Shadowing Practice: Why the Global Car Industry Is Facing Its Biggest Transformation - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Why is the car industry in crisis?

And… Can crisis reinvent the car?

The history of the automobile shows it’s not just a story of ingenuity and engineering breakthroughs.

It’s also a story of crises.

Oil shocks made fuel efficiency imperative.

Dieselgate forced carmakers to tackle emissions.

And today, the industry is at a historic turning point, with electrification, software, geopolitics, energy security and Chinese competition converging all at once.

This is the largest transformation of what we have seen in the automotive industry.

It’s an extreme crisis, because it’s not just one front, like the oil shock.

I think this era is characterized by the number of changes that are happening at the same time.

So, why is the automotive industry in crisis?

How do periods of disruption change the cars we drive?

And what kind of car will emerge from this latest upheaval? REV investigates.

Why is the automotive industry in crisis?

The car industry is entering a new phase. Electric car sales are growing, new brands are starting to upset the old order, factories are being retooled to accommodate new technologies. And carmakers are pouring unprecedented sums of money into battery tech, software-defined vehicles, and EV platforms.

So why does it feel like the industry is in crisis? Because EVERYTHING is changing.

For more than a century, the world’s biggest carmakers built their businesses around the internal combustion engine. A technology that is now being made redundant in order to meet climate goals. It's an extremely expensive pivot, with major carmakers having tentatively planned to double investment in EVs by 2030 to nearly 1.2 trillion-dollars.

That investment could be essential for carmakers to stay relevant. But success is not guaranteed. Despite higher EV volumes and revenue, Ford's electric-vehicle division, Model e, was dissolved after losing 4.8 billion dollars in 2025.

EVs are not yet equally profitable for every player. And the question isn’t simply whether electric cars will sell, but rather whether legacy carmakers really can manufacture these EVs profitably, while their combustion-engine models still make up the bulk of the profits. And that's while navigating shifting regulations and subsidies, fluctuating raw material costs, and high energy costs.

Then there’s China. Legacy carmakers, especially from Germany, have lost the Chinese market, with domestic brands being seen as more tech-forward and innovative. At the same time: Chinese manufacturers are challenging legacy carmakers in global markets with high-spec, low-cost EVs.

There is a structural change...

Economist Claudia Kemfert studies how energy, climate policy and industrial transformation reshape economies. What carmakers are facing, she says, is not a normal downturn, but a dramatic shift.

And that means that the jobs of the past are not the same as the future. There will be more electric cars, more digitalization, battery production and services.

The shift is painful because the old strengths of the industry don’t automatically make it future proof for this transformation. Although not everyone dubs it just a crisis.

Crisis and opportunity, I would say, at the same time.

Nikolaos-Stefanos Koutrakis works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology.

The ReTraNetz project helps automotive companies in the Berlin region as they navigate this pivot.

When we shift from internal combustion engines to electric motors, a lot of products and components change. So, if for OEMs, the change is only in the production processes or in the product lines, for suppliers it’s a lot more difficult to adapt.

And legacy car makers are having to become software companies, instead of just vehicle manufacturers.

It’s an extreme crisis.

Steve Fambro is the co-founder of Aptera: A US-based company that's developing an ultra-efficient solar electric vehicle. He sees today’s crisis as a fight on multiple fronts.

It’s not just one front, like the oil shock. Yes, it is energy, but now it’s also the labor model. It’s actually two battles that the car companies are having to fight: the energy transition and the labor transition.

Carmakers are going through a painful evolution – it’s a crisis of profitability, technology, suppliers, skills and competition all at once. But can pressure also force progress?

On the one hand, this is a huge pressure for competition. On the other hand, it is also a chance for more innovation, and really disruptive innovation.

But this isn’t the first time the automotive industry has faced a technological crossroads.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, nobody knew what would power the car. Steam, petrol and electricity were all in the running. And for city drivers, electric cars had real advantages. They were quieter, cleaner, and didn’t need to be started with a hand crank.

