For Europe’s automotive Tier-1 suppliers, these past few years have felt less like a cyclical downturn and more like a terminal reckoning. Across 2024 and 2025, the sector shed over 100,000 jobs, as giants like Continental, Bosch, and ZF Friedrichshafen have all taken steps to downsize: Bosch alone faced a $2.9 billion cost gap. Meanwhile, their Chinese peers are increasingly outperforming, having boarded the rocket ship of domestic EV growth. One could blame the usual suspects: geopolitical friction, th ...