There's a version of this story where China simply got lucky, where a command economy threw enough subsidy at enough factories and, eventually, some of it stuck. It's a comforting version, and it's wrong. Beijing told the world exactly what it intended to do, put a named individual in charge of doing it, funded it consistently for two decades, and then did it. The tragedy for European automotive manufacturers isn't that China outmanoeuvred them. It's that they simply weren't

There's a number sitting quietly inside every finance contract, every lease agreement, and every dealer's stocking plan that decides, more than almost anything else, whether the European automotive industry has a good year or a catastrophic one. It isn't the interest rate. It isn't the incentive spend. It's the residual value, the price a car is expected to fetch when it comes back off finance. Get it right, and the whole machine runs smoothly. Get it wrong, and losses cascad

A few days ago, I was listening to the first episode of Andrew Neil's new podcast, interviewing Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times financial journalist and author of 1929. What stopped me wasn't anything entirely new. It was how precisely Sorkin placed today's AI bubble inside a pattern going back nearly two centuries, a pattern we convince ourselves is different every single time it appears. It never is. This piece works through what that pattern actually says about jobs

For eighty years, the global car industry ran one direction: the West designed, China assembled. That arrangement is over. GM, Volkswagen, Renault and Audi are now letting Chinese engineering teams conceive the vehicle itself, the platform, the software, increasingly the AI, and shipping those designs back out into Western markets. This isn't a manufacturing story. It's a transfer of power, and it has direct consequences for R&D strategy, brand identity, and, for anyone in au

CCD2 is not the kind of regulation that stays confined to a compliance folder. The Second Consumer Credit Directive touches underwriting, dealer sales journeys, pricing disclosure, and the technology stack behind all of it, and CCD2 applies to automotive finance from 20 November 2026, a deadline that is now measured in months, not years. The scale of the gap is worth sitting with. Twenty-three of twenty-seven EU member states have already missed the earlier transposition dead

Ask most dealer principals where their profit really comes from, and the answer is almost always new car margins or finance penetration. It's rarely aftersales, and that gap between perception and reality is costing the industry more than most boards realise. Service and parts make up just 13 per cent of dealership revenue across Europe, yet they deliver close to half its gross profit, a ratio that gets more important every year new vehicle margins stay under pressure. This p

Madox Square sits at the intersection of retailers, captives, banks, fleets, investors and regulators, a position that only makes sense if the firm sees itself as part of something larger than any single client relationship. That's the idea behind this piece. The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks argued that a flourishing society depends on recovering the "We within the I," and reading his final book, Morality, prompted a genuine reassessment of how Madox Square measures its own

For several years, AI and digital retail in automotive have generated more heat than light. That's shifting. At the Genpact Automotive Finance Leadership Forum in London on 9 June 2026, the conversation among lenders, captives, dealer groups and OEMs had moved on from whether technology can digitise the vehicle purchase journey to a harder, more commercial question: where does AI in European auto finance actually improve conversion, risk control and portfolio economics? This

Chinese OEMs are gaining market share across Europe while increasing access to European manufacturing capacity. For legacy automakers, the issue isn't whether collaboration should happen. It's whether short-term factory utilisation is being mistaken for long-term industrial strength.

AI is improving efficiency, accelerating decision-making, and transforming industries. But as organisations increasingly rely on artificial intelligence, a more fundamental question emerges: are we enhancing human thinking or slowly outsourcing it? This article explores the rise of cognitive dependency, the pseudo-expert problem, and why human judgement remains the most valuable asset in business.

In modern business, strategy and expertise matter, but attitude, enthusiasm, resilience, and tenacity are often what turn ideas into commercial momentum.

The rise of EVs could erase £30 billion in fuel duty revenues. Here’s how the UK may redesign vehicle taxation for the electric era.

Xiaomi’s EV factory is not just about automation. It signals a shift toward software-driven manufacturing and faster industrial learning in automotive.

Aftersales drives up to 50% of dealership profits. Learn why retention, data, and customer lifetime value are now critical for automotive success.

The FCA’s motor finance redress scheme raises a critical legal question. Can it apply to agreements made before 2014 regulation? Here’s what the industry needs to know.

Customer retention is becoming the most powerful growth driver in automotive. Learn how customer lifetime value is reshaping sales, finance, and dealership profitability.

Chinese automakers now hold over 10% of Europe’s market. As competition intensifies, the EU faces a critical choice: protect its automotive industry or risk losing it.

CCD II is reshaping automotive finance across Europe. The UK’s recent motor finance crisis offers a clear warning of what happens when firms underestimate outcomes-based regulation.

China perfected its automotive strategy with BYD and CATL. Now, COMAC is applying the same playbook to aviation, challenging Airbus and Boeing on a global stage.

Extended Range Electric Vehicles are booming in China and re-entering the European conversation. Could petrol-powered range extenders help accelerate EV adoption — or complicate the transition?