Guanajuato, the New Hub for the Automotive Industry in Mexico: The Rol of the Industrial Policy

The automotive industry is undergoing major changes worldwide regional, occupational, technological and organizational type, as a result of environmental pressures, the need to reduce costs and to the search for new technologies that provide greater security to the car driver and their companions. According to Covarrubias (2014:4) we are witnessing a lateT trend: “(…) tendency to shift the centers of production and consumption in the industry to emerging and less developed countries, once the manufacturing sectors have entered a terminal crisis in developing countries." This is one reason why it occurs, for example, a reconfiguration of the value chain, the emergence of new competing countries (such as the cases of China and India), changes in the design of the cars (Tharumarajah and Koltun, 2007; Van den Hoed, 2007) and transformation of geographical space from the integration of industrial clusters and corporate globalization (Alvarez Carrillo and Gonzalez, 2014; Alvarez, 2011a and 2011b). In sum, these changes are intended to streamline the production process (reducing assembly costs and coordination), increase economies of scale, increase the speed of response to changes in consumer demand and shorten the life cycle automotive products and processes (Helper, et al., 1999; Freyssenet and Lung, 1996; Fine, 2000; Guo and Guo, 2011 and Türker, 2012).  In this paper the case of Guanajuato State is analyzed as the most dynamic of the new dynamism of the automotive industry sub-space.