Vehicle makers and factories

Added or changed on 15 October 2026

• Vehicles companies deal with 44 fictional makers: 22 carmakers carried by the car carriers and 22 boatbuilders carried by the boat carriers, from budget to luxury and from small (one factory) to big (three), spread over the world. Carmakers: Hoshino Motors (Nagoya, Yokohama, Charleston), Kaminari (Osaka), Daebak Auto (Busan, Incheon, Chennai), Seonghwa (Incheon, Qingdao), Longwei Motors (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin), Jinxing EV (Shenzhen, Ningbo), Rheinwerk (Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Savannah), Adlerhof (Hamburg, Antwerp), Velloro (Genoa), Corsetti (Rome, Tanger Med), Marchand (Le Havre, Valencia), Albion Motor Company (Southampton), Lakeshore Motors (Detroit, Toledo, Veracruz), Pioneer Trucks (Chicago, Houston), Nordvik Trucks (Gothenburg, Santos), Sagar Motors (Mundra, Chennai, Kolkata), Garuda Trucks (Jakarta, Surabaya), Pampa Motores (Santos, Buenos Aires), Southern Cross Motors (Melbourne, Adelaide), Amur Trucks (Vladivostok), Desert Falcon (Jebel Ali), Savanna Motors (Durban). Boatbuilders: Lazzaro Yachts and Vanderhaven (superyachts: La Spezia and Genoa, Rotterdam), Elbwerft, Solent Marine and Gulf Pearl Yachts (luxury motor and sports yachts: Hamburg, Southampton, Jebel Ali), Mistral Voiliers, Tasman Cats, Formosa Yachts, Muskoka Classics and Cape Craft (premium sailing yachts, catamarans, trawler yachts, wooden runabouts, charter catamarans), Bluewater Boatworks, Gulfstream Marine, Wavecrest, Yamakaze Marine, Fjordline Båt, Baltic Sails and Rio Náutica (mainstream sportfishers, bowriders, trailer boats, jet skis, day cruisers, sailboats, speedboats), Lakeland Boats, Nanhai Boats, Malabar Boatyards, Aegean Caiques and Andaman Marine (budget aluminium fishing boats, dinghies, fishing boats, caiques, longtails).
• Their goods: each maker's vehicles are their own market good, in the Markets page's picker under Car makers and Boat builders. One takes its hold of deck slots (a car 1, a luxury car 1.5, a truck 2.5 or 3, a jet ski or dinghy 1, a runabout 2, a sailing yacht or catamaran 4, a motor yacht 10 to 12, a superyacht 60): a ship's capacity is in slots, and a good bigger than a ship's hold isn't offered to it. Prices: half at the maker's factories, 0.75 over its home region, and elsewhere what its class sells for by the region's wealth (luxury 1.2 in the poorest regions to 2 in the richest, budget 1.75 to 1.3, mainstream 1.6), then evened out over the map like every good. The old regional pricing of plain cars, trucks and boats gave way to the makers' factories.
• Likeness: every company starts at 20 with every maker (wary of a new carrier). Trading its goods raises it: selling them by 0.3 x the square root of the load's worth in millions, buying them by 0.4 of that, tapering as it gets high ((120 - likeness) / 100, at least 0.2): about 46 round trips of a full Car Carrier take it from 20 to 70, 78 to 90; 40 of a Car Hopper's from 20 to about 38. Trading a maker's goods lowers its rivals' (the makers of the same kind, cars, trucks or boats, and class) by 0.15 of the gain. A ship breaking down with its goods aboard costs 2, one lost 5. The activity log says when a perk is won or lost.
• Perks: at 40 the maker's own factories sell to the company 10% cheaper; at 55 first pick (buying at its factories no longer pushes their price up); at 70 the company may build a factory for it, at 90 a second.
• Factories: built at any port where the maker has none (its own or any company's for it) in a region the company has unlocked: $30M for a budget maker, $50M mainstream, $90M premium, $150M luxury, and 1% of that a calendar month to run, paid a day at a time. Each makes 2,000 deck slots of the maker's vehicles a month (2,000 cars, 800 trucks, 33 superyachts) into the company's stockpile there, up to three months' worth. The company sells the stockpile there (Factory stock sales), or its ships load it free and sell it anywhere. The maker takes its cut of what factory goods sell for: 30% at 70 likeness, falling to 10% at 100 (on a ship, paid at the sale as the cargo's cost). A factory keeps running if the likeness falls back below 70; closing one, the maker buys it back for a quarter of its price. Building, upkeep and closing are Factories in the Finances totals.
• The Makers screen (the Makers page over the map, from its button at the map's top left, for Vehicles companies): the makers down the left (All makers, Car makers, Boat builders or My factories; the best liked first, each with its colour, class and kind, home country, likeness and factories), and the maker picked: what it makes, where it builds and its story; its likeness bar with the perks reached; how likeness moves, its rivals (with the company's likeness with each) and the other companies' standing; its goods (slots each, average worth, how many the smallest and biggest carriers that take it hold, the cheapest and most expensive ports); and its factories: the company's own (stockpile, what it would fetch there after the cut, made so far, upkeep, Sell and Close with a second click), other companies', and Build a factory with a port picker (the HQ and hubs first, then every port it may build at by name).
• The port popup lists the makers building there (theirs, or a company's for them), the player's likeness with each and its own factory's stockpile, with a Makers button to the screen. The World map's Factories switch (on to start with for Vehicles companies) marks each factory by its port, a little works in the maker's colour, outlined in the building company's colour for a company's. Price boxes for the car and boat carriers list the five makers that matter most at each port. The ship popup says when cargo is from the company's factory and what the maker takes.
• Hub industries for cars, trucks and boats serve every maker's goods of that kind; delivery achievements count each maker's under Cars, Trucks or Boats.
• AI rivals with Vehicles earn likeness by their trading like a player, and every few thinks build a factory for the maker they're best liked by (at the first of their HQ and hubs they can, with twice its price to spare), and sell a factory's stockpile where it is once it's nearly full.
• Boats aboard a car carrier stay plain Boats and sell at the next port.
• Boat carriers: Boat Barge (tier 1, level 6, 30 slots, $120,000), Deck Coaster (tier 2, level 12, 80 slots, $400,000), Yacht Transporter (tier 3, level 18, 200 slots, $1.5M), Heavy-Lift Carrier (tier 4, level 38, 2,000 slots, $15M, Medium ports and up) and Float-On Semi-Sub (tier 5, level 58, 8,000 slots, $60M, Large ports), about 5% slower than the car carriers, the three smallest through the Seaway. Drawn with a pointed bow, an open deck with yachts in cradles, the house forward and two deck cranes. The Shop, Ships and Finances screens list them as Boat carriers (and the car carriers as Car carriers).