These countries produce the most cars

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More than every three cars produced worldwide now roll off the assembly line in China. This is illustrated by current figures from the international association of automobile manufacturers, OICA. In 2022, about 23.8 million cars were produced in China – 61.6 million worldwide. In 2022, with a production of 6.6 million vehicles, Japan is in the second place with a large margin, while India is in the third place with 4.4 million automobile production.

This brings three countries from the Far East to the top of the world’s most important automobile manufacturers. Germany is in fourth place with 3.5 million cars produced in 2022, while another Asian country, South Korea, is in fifth place: 3.4 million vehicles rolled off the production lines here last year.

China: From car midget to superpower

A glance at the statistics shows how significantly the balance of power in the world market has changed over the last 20 years. In 2002, China was still largely insignificant as a car manufacturing location – only 1.1 million cars left the People’s Republic’s factory buildings at that time, making it a distant 14th place in the world market with 41.4 million vehicles produced worldwide. . Just ten years later, China had already outstripped all other automaker nations and was responsible for the production of 15.5 million cars – Japan, which was second at the time, had 8.6 million cars (also interesting: China drives a lot of crazy cars).

India is also one of the biggest winners of recent years: The currently most populous country on the planet produced just around 700,000 cars in 2002, compared to 4.44 million last year, making it third in the production statistics.

America’s Total Collapse

But where there are winners, there are also losers, and these are called America and Europe on the continents that produce cars. There is a real collapse in the world market, especially when it comes to the proud car nation of the USA. As early as 2002, the so-called “Big Three” Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler had already lost the brilliance of bygone times, but still placed the United States in third place in the world with nearly five million vehicles produced after Japan (8.6 million). ) and Germany (5.1 million).

Ten years later and 900,000 fewer cars were produced per year, it ranked fifth – in 2022, the United States, with 1.75 million cars produced, ranked only eighth between Spain (1.78 million) and the Czech Republic (1.22 million). .) listed. There is a ray of hope from new players in the US auto market that are increasingly outpacing established manufacturers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid (More on that here: The battle for the US auto market).

Big losses in Europe

The situation in Germany is not as dramatic as in the United States, where automobile production fell from 5.1 million in 2002 to around 3.5 million in 2022, and the Federal Republic fell from second place to fourth place in the world. As a manufacturing location, France is doing significantly worse: in 2002 about 3.3 million cars left the French factory, enough to rank fourth after Germany, while last year it was just about a million cars – with 1 in Indonesia. 11th place behind 2 million newly produced cars entered the top ten. Countries that previously produced large cars, such as Great Britain or Italy, are no longer in the top ten.

Matthias Janson, of the Statista statistics platform, said: “The production figures in China have increased very rapidly, because the entire automotive industry is subject to strong internationalization and German manufacturers such as Volkswagen are increasingly expanding their production in China.” transition to Chinese dominance in the car market. Many other manufacturers have also moved their production to the Middle Kingdom in recent years and from there export their – mostly electric – models all over the world. “Factories in Europe are at a disadvantage and know-how migrates with production. German manufacturers enter into so-called joint ventures with Chinese companies, often involving a technology transfer,” Janson warns in his analysis.

Source: Blick