUVs in Europe, America and China
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