China’s new car sales come roaring back. After a strong first quarter, China’s passenger car sales, including minivans, rocketed up a whopping 44.5 percent in April from a year earlier. Shen me? (Excuse me?)
The boom was helped by government policy measures to bolster demand in both urban and rural areas, Gasgoo reports, citing data of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
Passenger vehicle sales, including minivans, came to 800,541 units in April. That’s another 3.7 percent increase over the already strong March sales of 771,898 vehicles.
Total passenger car sales in China from January through April were 2,972,308 vehicles, up 24.8 percent from a year earlier.
CPCA says the reason for China’s car sales boom are the government’s industry stimulus policies, which cover measures to boost vehicle purchases through tax breaks and subsidies.
Whatever the true reasons may be, China is squarely back in double digit growth territory and should definitely dethrone the US as the world’s largest car market in 2009.
Go china! Now if only they bought only gm cars…
They do buy GM cars. Actually, China is GM’s best performing market.
I realize that….that is why I said if they “bought ONLY gm cars” :)
But what is the market value ? If they’re only buying $2k Nanos while the average American buys a $25k Explorer, then the actual number sold seems rather irrelevant.
The Nanos are (hopfully soon) built in India. Different country. They like big cars in China.
Car output worldwide is measured by units made and sold. If someone wants to measuire it by value, then we need a new set of statistics.
This is only the third article that you have published on this topic, but hey, who’s counting?
I used Nano as a kind of metaphor for a small and inexpensive car, not necessarily the Tata built vehicle. It seems just quoting units sold is a little meaningless; China has 4x the population of the USA so it is unsurprising that more units are sold. It does show that China is an expanding market while the USA is contracting, but if I were a car company executive I’d be looking to where the most profit was to be gained and as a first guess I’d say profit is somehow proportional to total market value.
GM lost their focus. They put all their eggs in the China basket, neglecting the US. Their long range plan was to import most US cars from China. Looks like the plan blew up in their face, as now GM will be owned by the gov’t/UAW, and they may not be able to import most cars into the US. It is hard to believe GM had any long range intention of making/designing cars in the US. Considering the crap they were selling here.
sitting@home :
May 8th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
but if I were a car company executive I’d be looking to where the most profit was to be gained and as a first guess I’d say profit is somehow proportional to total market value.
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Wrong. The key is not “total market value”, since competition is tougher there as well.
The key is “growth”. In China, not only the Nano sized car sector is growing, the Camry sized car sector is also growing.
The US is a large but shrinking pie. China is a median but expanding pie. In a expanding market, you don’t have to put tons of cash on the hood to sell cars.
They’re not buying any $2,000 Nanos. The cheapest cars there are about $7,000, but the average is probably in the mid or high teens. The equivalent car costs more in China than in the US.
rpol35:
It’s a new month, so a new set of sales stats.
Or do you get upset each time a monthly sales report is released?
April. 4th article.
Michael Karesh
“It’s a new month, so a new set of sales stats.
Or do you get upset each time a monthly sales report is released?”
It’s not news, that’s the point. It seems to be some subtle dig that the U.S. auto market is in disgrace because it is no longer number one and has been eclipsed by China. Well no $hit sherlock! I don’t understand why someone would express surprise (or glee?) that the Chinese auto market is larger than the U.S. market. Something would be wrong if it weren’t considering it is home to largest consuming population on earth.