The global automotive market is accelerating towards electric mobility, redefining the competitive dynamics of the sector. The Italian industry is facing this transformation amid significant challenges, with a steady decline in production over the years (in 2024, 310,000 vehicles were produced, an 85% decrease compared to the historical peak in 1989). Further delays in adapting to this shift could severely undermine the sector’s competitiveness, increasing the risk of marginalisation at both the European and global levels.
A new study commissioned by ECCO and T&E Italia to a group of professors and researchers from the Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and the Enrico Fermi Research Centre in Rome analysed the economic and employment impacts on the national automotive industry of the failure to transition to electric mobility. According to the various scenarios analysed, the cost of inaction is estimated to result in a reduction of production value between 7.24 and 7.49 billion dollars and a loss of 66,000 to 94,000 jobs, leading to an increase in unemployment benefit spending of up to 2 billion dollars over ten years.
To counter this trend and promote the sector’s recovery, the study proposes a framework for coordinated industrial policies, structured along four key areas: mission, sector, technology and market. The following aspects are identified as priorities within this proposal:
- Stimulating domestic demand for electric vehicles through direct incentives, including an experimental social leasing scheme targeted at citizens and families experiencing mobility poverty, public procurement and indirect measures that influence taxation;
- Incentivising investments in R&D activities, encouraging public-private collaborations, particularly in cutting-edge technological areas such as batteries and material circularity;
- Supporting industrial redevelopment by promoting process innovation and adapting workforce skills;
- Reducing energy costs to align production costs with other European countries, complementing emergency measures with market regulatory interventions to decouple the price of renewable energy from that of gas.
Read the policy briefing “Between crisis and transition: the Italian automotive industry at a crossroads”
Read the study “The Automotive Industry and the Transition to Electric Mobiliy in Italy”
The policy briefing “Between crisis and transition: the Italian automotive industry at a crossroads” was edited by Andrea Boraschi and Luca Poggi, T&E and Massimiliano Bienati, ECCO.
Photo by Ralph Hutter
