Dealmakers are taking advantage of a scaled-down Detroit auto show.
Invest WindsorEssex, the economic-development organization for the southern Ontario auto hub that borders Detroit, spent the week recruiting suppliers in Detroit for a new EV battery plant being built in the Windsor area.
The smaller footprint at this year’s auto show, the first since January, 2019, made it easier to make connections.
“I wasn’t travelling from one major hall to the next; I could go right to a booth that I could see and have those conversations,” said Matthew Johnson, executive director of mobility partnerships and innovation for Invest WindsorEssex.
“We went there with a very targeted list of startups. …. We met with them one on one.”
The last Detroit Auto Show took place a month after General Motors’s Oshawa, Ont., assembly plant mostly shut its doors after 100 years, capping a decade of shuttered auto suppliers.
“In 2018, it was kind of what we wanted to be, what we were hoping to offer. Whereas this time, because we’ve accomplished so much in those short four years, it was kind of like, ‘This is who we are.’”
The show’s move away from a January schedule—in part because automakers began to favour tech-focused trade shows like CES—is just one sign of how times have changed in the Detroit region. Here are five highlights from the week:
- DTW✈️SFO: While U.S. President Joe Biden grabbed headlines with his auto-show cameo, Canada’s federal government also sent a “car guy,” Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, to meet with GM, Stellantis and Ford in Detroit. Champagne went from there to Fremont, Calif., by Friday, where he met with senior management at Tesla and toured a manufacturing facility. (His second Tesla tour in as many months.)
- Scooting right by ya: Ross McKenzie, managing director of the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research, said the show seems to be expanding beyond passenger cars: drones and air ambulance technologies, “green” off-road vehicles and electrified scooters. “It’s not just a vehicle show. It’s evolving as an event.”
- Case in point: Ontario auto supplier Magna International unveiled a robot it’s been testing with “hundreds” of pizza deliveries since March, using self-driving car technologies like LIDAR. (No word on whether it will provide the automotive-grade metal used to make Detroit-style pies.)
- New-car smell: Despite Detroit being dubbed a “depressing ghost town,” Johnson was hopeful that the increased focus on outdoor events may have drawn first-time visitors. EVs on display included the Chevrolet Silverado and Blazer, Jeep Wrangler 4xe, Ford F-150 Lightning and GMC Hummer EV.
- Meanwhile, the seventh-generation Ford Mustang unveiled at the event will use an internal-combustion engine made in Windsor.
The ‘Stang may be one of the few Canadian contributions that didn’t buck tradition.
“It’s pretty crazy to see how quickly all this has changed,” said Johnson. “And how a lot of what we would have thought of as more traditional [manufacturers] are embracing this change.”
Read Shift—The Logic’s authoritative weekly newsletter on automotive technology industry news—for more; and if you know someone who should be reading it, they can sign up here.
