Treemap comparing top-selling car brands in Brazil, showing Stellantis commands almost one-quarter of the market | Sources: AMIA, Anfavea, Latinometrics
These are the Top-Selling Car Brands in Mexico & Brazil

If you're wondering, from looking at this chart, "what the heck is Stellantis, and how does a brand I've never heard of command almost one-quarter of Brazil's car market?" you're not alone. As it turns out, Stellantis owns more than a dozen brands you probably have seen before — Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, Ram, Renault, and Maserati — to name a few.

All those brands you probably grew up driving around are all owned by one conglomerate, created in 2019 by the merger of Chrysler and Peugeot, baptized as the 4th largest carmaker in the world.

While Stellantis has cemented itself as Brazil's top carmaker, the story is very different in Mexico, where it gets about 7% of the car pie. Combined, Japanese companies rule the market with a ~37% share. Nissan, the creator of the locally infamous Tsuru, and GM are the top participants.

The car market has changed forever, and not just because of the electric vehicle disruption we've all heard about. Vehicles' operating systems are becoming increasingly important and complex. The industry has shifted into a role similar to that of Apple or Google, where companies look to improve the software just as much, if not more, than the hardware that makes up their vehicles. This game, which includes continuously deploying updates to vehicles' computers just like our phones do, was pioneered by Tesla; there's no turning back.

Some companies, like BMW, have embraced the new world (maybe too much) by launching a subscription service for heated seats, for example. The new game means a massive retraining of the existing mindset and talent for all carmakers' workforces if they want to remain competitive:

Stellantis recently launched a 'Data and Software Academy' intended to retrain more than 1,000 of the firm's existing employees per year, as well as hiring talent worldwide, with the aim of having 4,500 engineers by 2024. Mercedes-Benz has just invested €200m ($206m) in an ultramodern 'Electric Software Hub'

-The Economist

Latin America will continue to play an essential role in companies' operations. Mexico produced 3.5M vehicles last year, making it the 7th biggest producer in the world. As of this writing, there were 8.3K Latin America job openings on LinkedIn in the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing industry.