New trends in the automotive industry

Abstract

This thesis describes new trends in the automotive industry. It investigates how these trends altered the automotive market and industry and what are the reasons of it. The thesis then ascertains an impact on the new cars business, in which stress is put on new technologies and automotive market development in the world, with emphasis on the Czech Republic within the crisis period. The thesis follows 2 trend groups, namely the trends that already appear for a longer time as well as the quite new trends influencing substantially the automotive market. The first named group deals with the technological innovations as well as for example with the problem concerning car factories model families expanding with the aim to maximize volume of sale; problems of the car new models safety and performance is another topic of this thesis. As another important topic of this group diesel drive phenomenon problems in the European Union can be taken into account as well as additional burden of taxation for cars with higher fuel consumption connected with it. A significant part of the second group comprises financial crisis development and impact on the new cars sale in a given period. In addition to it, it describes quite new trends, e.g. engine capacity decreasing with the use of supercharged engines (downsizing), coming wave of SUV cars and a phenomenon of four-wheel drive cars. In the final part of this diploma paper problems are analyzed and finally hybrid cars development as well