How supply-chain turmoil is remaking the car industry

to see how technology and deglobalisation are changing the global economy, there are few better places to look than the car industry. Not only is it going through an epochal shift: away from the internal-combustion engine () and towards (s). Automobiles are also becoming, in effect, computers on wheels, running as much on processing power as the horse variety. And the pandemic has wreaked havoc on car companies’ complex global supply chains, most prominently of . As carmakers electrify, computerise and refashion their supply chains for the new reality, the giant sector is undergoing the greatest transformation in decades.Having outsourced much of the manufacturing process in the past half-century to focus on design, supplier management and parts assembly, car firms want greater control over their value chain—from the metals that go into batteries to the software those s run on and the shops in which they are sold. And they want to turn their arms into tech startups.