Europe's car manufacturers are sleep-walking to disaster as overambitious sales targets founder on the rocks of a stagnant market.
That's the conclusion of a leading European investment bank, which also looks in vain for a mass car manufacturer to adopt a sensible and realistic strategy that would forgo marginal sales in favor of fatter profits and a healthier future.
Deutsche Bank, in a report, said Western European manufacturers' sales projections for the end of the decade added together are 30 percent higher than the likely actual outcome. Deutsche Bank also worries that Europe's generally wafer-thin profits will be jeopardized further by new production from Koreans in Eastern Europe targeted at the West, while tough regulations to make cars emit less carbon dioxide (CO2) and be more fuel efficient (thereby saving the planet from global warming) will cost so much money there will be nothing left to allow price cuts to stimulate demand.
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