Today's "Kicking Car Q&A" is here!
Question from netizen "Ordinary Grass": Why does Italy produce performance cars and sports cars, Britain produces luxury cars, Japan is an economic type, and the United States and Germany in short. Are there any root causes?
A: Although these classifications are not entirely accurate, they can be observed from the perspective of the Chinese market. This is because there is a country-by-country correspondence between the cars sold in the Chinese market. This only shows that in the Chinese market, cars with such characteristics are marketable, and it does not mean that these countries only produce such cars. For example, the Italian Fiat is a particularly economical car, but it is not sold in China.
Since the automobile is a terminal consumer product, the "root" of its production and manufacturing in the supply chain is upstream raw materials, of which the largest proportion is steel. The strength of the steel industry and the proximity to the automobile production area are all important factors. Since the car is not the only customer of steel, it cannot support the steel industry on its own. Then the dependence between them is more biased towards steel to support the car. When the steel industry shifts, so does the car. Countries with developed automobile industries basically have strong steel industries - Japan, South Korea, China, the United States, etc. Or close to the production areas, Germany and Italy are on the Western European continent, where there is also a well-developed and advanced steel industry, with the center in Luxembourg.
The above is from the manufacturing side, but also from the market side. The market is a model of diffusion in concentric circles, that is, the diffusion from the domestic market to the international market with the domestic market as the core. The influence of the domestic market on the attributes of the product is very large. It includes market preference, which is geographical and cultural characteristics, and market size, which is the characteristics of a country's population and consumption power.
Plus a timeline. From the perspective of historical depth, the automobile industry has a lot to do with a country's own development process. Since the automobile industry is the backbone of the manufacturing industry, it has been developed for more than 100 years, and it is linked to the history of the entire modern world. There is inevitability, and there is also a lot of contingency. These are three directions to find the "roots". The meaning of the word "root" is to search for the depth of time and space, and to analyze it while searching.
The above is all the content of this issue of Kick Car Q&A, if you also have questions you want to ask, please actively leave a message in the comment area to ask questions. If you see the content of the Kicking Car Gang on other platforms, you are also welcome to leave a message at any time, we will collect questions and comments on all platforms, and Mr. Xia Dong will select 5 questions to answer every week.