In New York, electric taxis even used battery swapping more than a century before it became a modern EV buzzword.

But gasoline had one decisive advantage.

What the gasoline cars gave at the time was a massive increase in range, because you could bring the fuel with you in cans.

Cheap oil, Henry Ford’s mass-produced Model T and the invention of the electric starter made petrol cars easier, cheaper and more convenient to live with.

Electric cars didn’t disappear because the technology failed. They disappeared because gasoline addressed problems drivers had at the time. Although every time fuel became scarce again, it seemed like engineers returned to electricity.

Even before the oil shocks of the mid-1970s, carmakers across Europe revived the idea of battery-powered mobility.

BMW had two electric 1602s as support cars during the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Opel’s Elektro GT set electric speed records. And in response to the energy crisis, Volkswagen experimented with an electric Microbus, battery swapping, and, later, the Elektro-Golf. None of these cars transformed the market. But they demonstrated that, when energy security was under threat, the industry was willing to adapt and innovate.

A few decades later, came Dieselgate. This time, the challenge was no longer simply how to use less fuel. Instead the problem of emissions became more urgent than ever before. Electrification moved from the fringes to the foreground, accelerating the industry-wide shift we see today.

This is the largest transformation we have seen in the automotive industry. It is not only to go away from oil. There are so many different components, including digitalization and software-based mobility.

Essentially, every automotive crisis has thrown up a new question for engineers to answer. First: how do we power a car? Then: how do we use less fuel? Then: how do we cut emissions? Today, the industry is being asked to answer all of those questions simultaneously.

For over a century, the combustion engine shaped practically every aspect of a car, dictating the layout of the vehicle and the factories, the supplier network, and the expertise carmakers needed.

The advent of the battery is changing everything. Which means the car isn’t simply being modified.

In electric vehicles, the battery is the most vital component. It influences the floor of the vehicle, the weight, thermal management, crash safety and ultimately what the car costs.

I think it’s a redesign. We’re not talking only about a vehicle, but a system of different components that need to be integrated together.

The second most important component – software. In older cars, software was tasked with individual functions. But it’s now moved from a supporting role to shaping the experience of the car itself. A modern vehicle can incorporate up to 100 million lines of code – handling everything from driver assistance and infotainment to charging, battery management, cybersecurity and over the air updates. So as parts of it can keep changing and evolving, the car is not a 'finished product' when it leaves the factory.

Until now, manufacturers were focusing on the mechanical side of cars, so mechanical engineering, most of all. But now software plays an equal part when developing the product and designing the vehicle.

AI enters the arena in two places. Inside the car, it supports driver assistance and future autonomy. Behind the scenes, it's increasingly used in manufacturing.

We see it for autonomous driving, but it's not only used for the car itself, it's used for the manufacturing processes to produce the car, so it can be for digital assistance systems that will help workers with introduction of new production lines, quality control, predictive maintenance, adaptive process control, optimization of manufacturing processes.

Production is one aspect, but the components essential to that process are equally important.

EVs depend on battery cells, critical minerals, semiconductors. This is where China has become so important – creating a further challenge for European carmakers.

China really invested into electric mobility, into batteries, into raw materials, and they really dominate the whole value chain of electric mobility, including digitalization and software-based cars.

For legacy carmakers the challenge is now to build not just an electric car, but an entire industrial system around it. One where the internal combustion engine or 'ICE' no longer takes center stage … right?

If today’s automotive transformation is so fundamental, you might expect carmakers would agree on one clear answer to future technology. But while there is consensus that the old model is under pressure, the industry remains divided on what should replace it.

I don’t think there will be one unified answer across everyone. Different manufacturers, different markets, different products. They’re all approached through a different angle.

Each manufacturer is making a different assumption about the future – about customers, regulation, infrastructure, and how rapidly the world might evolve.

Let’s take a look at BMW. Its early forays into eMobility were radical.

