Automakers from later-developing East Asian countries have come to play an increasingly vital role in the world’s second-largest manufacturing sector. Yet despite similarities in initial conditions, East Asia’s automotive industries exhibit significant cross-national differences in both strategies and performance. Our starting point in explaining such variation is to highlight two forms of industrialization, extensive and intensive, which require different competencies at the firm, sectoral, and national levels. Extensive growth is characterized by assembly of vehicles and components in global value chains primarily under the aegis of foreign producers. Successful extensive growth generates economic diversification, which in turn provides employment opportunities and generates foreign exchange earnings. But productivity gains from sectoral shifts on their own typically do not lead to increases in local value added based on inputs from national producers and on national technical capabilities. Such increases are the key elements of upgrading, which for us is the essence of intensive growth. Both strategies engage with global value chains but in different ways. Countries pursuing extensive development continue to rely on foreign multinationals for most of the skill-intensive dimensions of the production process, and for marketing and distribution. Companies in countries that have pursued intensive strategies often depend heavily on foreign suppliers of core components, particularly in the early stages of industry development. But unlike countries pursuing extensive approaches, intensive developers make a conscious effort to develop local competencies to displace the foreign dependence. East Asia includes failed intensive approaches (Malaysia) and failed extensive approaches (the Philippines), as well as success stories, notably Korea and China (intensive) and Thailand (extensive). Going beyond a traditional technocratic focus on property rights, macroeconomic policies, and “good governance,” we account for these differences by emphasizing the institutional requirements and political origins of industry performance. In this chapter, we first explore our arguments by contrasting Malaysia and Korea. We then focus on Thailand to illustrate our arguments in explaining a successful case of extensive automotive development. Lastly, we compare Thai and Chinese responses to the challenges of electric vehicle (EV) production to provide further evidence for the importance of appropriate institutions and underlying political conditions.