Prior to the 1980s, most manufacturing facilities were owned by the Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) and AMC Their U.S. market share has dropped steadily as numerous foreign-owned car companies have built factories in the U.S. Many universities teach and generate automotive-specific expertise, for example Automotive Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences Landshut, Automotive Technology and Management at Coburg University and Vehicle Technology and Mechatronics at Munich University of Applied Sciences.
These policies, however, resulted not in the creation of Canadian assemblers, but the domination of US makers as the smaller Canadian operations were forced out of business by the huge financial demands and technological innovations required by the fast-developing industry.
As a result, in the early 1960s, the federal government embarked on a number of initiatives to boost exports from Canada to the United States, and also to prompt the US car companies — and the American government — to rethink the automotive trade and production relationship between the two countries.
As a result, by the late-1980s, two of Japan’s largest manufacturers, Toyota and Honda, had established assembly operations in Ontario These investments, and the relative prosperity of the 1990s, led Canada to its most successful period in the industry, as by the early 2000s Ontario had become the largest auto-producing jurisdiction in North America, and Canada’s industry reached a height of sixth largest in the world.
Among the important activities of modern automotive industry development can be listed not only the construction of the latest automotive plants with the latest technologies, but also the first initiatives in the development of e-Mobility in Slovakia.