There was a time when the car universe seemed to revolve around Detroit’s “Big Three” of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The U.S. car market was by far the largest in the world, much larger than Japan’s or China’s, and it dwarfed car sales in any European country. The U.S.-centric view of the auto world is no longer accurate and ended about 50 years ago. China is now the world’s largest car market. Domestic car companies sell fewer vehicles than some Japanese and German brands in the U.S. market. Recently, Toyota began to sell more cars per month in America than GM.
Most of the world’s largest car companies are no longer domestic. Dutch automotive company Stellantis owns Chrysler and its Jeep, Dodge and Ram brands. Several car companies based in Europe and Japan are comparable in revenue to GM and Ford.
USwitch’s recently released “Car Brand Earnings” research report points out that about 56 million cars and light trucks were sold worldwide last year. The companies that control much of these sales have multiple brands. Some of their cars carry different brands from country to country. Volkswagen, for instance, owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat, Cupra, Ruf, Škoda and Volkswagen banners.
The landscape of the car brand world is also being altered by the rise in sales of electric vehicles. Tesla was a tiny car company five years ago. In its most recently reported quarter, it had revenue of almost $14 billion.
U.S. car companies are not among the top five manufacturers in the world based on last year’s numbers. Ford had revenues of $125 billion, while GM’s were $121 billion.
Two of the world’s largest car companies are German and three are Japanese. Tesla, amazingly, has moved into 16th place, ahead of China’s Geely.
The world’s largest car company last year was Toyota, with sales of $270 billion. It was followed by Volkswagen at $250 billion. These are the 18 largest car companies in the world:
- Toyota ($270 billion)
- Volkswagen ($250 billion)
- Daimler ($172 billion)
- Honda ($134 billion)
- Mitsubishi ($133 billion)
- Ford ($125 billion)
- General Motors ($121 billion)
- BMW ($111 billion)
- Stellantis ($97 billion)
- Nissan ($89 billion)
- Hyundai ($87 billion)
- Renault ($48 billion)
- Volvo ($36 billion)
- Tata Motors ($34 billion)
- Suzuki ($31 billion)
- Tesla ($31 billion)
- Dongfeng Motor ($15 billion)
- Geely ($13 billion)
Click here to read about the fastest-selling cars in America right now.
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