Our roots run deep when it comes to the automotive industry, which is why we focus on delivering powerful solutions that ensure efficiency, flexibility, durability and a quick return on investment. It’s rough for outsiders to the industry to find real numbers for the number of flight hours, failures per flight hour and so on. We always have to keep in mind that if two very rare occurrences happen in rapid succession, they might legitimately still be very rare. Setting the industry standard for production enabled Ford to take the lead in market share, but it also led to a complacent mindset that hindered innovation.

While large domestic car and truck manufacturers such as Tata, Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki and Ashok Leyland, along with motorcycle makers Hero, TVS and Bajaj, remain the most important drivers for the industry, foreign investment in India’s auto industry is also giving the sector a push. In 1980 Japan, which had had little automotive manufacturing before the war, became the leading producer, with the European Economic Community (EEC) ranking second. It also provides a common platform for the concerns and interests of the automotive supply industry.

The European industry was moving in the same directions as the American industry, toward a mass market for motor vehicles, but it made slower progress for a variety of reasons: lower living standards with less purchasing power, smaller national markets, and more restrictions in tax and tariff policies. In Traverse City this week, several industry leaders spoke of the need to take action.

With the typical industry product cycle, which is five to six years, what we’re going to launch (in 2024 to 2025) is already in the pipeline,” Hinrichs said, adding that the most a rollback likely would now do is let automakers shift their model mix. The trend of the automotive industry to mergers and large-scale organization, and to a situation in which each producer could affect but not control the market, continued unchecked.

Yet mergers between companies from different countries (such as Germany’s Daimler-Benz and Chrysler in the United States) have not typically brought capacity reduction, because political forces strive to maintain domestic jobs. Hyundai Motor Company and Kibar Holding has a joint venture called Hyundai Assan Otomotiv , Hyundai Motor Group owns 70{a775f47e5e8fab0076d6dd0f2239d5f40a1e14262a4fe67b7afc4fe8e63c40b1} and Kibar Holding owns 30{a775f47e5e8fab0076d6dd0f2239d5f40a1e14262a4fe67b7afc4fe8e63c40b1}. Let’s take the mobile phone industry as an example and see how it has evolved in the past decade.