Change in Automobile Industry Structure and Local Industry Promotion by Next-generation Vehicles

Abstract

Many problems are closely associated with the mobility including rapid aging of the population, depopulation, low carbon society, environment-conscious society or energy-saving society, the safest society of road traffic in the world etc. in twenty-first-century. There are high expectations for next-generation vehicles as typified by electric vehicles becoming solutions to the above problems. However, the automobile industry which is a typical serial industrial structure and Japan's largest industry lasted for a century could change to a parallel industrial structure. This also could shake the foundation of a key industry in technology trends or globalization. The overview of the automobile industry and the paradigm shift in society and economy is described through developments of next-generation vehicles in this paper.