IEMSA
Assembly Line
🚙 Mexico’s $100-billion auto parts industry is reinventing itself for the EV era
Tecnoformas, for instance, may eventually have to phase out its current production line. “Those will eventually disappear,” said Trinidad. The company has been on the lookout for the new materials, technologies, and processes that EVs will require. It already supplies Tesla the piping that holds the array of cables connecting to the dashboard. Trinidad is hopeful he’ll see a boost in sales once the Tesla gigafactory is up and running in northern Mexico. That won’t, however, fill the gap left by the lost sales of engine components for Tecnoformas. Trinidad said the effects of electrification will remain an unknown challenge. “We are aware that electric motors are not our expertise,” he said.
Aida Mercado Salazar, sales and business developer at IEMSA, a Mexican stamping and plastic-mold injection company, told Rest of World car makers are seeking more aluminum and resins, following the trend of using materials that are lighter, cheaper, and more efficient. “We’ve seen a tendency in the auto part industry of changing the engineering of certain heavy materials for plastic,” Villarreal said, noting that the trend is particularly evident in the EV sector, where the cars can be hundreds of pounds heavier than internal combustion vehicles. The batteries powering an EV can weigh an average of about 1,000 pounds, while the average eight-cylinder engine weighs between 400 and 700 pounds. “The technology [behind electrification] is all so new that first-generation suppliers like us are acting as guinea pigs,” she said.