Automotive

Our Expertise

Driving automotive and mobility industry transformation

The automotive and mobility industries are transforming with remarkable speed: Electrification. Automation. Artificial intelligence. Connectivity. Shared mobility. All this innovation has revolutionized the industry and brings opportunity for those who find creative ways to restructure their businesses, reshape their products, reimagine their services, and refine their operations. Our automotive advisors and consultants deliver leading-edge insight and pragmatic solutions to help you succeed in this new world of future mobility

Our automotive practice serves clients across the global value chain, including OEMs, suppliers, technology companies, investors, and dealerships. As leaders in accounting, tax, and consulting for the automotive industry, we bring decades of industry experience backed up by proprietary market forecasts and benchmarking data. Our future mobility experts deliver leading-edge market, financial, operational, and strategic intelligence you won’t find anywhere else. We’re also highly regarded as thought leaders within the industry, with our experts regularly featured at key automotive conferences and quoted in industry media.

Automotive and mobility audit, tax, and consulting services

The speed of transformation has made it critical to partner with expert automotive advisors and consultants to help you navigate change. Let us help you with:
Audit and financial strategy

Does your advisor address every aspect of business risk for you? We entrench ourselves in your business to gain a deeper understanding of core functions and performance and deliver meaningful, actionable insights to drive improvement. We’re set on serving as more than your auditor; our goal is to be your trusted business advisor.

Our automotive accounting and audit professionals will help you navigate ever-changing regulations, manage complex accounting issues, audit your employee benefit plan, and ensure your internal controls are functioning correctly. If your company needs back-office support, our accounting solutions team can support your business with finance and automotive accounting services, assume a CFO-level role, or help upgrade your accounting systems to keep pace with your growth.

Cost and margin intelligence
Do you have transparent insights into key cost drivers and how they impact your margins? From product proliferation, process complexity, and automation to volume variability and varying logistics requirements, you need a strategic cost model. We’ll tailor a practical cost and margin model to your specific needs, so you gain new insight into operations and profitability to make more informed financial decisions.
Environmental, social, and corporate governance
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting is becoming an important initiative for many organizations. Do you have a plan in place for ESG reporting? If you’ve prioritized developing an ESG strategy but don’t know where to begin, we can help.
Mergers and acquisitions
Automotive companies face difficult decisions about the technologies and capabilities they’ll need to succeed. A clearly defined M&A strategy will play a pivotal role in determining your future success. As your single source for transaction advisory services, including our investment bank affiliate, PMCF, our team has strong expertise in automotive M&A. We have experience working with a variety of ownership structures, including public, private, foreign, and private equity-owned. Our professionals will help identify opportunities, develop a buy- or sell-side strategy, conduct due diligence, execute the transaction, and guide post-transaction integration.
Operations improvement
A streamlined operation equates to improved financial performance. With extensive automotive experience, we’ll quickly learn the intricacies of your operations and focus on delivering the biggest improvements in the shortest amount of time possible. Our practical approach helps you achieve high performance and sustainable results that improve customer service levels and bottom-line profitability.
Smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing leverages technology and automation on the plant floor to achieve greater operational efficiency and open doors to new and incremental revenue. From assessing where you stand to creating your best course of action, we’ll help you level up.
Strategy
In this era of disruption, your strategy is more important than ever. Our interdisciplinary team of automotive management consultants are guided by proprietary industry data and benchmarking you won’t find anywhere else. We use this insight to help you assess critical areas such as product growth, customer acquisition, digital competencies, and operational efficiency, and then will help you prioritize. We won’t restate the problems you’re already aware of — we’ll build solutions to the issues critical to driving your success. Our strategic recommendations are practical, and our detailed blueprint will help you execute.
Supply chain
In response to emerging global trends, increased demand for visibility with suppliers, and speed-to-market pressures, our comprehensive solutions will help you build more resilience in your automotive supply chain. From supply chain strategy and optimization, and sourcing and supplier management, to logistics strategy, and right-shoring analysis and implementation, we will help you optimize your supply chain.
Tax
With ever-changing tax codes in the United States and across the globe, are you optimizing your tax position? With a team of tax specialists focused solely on automotive clients, we’ll help identify planning, structuring, and compliance opportunities that minimize your tax obligations. With expertise ranging from state and local tax and international tax to tax credits and incentives and transfer pricing, we’ll develop a plan customized for your situation.
Technology, data analytics, and cybersecurity
Our technology strategists will help you evaluate which technology investments are strategic to your short- and long-term competitiveness while also understanding the time frame on return. We’ll assess your technology infrastructure and ensure it’s gathering accurate data, generating efficiencies, and helping drive informed decisions. Our cost and margin intelligence team will help you understand where you make money — and where you don’t — while our automotive analytics team will assist to transform data into actionable insights to improve performance. And, with cybersecurity threats continuing to evolve, our cybersecurity experts will assess your security infrastructure and ensure your data and systems are protected.

Discover four ways smart manufacturing can help you do more with less.
Accelerate productivity and profitability today.




With the shift to EV technologies, automotive suppliers must make critical decisions. Our white paper offers insights to help suppliers discern the speed of EV adoption, revenue source shifts, cost trends, and the battery value chain.

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Client Experience

An experienced automotive advisor at your side

Headquartered in the Motor City with nearly 100 years of experience, our experts know what drives success in the automotive industry. In this era of radical change, our broad range of customized services will meet you wherever you are in your transformation journey and wherever you operate around the globe.

Our clients say we’re knowledgeable, attentive, and more flexible than other automotive consulting firms. They know we’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder with them as a member of the team and be equally invested in their success. In the words of our automotive consulting practice leader Mark Barrott, “Our clients appreciate the depth of our industry experience, our understanding of what’s most important to transform and succeed, and our ability to help build out a pragmatic plan with realistic, implementable, strategies.”

Our clients say

Over the past decade, Plante Moran has distinguished itself from other firms by consistently surpassing expectations. They are more than just a service provider; they are co-creation partners. Plante Moran goes beyond offering standard solutions and instead crafts customized solutions specifically designed for each company. They do this by providing valuable intelligence, guidance, market research, and always keeping the voice of the customer in mind, even when working under tight deadlines.

Ashish Sadhu
Vice President, Marelli