Daimler took the Beijing plant with it, among other assets, when it sold Chrysler. Fiat is about to announce a new joint venture in China where Jeep and Alfa Romeo should be strong sellers.
Locally‐built light vehicle sales in China totaled 1.57 million units in August, a healthy 10.3% increase compared to the previous year. While the Chinese economy did undergo a slowdown during Q2 setting off alarms in the auto industry, it has not dampened new vehicle sales much, and Q3 is increasingly looking stronger.
Consultancy LMC says that with year‐on‐year growth rates ranging from 8.8% to 9.7% for light vehicles during the previous three months, China’s market – the world’s largest by far – has been running strongly with consistent improvements recently. In a release today, LMC says that widespread industry predictions of only single digit growth rates for light vehicle sales this year and for the next couple of years are looking pessimistic. It is sticking to a more than 13% increase as a 2013 forecast.
This is good news for market leader General Motors. GM and its joint ventures sold an August record of 245,799 vehicles in China with sales increasing 11.2% from last year’s previous high for the month. Shanghai GM’s domestic sales increased 10.9% on an annual basis to 122,218 units. SAIC-GM-Wuling’s sales in China rose 12.4% to 119,745 units. Both joint ventures had record August sales. FAW-GM’s domestic sales decreased 18.3% to 3,362 units. (China Auto Sales Continue Upward. GM Sets August Record and General Motors to Export Cadillac ATS to China)
The overall Chinese market improvement in light vehicle sales came from commercial units, which totaled 370,000 in the month, up by 6.5% year‐on‐year. This is a marked improvement when compared to the average commercial vehicle growth of 1.4% over the period of May to July.
Helping the healthy outlook, the passenger vehicle market has remained on track since May. With 1.19 million units sold in August, locally‐made passenger car sales increased 11.5% on a year ago, about the average growth rate of 12% registered over the previous three months.
Inner land provinces, such as Hunan and Hubei, have been consistently increasing their contributions to the overall Chinese market growth, with passenger vehicle sales in those areas growing more than 20% in the first half of this year. Nevertheless, prosperous coastal areas with much higher unit sales are still the root cause of continuous market growth, passenger vehicle sales in some provinces, say Jiangsu and Shandong, have posted year‐on‐year growth of more than 10%. LMC thinks passenger vehicle sales will increase in the 10%‐15% range this year. This potential growth is, however, is exposed to the risk of car purchasing limits or bans now being implemented in some Chinese cities.
During the next two months, the market will see a higher growth rate, “mainly due to a lower base on the year‐on‐year comparison as a result of the Sino‐Japan island disputes.” Sales by Japanese automakers were heavily affected by anti‐Japanese sentiment last September and October, with the year‐on‐year growth rates of the passenger vehicle market in those 2 months achieving only 1.6% and 6% respectively.
