The word Automotive comes from the Greek autos (self), and Latin motivus (of motion), referring to any form of self-powered vehicle
The automotive industry is a term that covers a wide range of companies and organizations involved in the design, development, manufacture, marketing, and selling of motor vehicles, towed vehicles, motorcycles, and mopeds. It is one of the world's most important economic sectors by revenue
The automotive industry began with Horseless carriages, it all started with Henry ford bringing the Model t to the roads, in 1929, the US produced 90 percent of the automobiles in the world, as time passed on, this percentage started to decrease.
Cause globalization along with innovation started happening.
The USA went on to be the world’s largest automobile manufacturer for a long time but was overtaken for the first time in 1980 by japan, it regained its position as the world’s largest automaker in 1994.
Over time, things like traffic rules and road organizations were built, and then safety also became a thing in the car, when Volvo invented the 3 point seat belt, and it was one of the most defining movements in the automotive world, Volvo could have patented this technology and made billions if not trillions of dollars but they didn’t patent it just so that every manufacturer around the world can use this technology.
In 2007, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road, consuming over 980 billion liters (980,000,000 m3) of gasoline and diesel fuel yearly
In developed countries, the development in this field has slowed down but in developing countries like India, it’s only expected to rise for a long time.
As of now, China is one of the largest automobile manufacturers with about 33 percent of Cars produced in china alone, India stands at a decent 5.1 % in terms of the global production of cars, if we position India in the list of largest automobile manufacturers then India stands at 6th Position with south Korea being just 0.3 percent larger than us in terms of production.
In a short, these are the steps on which the automotive industry works: -
1. Raw Materials
2. Design
3. The Manufacturing process (Components, Chassis Body, Paint, Interior assembly, Mate)
And lots of other things
Then there is value chain in the Automotive Industry, which at a time even I couldn’t understand but later I built the understanding to understand all the concepts in it, so the value chain consists of the following: -
1. Inbound logistics: Logistics comprise of all the raw material that the Manufacturer needs for building the car in the first place, all the metal, electric wires, harnesses, plastic, leather, wood, etc…
2. Design and Manufacturer: Then there is the designing and the manufacturing part of the product, the product can be anything a car, a bike a truck or any other heavy commercial vehicle, but just for example we are going to consider a car as the product.
So, in the design part, the manufacturers give the designers all the rules and regulations that the car needs to follow to be classified as a road car.
The designers will be a given a timeframe or if it is a limited-edition product, the designers can ask for however much time they need.
Then after all the designing, engineering tests come the Manufacturing part, where the product is derived from the raw materials and it goes through all the processes and tests, then it’s assembled on the production line and at the end, you get your car.
After these processes we have a few other things as well, that might not seem important but are very significant in the production of the car. Those steps are: -
1. Quality and warranty
2. Connected vehicle services
3. Marketing and sales
4. Service
So that will be all for this time, the part 2 of breaking down the automotive industry will be coming very soon, so stay tuned for that.
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