Title: ICE age geography: powertrain sourcing in Europe and North America

Authors: Thomas Klier; James M. Rubenstein

Addresses: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 230 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60604, USA ' Department of Geography, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, USA

Abstract: We describe the location within Europe and North America of motor vehicle powertrain sourcing. A powertrain is comprised of the vehicle engine and transmission. In terms of the organisation of production, powertrain production typically is vertically integrated into a carmaker's operations. At the industry level, we find the footprint of powertrain sourcing to be remarkably similar in Europe and North America. A key feature driving the industry's geography is that powertrain plants in both Europe and North America co-locate with vehicle assembly plants, yet produce more units per year than vehicle assembly plants. For a specific vehicle producer, the geography of powertrain sourcing largely depends on the scale of its operations. In both regions, the plants producing engines and transmissions are more clustered than those producing vehicles. This clustering highlights a distinctive regional distribution of production at a time when the transition to electric vehicles is starting to take hold.

Keywords: motor vehicles; powertrain; economies of scale; vertical integration; Europe; North America.

DOI: 10.1504/IJATM.2021.119405

International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, 2021 Vol.21 No.4, pp.322 - 342

Received: 16 Mar 2021
Accepted: 27 May 2021
Published online: 02 Dec 2021 *

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