Automotive: how the sector works
how automotive works: OEMs and tiered suppliers, platform and scale economics, the dealer and financing model, and the EV/software transition.
This block builds foundational fluency in the automotive sector, from vehicle design and component sourcing through manufacturing, distribution, retail, and aftersales. You will map the value chain across OEMs, tier suppliers, dealers, and mobility providers, and understand where margin actually pools. You will learn the power dynamics between incumbents, EV challengers, and regulators, plus the competitive forces reshaping the industry through electrification and software. You will cover the regulations governing emissions, safety, and type approval in the US and Europe, and the compliance constraints they create. Finally, you will master the key market figures, acronyms, benchmarks, and routine calculations professionals use to size opportunities and run due diligence.
What you'll master
- Map the automotive value chain and pinpoint where margin concentrates across OEMs, suppliers, and dealers
- Analyze competitive dynamics between incumbents and EV challengers and assess each player's bargaining power
- Identify the emissions, safety, and type-approval regulations that constrain operations in the US and Europe
- Size the US and European markets and run standard calculations like content per vehicle and capacity utilization
Key terms
Modules
How value is created and captured across OEMs, suppliers, dealers, and the shift to EVs and software.
Who controls the industry, how challengers and regulators shift power, and where profit pools.
The safety, emissions, recall, data, and trade rules that govern selling vehicles.
The market sizes, acronyms, benchmarks, and quick calculations professionals rely on.
Latest articles
Recent articles from the blog that apply to Automotive.
- Finance$100/kWh and falling: the battery cost math every automotive CFO must ownThe $100 per kilowatt-hour threshold has long been treated as the point at which electric vehicles become cost-competitive with internal combustion equivalents on a per-unit basis. But in a year when consumer confidence has hit a 12-year low and EV demand is softening across major markets, CFOs need to understand exactly what that number means for their break-even models, and where it breaks down.
- DataTrack Boeing's component data the way their regulators now demandWhen a 737 MAX fastener is installed without a traceable birth record, the liability lands on the assembler, not the tier-3 supplier who made it. Boeing's multi-year effort to close that gap shows what end-to-end traceability actually costs to build, and what it costs more to ignore.
- FinanceCaptive finance arms: how automakers use off-balance-sheet structures and residual value exposure to fund sales volumeAutomakers have spent decades building financial subsidiaries that let them sell cars without the debt appearing to threaten the parent's investment-grade rating. With core CPI again exceeding forecasts in September 2026 and rate-cut expectations fading, the mechanics of that structure, and its hidden risks, deserve a CFO's full attention.
- FinanceBelron's IPO field guide: the people, precedents, and pressure points that define mega-listing readinessBelron's reported exploration of a mega-IPO puts one of Europe's most quietly formidable private businesses under the public-market microscope. This field guide maps the players and precedents that every CFO preparing for a major listing should know cold.
- AIHow ADAS perception stacks turn sensors into real-time driving decisionsEvery ADAS system makes dozens of life-critical inferences per second, chaining raw sensor data through fusion, object classification, and decision logic before a human blinks. Understanding how that pipeline actually works, and where it can fail, is not optional knowledge for automotive AI leaders.
- FinanceThe night Chrysler's CFO discovered the credit market had closedIn late 2008, Chrysler's treasury team woke up to a commercial paper market that had effectively stopped functioning overnight. What happened next became one of the most instructive case studies in corporate liquidity management that business schools still use today.