Data-Driven Products and Processes in Transitioning Automotive Production Networks within China and Europe
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With the shift from combustion engines to electrification and digitization, the global automotive industry has been undergoing a greatly disruptive phase in recent years. Vehicles are increasingly evolving from hardware-centered products into software-defined, data-generating smart terminals, reshaping traditional sources of value creation and competitive advantage. Against this backdrop, this dissertation examines how digital technologies, data-driven business models, and regulatory complexity are reconfiguring global production networks (GPNs) in the automotive sector, with a particular focus on Sino-European dynamics. Building on the Global Value Chains (GVC) and Global Production Networks (GPN) frameworks, the study explores how emerging digital automotive functions, autonomous driving technologies, and collaborative data-sharing spaces transform inter-firm relationships, governance structures, and power dynamics. Three empirical case studies illustrate these developments: 1) the integration of advanced navigation systems into Chinese vehicles entering the European market, highlighting the interplay between globally transferable software and territorially embedded regulatory constraints, 2) the rise of Chinese robotaxi services as a form of disruptive innovation reshaping industry hierarchies and geopolitical dependencies, and 3) the emergence of industrial data spaces such as Catena-X as organizational responses to regulatory complexity and data sovereignty concerns. Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews supplemented by grey literature and field observations, the dissertation demonstrates how digitization and data as strategic assets are restructuring value creation, shifting governance patterns, and enabling new lead firms to challenge established incumbents. The study contributes to ongoing debates on the digitization of GVCs and GPNs and offers a refined analytical framework for understanding the reconfiguration of automotive production networks in a Sino-European context.
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Issued: 2026-02-11
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FB19:Geographie
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en
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DoctoralThesis
Keywords
Global Production NetworksGlobal Value ChainsAutomotive industryDigital economySoftware-defined vehiclesData-driven productsChina-Europe
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3.45-02 - Humangeographie
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Project Information:492601593
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Stefanov, Alexandra Cezarina: Data-Driven Products and Processes in Transitioning Automotive Production Networks within China and Europe. : 2026-02-11.
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Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY 4.0)