The largest auto market in the World is Asia with 47,878,892 vehicles produced in 2015. This total increased by 7.8% in 2016 to 51,521,214 vehicles produced. Within Asia, the largest producer is china with 28,118,794 vehicles in 2016, followed by Japan with 9,204,590 vehicles. The next largest market in the World is Europe. 21,699,598 vehicles were produced in Europe in 2016, a 0.5% decrease from 2015. The Largest producer in Europe is Germany with 6,062,562 vehicles produced in 2016. Following Europe, the Americas produced 20,854,138 vehicles in 2016, a 2.5% increase from 2015. The largest producer in the Americas is the United States with 12,198,137 vehicles produced in 2017 ,dropping .8% from 2016. Africa is an emerging market for vehicle production with 901,682 vehicles produced in 2016, a 7.9% increase from 2015. Both Asia and Africa saw close to 8% growth this past year, whereas Europe experienced 2.5% growth, and the US saw a .5% decline in production.
The largest market in the auto-industry is cars. Here we see the same trend as with all vehicles produced. Asia is by far the greatest producer of Cars with China and Japan being the two largest producers worldwide with 24,420,744 and 7,873,886 cars produced respectively in 2016. 18,951,868 cars were produced in Europe in 2016, a 2.5% increase from 2015. The largest producer within Europe is Germany with 5,746,808 cars produced in 2016. The United States is the fourth largest producer of cars in the World with 3,934,357 produced in 2016. The US is followed closely by South Korea and India in yearly car production.
The market for autos is heavily dominated by cars, but production of light commercial vehicles and heavy trucks also occupy a piece of the market. The US is the leader in production of commercial vehicles with 8,263,780 produced in 2016, a 4.9% increase from 2015. China comes in second with 3,698,050 commercial vehicles produced. Mexico, Canada, and Japan, are the next greatest producers of Commercial vehicles respectively. The US is the leader in heavy truck production with 268,096 produced in 2016, which is a 16% decrease from 2015. All of Europe produced 229,351 heavy trucks in 2016, and Asia produced 40,638 heavy trucks in 2016.
Note that “light commercial vehicles” generally includes minivans and crossovers and SUVs. “Cars” means sedans. As economists we are surely more interested in distinguishing by end-user: consumer purchases versus business purchases. We can better make that distinction if we company model-level data, but even then we can’t distinguish a company-owned pickup truck from a consumer-owned one.
After reading your posts I was just curious about what the difference between vehicles and cars was according to your sources and how that distinction really breaks down.