Automotive industry
The term "automotive industry" refers to a broad category of businesses and organisations that are engaged in the process of designing, developing, producing, marketing, selling, repairing, and modifying motor vehicles. It is one of the sectors that brings in the most money throughout the globe. In addition to this, the average company in this sector devotes the most amount of resources to research and development.
The term "automotive" refers to any vehicle that runs on its own power and originates from the Greek autos, which means "self," and the Latin motivus, which means "of motion." The year 1898 marked the beginning of the usage of this phrase, which was first conceived of and contributed to by Elmer Sperry (1860–1930).
In the 1860s, hundreds of manufacturers contributed to the development of the first horseless carriage, which marked the beginning of the automobile industry. The United States dominated the global market in terms of overall automotive production for many decades. In 1929, just before to the onset of the Great Depression, there were 32,028,500 vehicles operating around the globe, and the automotive industry in the United States was responsible for producing more than 90% of them. In the United States at that time, there was one automobile for every 4.87 people. After 1945, the United States was responsible for about 75% of the world's automotive output. The United States of America lost its position as the world's leading economy to Japan in 1980, but it regained that position in 1994. In 2006, Japan edged out the United States to take the top place in production, and it maintained that position until 2009, when China overtook Japan with 13.8 million units produced. China's production of 19.3 million units in 2012 almost twice that of the United States, which totaled 10.3 million units. Japan's output of 9.9 million units placed them in third position, after China and Japan. The number of different automotive models available in the United States has increased at an exponential rate from 1970 (140 models) to 1998 (260 models) to 2012 (684 models).
In the early days of automobile production, each vehicle was hand-built by a human assembler. Initially, engineers would work on an automobile while it was parked, but eventually, they switched to using a conveyor belt system where the car would move through various stations staffed by more specialised experts. Beginning in the 1960s, robots and other forms of automated machinery began to be integrated into the production process. Today, the vast majority of automobiles are manufactured with the assistance of such technology.