Pictograph: a chariot or cart viewed from above — central axle with wheels on either side. Oracle bone forms show a more elaborate vehicle (sometimes with the entire chassis, harness, and reins drawn); modern simplification kept just the axle and the box. Three forms: 繁體 車 / 新字体 車 / 简体 车. The simplified Chinese 车 reduces the wheel-strokes to a more abstract form, but the central axle still pierces the box.

The character has produced an enormous family of vehicle vocabulary — anything that rolls on wheels uses 車 / 车: 自動車 / 自动车 (automobile), 自転車 / 自行车 (bicycle — "self-rolling vehicle"), 電車 / 电车 (electric train), 火車 / 火车 (train — "fire vehicle", from the steam-engine era), 駐車 / 停车 (parking), 馬車 / 马车 (horse-drawn carriage), 戦車 / 战车 (tank — "war vehicle"), 風車 (windmill), 救急車 (ambulance).

Mandarin: chē, level 1st tone (simplified 车). 汽车 (qìchē, automobile — "steam vehicle"), 火车 (huǒchē, train), 自行车 (zìxíngchē, bicycle), 公交车 (gōngjiāochē, bus), 出租车 (chūzūchē, taxi), 开车 (kāichē, to drive — "open the vehicle"). The verb 开车 (kāichē, "to drive") is one of the foundational verb-object pairs in Mandarin.

Japanese: on-reading シャ (sha) for compound nouns — 自動車 (jidōsha, automobile — formal), 電車 (densha, electric train — used daily), 駐車 (chūsha, parking), 自転車 (jitensha, bicycle), 汽車 (kisha, steam train — older), 救急車 (kyūkyūsha, ambulance). Kun-reading くるま (kuruma) is the everyday word — 車 (kuruma) alone now defaults to "car" in modern Japanese, though historically it meant any wheeled vehicle. 車椅子 (kurumaisu, wheelchair).

車 is also a major surname-building component: 車 (Kuruma), 自動車 industry, etc.

Memory aid: a wheel-axle viewed from above — center bar with wheels on each side.