The word 车辆 is formed by combining the character 车 (chē), which means "vehicle" or "cart", with the character 辆 (liàng), which is a specific measure word used for counting vehicles. This is a common structural pattern in Chinese where a concrete, single-item noun (车) is paired with its own standard measure word (辆) to create a new, more abstract and collective noun. The resulting compound 车辆 thus shifts the meaning from a single "vehicle" to the general concept of "vehicles" as a category or in plurality, referring to motor vehicles as a whole.