2011 China Auto Sales in Revew
When the Chinese auto market got its wheels spinning in early 1995 the market was spit down the middle quite evenly, you had a fairly constant 60-40 split of commercial vehicles and passenger car vehicles, in the early days it was companies buying trucks and government departments buying cars, later on as incomes improved regular citizens would buy cars as well. In 2005 passenger car vehicles outsold commercial vehicles for the first time and set the trend for the next six years. In 2011 the auto market received a bloody nose, auto sales growth increased by a mere 2.5%, the slowest it had been since the mid 1990′s and way behind the break neck growth rate seen in the previous five years. So what is exactly happening in China?
Many fingers have been pointed at the lack of low tax rates for sub 1.6L vehicles, in 2009 tax rates were lowered to 5%, then raised to 7.5% in 2010 and raised back to their pre-2009 rates of 10%
In 2011 sub 1.6L cars continued to see steady sales with sub 1.6L contributing over 9.83 million units to the total sales figure of 18.50 million cars sold last year, thus sub 1.6L cars stood for 53.2% of the market and saw an increase of 0.8% over 2010′s figure for sub 1.6L cars – showing that its not all about preferential tax systems.
Chinese branded cars sold 6.11 million cars in 2011, a fall of 2.6% and caught just 42.2% of the market, Japanese brands initially seemed to be ahead in the early years but have been caught up and over taken by Chinese brands. Of course the overall market situation is that foreign brands when clumped together dominate the Chinese market.
In 2010 the government introduced a fuel efficient subsidy of 3000rmb for cars that were able to meet fuel efficiency levels of 6.9L per 100km, for 2012 this no has been increased to 6.3L per 100km which will give Chinese manufacturers another hurdle to cross, however 148 cars currently meet this criteria.
4 car manufactures saw their production and sales jump over the 2 million cars barrier in 2011, in particular SAIC made nearly 4 million cars in 2011. Dongfeng, FAW, and Chang’an saw sales of 3.05 million, 2.6 million and 2 million units respectively, whilst their products accounted for a combined 11 million units and took 62.9% of the market.
Tweet This
Share on Facebook
Digg This
Save to delicious
Stumble it
RSS Feed
Welcome Catherine Qu and thank you for that birds eye view of the 2011 outcome.
Interesting to see Chery overtake Chang’an and Geely to slip off the chart altogether. And from the hot southern market, Guangqi is again no where to be seen.
It’s also startling to hear elsewhere that of SGM Wuling’s 1.2 million, more than three fourths were Sunshine vans.
The numbers don’t add up. SAIC, according to you, made 4mil cars, on the chart it show, Shanghai GM and Shanghai Volkswagen 1185 and 1165 respectivly. By adding those 2 numbers I have 2.35mil. Why not also having a chart for the Chinese brands, so we can understand the domastic brands standing of what you are talking about. Gosh, it has to be so hard to report it and use the right and same names in all parts of this article?
If you add SAIC-GM, SAIC-VW and SAIC-Wuling together you’ll get about 3.6 million. Add to that a few MG and Roewe and you might get closer. She said they sold “almost” 4 million cars.
Your graph doesn’t look right though. You said Chinese brands got 42.2% of the market, but from the graph it looks like it’s under 30%
I tend to believe these figures have been extrapulated from a US or UK based research firm and are estimates rather than concrete data. There is no way you can have sales data published so quickly after year end. As you guys also mention, the figures just don’t add up.
I would like to know about Honda’s sales and market share in China, as well as whether it has production operation in China. Does it have a joint venture partner? Thank you.