Mitsubishi smoking exhaust Automotive industry - history
The automotive industry began in the 1890s with hundreds of manufacturers that pioneered the horseless carriage. For many decades, the United States led the world in total automobile production. In 1929 before the Great Depression, the world had 32,028,500 automobiles in use, and the U.S. automobile industry produced over 90% of them. At that time the U.S. had one car per 4.87 persons.3 After World War II, the U.S. produced about 75 percent of world's auto production. In 1980, the U.S. was overtaken by Japan and became world's leader again in 1994. In 2006, Japan narrowly passed the U.S. in production and held this rank until 2009, when China took the top spot with 13.8 million units. With 19.3 million units manufactured in 2012, China almost doubled the U.S. production, with 10.3 million units, while Japan was in third place with 9.9 million units.4 From 1970 (140 models) over 1998 (260 models) to 2012 (684 models), the number of automobile models in the U.S. has grown exponentially.5
Źródło: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry#History
Worth to know - Public costs
The external costs of automobiles, as similarly other economic externalities, are the measurable costs for other parties except the car proprietor, such costs not being taken into account when the proprietor opts to drive their car. According to the Harvard University,11 the main externalities of driving are local and global pollution, oil dependence, traffic congestion and traffic accidents; while according to a meta-study conducted by the Delft University12 these externalities are congestion and scarcity costs, accident costs, air pollution costs, noise costs, climate change costs, costs for nature and landscape, costs for water pollution, costs for soil pollution and costs of energy dependency. The existence of the car allows on-demand travel, given, that the necessary infrastructure is in place. This infrastructure represents a monetary cost, but also cost in terms of common assets that are difficult to represent monetarily, such as land use and air pollution.
Źródło: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_car_use
Automotive industry - economy
Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007, consuming over 980 billion litres (980,000,000 m3) of gasoline and diesel fuel yearly.7 The automobile is a primary mode of transportation for many developed economies. The Detroit branch of Boston Consulting Group predicts that, by 2014, one-third of world demand will be in the four BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Meanwhile, in the developed countries, the automotive industry has slowed down.8 It is also expected that this trend will continue, especially as the younger generations of people (in highly urbanized countries) no longer want to own a car anymore, and prefer other modes of transport.9 Other potentially powerful automotive markets are Iran and Indonesia.10 Emerging auto markets already buy more cars than established markets. According to a J.D. Power study, emerging markets accounted for 51 percent of the global light-vehicle sales in 2010. The study, performed in 2010 expected this trend to accelerate.1112 However, more recent reports (2012) confirmed the opposite; namely that the automotive industry was slowing down even in BRIC countries.8 In the United States, vehicle sales peaked in 2000, at 17.8 million units.13
Źródło: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry#Economy