The i3 wasn’t a petrol car with a battery shoehorned into it. Instead, it was a purpose-built EV, featuring a carbon-fibre reinforced passenger cell.

But BMW has continued to invest across multiple technologies, pursuing battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, combustion engines, and next-generation EV platforms. A flexible approach that’s helped it stay competitive. In 2025, BMW delivered over 600,000 electrified vehicles, of which over 400,000 were fully electric.

Over in Japan: despite the success of the Prius hybrid, Toyota consolidated its multi-pathway approach, with plug-in hybrids, BEVs, ICEs and fuel cells. Essentially, different solutions for different regions. While EV adoption has progressed at different speeds, hybrids have remained a consistent source of sales, suggesting that Toyota’s strategy is a resilient one.

Meanwhile, Honda is a reminder of how quickly the tides can turn. After announcing a major EV push, the company has now cancelled the development and market launch of three EVs for North America, and is reassessing its electrification strategy.

It hasn’t stopped working towards EVs, but has stopped betting on its previous EV timeline.

It’s a similar situation over at Mercedes and VW. Major manufacturers are adjusting their strategies based on policy and demand... in real time.

What's interesting is how the electric vehicles are, in the industry, is being crafted regionally for regional needs. Charging in China is so prolific – and of course the batteries are lower cost there, because that's their origin – that efficiency doesn't really come into play, because you can charge enough so frequently and so often. But in places like North America, you have fundamentally much larger distance to cover. In Europe, it's different. So, I do think the solution is somewhat continental or regional.

That may be the key point. There may not be one single automotive future.

The crucial question is not “Will electric cars replace internal combustion engines?”.

It’s what mix of technologies will work best in what markets.

Which brings us back to the question of whether crisis really can lead to innovation. Well, in various parts of the world, there are people trying to come up with different solutions to the car industry’s various problems, and some are more radical than others.

For years, the electric-car debate has revolved around a single metric – range. How far can an EV go? The industry’s answer has often been to make batteries bigger. But bigger batteries come with their own set of problems: weight, cost, raw materials, energy consumption.

Has the industry been focussing on the wrong question? Instead of asking how much energy an EV can store, wouldn't the more important issue be how little energy it can use?

It’s easier if you can just make the battery bigger. I think that's the old way of thinking, but I do think it's easier for companies to do that, and you can understand why. It gets products in the market quicker, it develops revenue streams quicker, but in the end it ends up not being cost effective or not being profitable.

So, I think they're having to address the efficiency issue in order to get profitability.

Aptera is an example of an automotive startup taking a very different approach. Instead of asking how big a battery can be, it looks at how efficient a vehicle needs to be in order for solar power to be a viable solution.

We set out to say, “How can we let the sun power the average American's daily commute?” Let's say, the average is between 30 or roughly 35 miles, 40 miles. In order to do that, we needed to use 100 watt hours per mile, and in order to do that, we needed a very efficient platform. It just didn't exist. So we designed the vehicle to use that amount of energy per unit distance, so that most people, most drivers would be able to cover their daily driving needs just by solar charging.

That fundamentally different approach is reflected in the vehicle's design.

With a focus on aerodynamics, low weight, and reducing the energy needed to power the vehicle.

Once we saw how much energy we received from a solar roof, my co-founder and I said: well, why don't we just make the whole vehicle covered in solar cells. Let's not only have a solar roof, let's cover the entire vehicle in solar, and really see how much energy we can get, and so I think that all-in approach is really the only way to make solar power transportation work.

Of course, the broader point isn’t that every manufacturer should necessarily emulate Aptera. It’s that efficiency could become the defining factor in the EV race too.

The cars cannot be always bigger and heavier. They should be smaller, and the batteries need to be recycled fully, so 100% recycling of the batteries is really important, but also the size.

Efficiency is a crucial aspect here, and also research to become less also resource-dependent.

