3rd ICAI 2024

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2024

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

FOREWORD

Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers, The automotive industry is experiencing an even more challenging period in 2024 than that which it faced at the beginning of the Covid era, especially the European one. Aspects of European security and self-sufficiency in various areas including chips, batteries, and raw materials ome to the fore. These challenges are demanding enough in themselves, not least because the dominant global market is, and will remain for some time to come, the Asian market, where the advantage of scale has been successfully transformed into technological leadership. Despite this, the European economy is the second-largest automotive market. European producers strive to respond to problems in the current supply chain configuration and strategic autonomy. With establishment of the appropriate regulatory frameworks, national and supranational economic policy in Europe is, in addition to well-developed regulation, establishing support through targeted measures. The new policy towards a more relaxed framework for state aid constraints, especially in support of building chips and battery-producing capacities, is a matter of EU competition policy. Technical and technological development brings opportunities for the automotive industry in several areas, such as utilizing new materials or introducing digital and information technology elements. With the introduction of new business models, all of the above-mentioned thematic areas also bring challenges to modernizing the legal framework, such as a changed scope in the regulation of emissions or protection of data collected by cars. We believe that organization of the 3 rd International Conference on Automotive Industry (ICAI) – this year 2024 with the subtitle “European Automotive Industry facing China’s competition” – at the Škoda Auto University is yet another step that will help to facilitate exchange and information sharing in the given thematic areas and that the conference will be a suitable platform for their discussion and will prove to be a valuable source of information for all those who deal with issues relating to the Automotive Industry.

We wish you an inspiring experience.

prof. Ing. Stanislav Šaroch, Ph.D. Conference Guarantee Škoda Auto University

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