As we all know, different places are home to different people, different cultures, different foods, and just about everything you can think of.
That includes cars and trucks.
I bet you didn’t see that one coming…
When it comes to vehicles being different around the world, there are three main reasons why that’s the case.
The first reason is because of different safety and technology regulations.
Most of the world conforms to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) safety standards when building their vehicles (Source). This allows manufacturers to basically make one vehicle and sell it to most countries.
In typical United States fashion, we conform to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), which are very different than international standards (Source).
As you would imagine, this causes some issues.
The number of changes within single manufactured vehicle model directly affects cost, and eventually, prices for the consumer.
In other words, manufacturers are already making two or three different versions of one vehicle to sell throughout the world. Selling yet another version to the United States could add even more expense.
So, if that vehicle is not going to sell well enough to justify the extra expense required to meet regulations, they won’t make it.
Things like emissions standards and safety equipment can add a tremendous amount of cost to a vehicle, especially when things like the entire engine setup and computer systems have to be so different from one market to the next.
The second reason vehicles are different in the U.S. than they are in many other parts of the world is because of the infrastructure.
This is one reason large pickup trucks don’t sell quite as well in places like Britain, Italy, India, and some other countries.
Likewise, very small vehicles, often popular in other countries, don’t often do well here in the United States.
Most U.S. roads are suited much better for larger cars, trucks, and SUVs than in Europe and other markets.
Countries that are much more densely populated prevent of larger vehicles from being prevalent on the streets.
Some places don’t even have real roads, while other places don’t have that much room for cars and trucks at all.
Additionally, taxes and insurance in other countries are vastly different than they are in the U.S. This greatly affects the large vehicle purchasing power of many European countries in particular as governments often tax their citizens based on engine size rather than vehicle type.
Many people just don’t want or can’t afford the extra cost.
The way everything is built to move in a certain place is dictated by who its citizens are and how they live and work. In the end though, infrastructure just bridges the gap between regulations and culture.
Culture is the last reason why many vehicles are different overseas than they are in the United States.
Culture takes into account how life has been lived, how everything is built around its infrastructure through the years, and what everyone wants and needs because of that.
From this, consumer demand is born.
It looks at what people want because of the culture in which they’ve grown up.
It is dictated by current events and trends, like the fuel crisis in the 1970’s, or even like the current demand for trucks and SUVs in the United States.
A good example of cultural consumer demand is the predominance of manual transmission vehicles in Europe versus the United States. By comparison, a far larger percentage of vehicles sold overseas are bought with a manual transmission rather than an automatic transmission.
Manufacturers know that vehicles with a manual transmission will sell in Europe or Asia much better than in the United States. Therefore, they can justify offering a vehicle with that option overseas, while the U.S. market might not even receive a manual transmission option for that particular vehicle.
It shouldn’t surprise anybody that vehicles are different throughout the world. There are a lot of things that are different in other countries – food, language, culture, and of course, the way we move.
It’s a wonderful thing to experience different cultures and everything each one has to offer. And, if you didn’t know that all vehicles aren’t exactly the same throughout the world, hopefully you’ve learned something new today.
But, just how different can one model be here than the same model in Britain, Japan, or even Canada? You will have to come back next week and see!