So, the car of the future may not just be electric. It may also have to be lighter, smarter, less wasteful. These aren’t entirely new ideas, having been pursued previously by various innovators within the automotive industry. Whether it was the Sebring Vanguard CitiCar in the USA, the REVA electric car in India, or the Buddy EV and ThinkCity in Norway.

However, with mounting climate pressures and natural resources becoming even more precious, the need for these vehicles is becoming more urgent. Looking ahead to the next automotive era: while range may still matter, efficiency is set to end up playing the most crucial role.

So, who will triumph in the next automotive age? Not necessarily the companies with the boldest prototypes. But those who can build the right technology at scale, at the right cost, for the right market.

Scaling is a big issue – it might take more time than the actual solving of the problem, because you need to change the manufacturing, the technology, and the processes you have.

This is also where legacy carmakers are trying hard to catch up with China.

It’s a result of China’s long-term industrial policy. Because they heavily invested into electric mobility, into batteries, into circular economy, and all the rest, and so they dominate the whole value chain.

And it’s where new priorities might become imperative.

Every automotive company that’s building electric vehicles is focused more and more on efficiency: light weight, low drag, motor efficiency, battery-electric conversion efficiency.

Which brings us back to the question we began with. Can crisis reinvent the car again?

Maybe it already is doing that ... When the old solutions are no longer competitive or sustainable, the industry is forced to innovate. Carmakers propose new technologies, policymakers shape the market, consumers decide what they trust, and cost decides what survives.

So the next automotive age may not be won by the cleverest concept alone. It might belong to the car that can be built at scale, sold profitably, and adopted globally. If history is any guide, crisis reinvents the car by changing what each new generation must prove it can do – and be.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 97 sentences and 2767 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:33. The speaker talks at a steady 141 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
automotive adjective	/ˌɔtəˈmoʊtɪv/	Having the ability to move by itself; self-propelled or self-propelling.
efficiency noun	/ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/	The extent to which a resource is used for the intended purpose.
manufacturer noun	/ˌmænjʊˈfæktʃəɹə/	A person or company that manufactures.
combustion noun	/kəmˈbʌs.t͡ʃən/	The act or process of burning.
legacy noun	/ˈlɛɡəsi/	Money or property bequeathed to someone in a will.
component noun	/kəmˈpoʊ.nənt/	A smaller, self-contained part of a larger entity. Often refers to a manufactured object that is part of a larger device.
transformation noun	/ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/	The act of transforming or the state of being transformed.
mobility noun	/mə(ʊ)ˈbɪlɪti/	The ability to move; capacity for movement.
shock noun	/ʃɔk/	A sudden, heavy impact.
efficient adjective	/ɪˈfɪʃənt/	Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
aspect noun	/ˈæspɛkt/	Any specific feature, part, or element of something.
innovation noun	/ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən/	The act of innovating; the introduction of something new, in customs, rites, etc.
invest verb	/ɪnˈvɛst/	To spend money, time, or energy on something, especially for some benefit or purpose; used with in.
crucial adjective	/ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/	Essential or decisive for determining the outcome or future of something; extremely important; vital.
gasoline noun	/ˈɡæs.ə.liːn/	A flammable liquid consisting of a mixture of refined petroleum hydrocarbons, mainly used as a motor fuel; petrol.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
come up with verb		To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
look ahead to verb		To plan for the future; to look forward to something; to be excited for something happening in the future.
make up verb	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	To constitute, to compose.
throw up verb		To vomit.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 18 contractions and reduced forms, such as isn't, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thermal /ˈθɜːməl/, twentieth /ˈtwɛn.ti.əθ/, pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/, efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, innovation /ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: automotive /ˌɔtəˈmoʊtɪv/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, manufacturer /ˌmænjʊˈfæktʃəɹə/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, mobility /mə(ʊ)ˈbɪlɪti/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like automotive, efficiency, manufacturer.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have seen · have lost · has faced
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is characterized · being retooled · being made

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Why the Global Car Industry Is Facing Its Biggest Transformation - Learn English Speaking with Video

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