China car sales up but local brands struggle
Print Edition
CHINA’S car market stayed on growth track last month but the performance of Chinese branded passenger cars was lackluster, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said yesterday.
Sales of passenger cars and commercial vehicles increased 6.7 percent from a year earlier in July to 1.62 million units.
The growth was relatively modest compared with the double-digit increase seen in the first half of the year.
But it was still desirable in the low season hit hard by the scorching summer.
Total passenger car sales were up 9.7 percent last month to 1.36 million units.
Among them Chinese brands accounted for 34.6 percent, which was down 0.6 percentage point from a year earlier.
The combined sales of Chinese passenger cars over the past seven months this year totaled 4.1 million units, which was up only 2.4 percent from a year earlier compared to the market’s overall growth of 11 percent.
That means domestic brands had their market share reversed 3.1 percentage points so far this year. The German auto giants led the foreign brands with gains of 2.2 percentage points in market share.
Rao Da, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association, said the languid performance of domestic brands, despite the huge gains they have made over the past four years, is an unfortunate result of a culture in which people tend to prefer foreign brands as a status statement.
Global automakers see China as crucial to their future and are spending heavily to develop models for local tastes. That is squeezing China’s fledgling auto brands, the Associated Press reports.
Sales by German, Japanese, American and Korean brands soared 30.9 percent, 21 percent, 18.4 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively.
The standout vehicle category was sport utility vehicles. CAAM said sales rose 35.3 percent in the first seven months of the year, though it gave no figure for total sales.
Earlier, General Motors Co reported sales of GM brand vehicles by the company and its Chinese partners rose 12.7 percent over the same month in 2013 to 249,734.
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