The Automotive Industry in the Emerging Economies

Abstract

Abstract This chapter situates the development of automobile production and demand in emerging economies within the long-term dynamics of the global automotive industry. It stresses the dominance of carmakers from the Triad of the US, Western Europe, and Japan for much of the 20th century and how they relocated part of their production to emerging markets to fulfil growing local demand, thereby fulfilling the host country’s aims for import substitution though without sharing their know-how. China constitutes a recent exception in this respect. A shift in industrial policy from a focus on existing state-owned enterprises to new domestic companies, combined with efforts to foment technology transfer from the multinationals, allowed the former to not only catch-up but eventually leapfrog the latter, namely by targeting customers from lower social strata and producing battery-powered vehicles.