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 and smart manufacturing.

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.

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.

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 and operations

Whether it’s building more resilience in your automotive supply chain, optimizing your plant floor to better leverage technology, analyzing your costs and margins to drive more informed decision-making, or increasing viability with your suppliers, our comprehensive solutions tailored specifically for the automotive industry will help you optimize your supply chain and operations.

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.

Future mobility: Data and intelligence to drive growth

More Future Mobility

Electric vehicles at battery charging station.

December 21, 2022

Electrification of the auto supply chain requires new business case evaluation: Suppliers share strategies

The transition to EVs is accelerating, with both OEMs and suppliers making significant investments. Our recent survey captured supplier opinions and strategies around customer-supplier relationships and the EV transition. We share key takeaways.

Article / 6 min read

May 22, 2023

Toyota, Honda, GM finish 1-2-3; Nissan overtakes Ford in annual Supplier Working Relations Study

Press Release / 7 min read

May 05, 2023

Disruptive EV technologies drive new supplier realities

White Paper / 14 min read

April 06, 2023

EV push could spur more auto supplier mergers and acquisitions

Article / 3 min read

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

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Insights

MORE INSIGHTS

May 25, 2023

International considerations for U.S. exporters

International experts from Plante Moran and the U.S. Commercial Service join to discuss topics affecting U.S. exporters, such as VAT, permanent establishment, free trade agreements, and more. View our on-demand webinar to learn more.

Webinar / 90 min watch

May 22, 2023

Toyota, Honda, GM finish 1-2-3; Nissan overtakes Ford in annual Supplier Working Relations Study

Press Release / 7 min read

Group of people having a discussion in a hotel room.

May 11, 2023

Expanding globally: Supply chain considerations & hiring employees

Webinar / 1 hour watch

May 05, 2023

Disruptive EV technologies drive new supplier realities

White Paper / 14 min read

Case Studies

SEE ALL CASE STUDIES

October 15, 2021

Operations assessment for targeted growth

Manufacturer improves efficiencies by more than 10 percent of operating cost and sees increased production capacity.

Case Study / 1 min read

North American Lighting discussed at meeting

October 01, 2018

North American Lighting replaces multiple ERP systems with Plex Manufacturing Cloud

North American Lighting (NAL), the largest independently owned Tier 1 automotive lighting supplier, replaces multiple legacy, on-premise ERP systems and achieves seamless integration across advanced manufacturing systems and facilities with the Plex Smart Manufacturing platform.

Case Study / 2 min read

May 07, 2020

Cost and margin intelligence solutions for automotive supplier

Automotive supplier improves costing information leading to confidence in product decisions and reduced lead time.

Case Study / 1 min read

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 Daron Gifford, “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

Our Plante Moran consultant is a trusted, highly respected, and integral part of our organization. He is our expert on industry and market issues and consistently delivers top value while maintaining the highest degree of professionalism and integrity.

Steven Perlman

Chief Executive Office, The Intec Group