Introduction: Augmented reality is defined as a direct or indirect vision of a physically real environment, parts of which they are enriched with additional digital information relevant to the object that is being looked at. In the field of engineering design, there is a wide range of industries that use this technology, such as automotive, aircraft manufacturing, electronics, engineering; so that it has gained popularity in assembly, maintenance and inspection tasks. The objective was to characterize the use of augmented reality in the automotive industry.Methods: a total of 20 articles in Spanish and English were reviewed, from Scopus, Science and Dialnet; Using as keywords: augmented reality, automotive industry, manufacturing, being more than 50 % of the last five years.Result: its main advantage is considered its potential as an interactive and intuitive interface. It promises to provide the correct information to the human operator at the right time and place. If it is considered an ideal environment in which the RA is applied safely, in adequate balance between automated processes and human control over them; The level of production and its quality will be positively affected.Conclusions: Augmented reality is applied in areas of the automotive industry such as logistics design, assembly, maintenance, evaluation, diagnosis, repair, inspection, quality control, instruction and marketing; in order to guarantee better work performance, productivity and efficiency, mainly mediated by portable devices. Its degree of acceptance, although growing, is not yet clear.