As the total number of automobiles on Chinese roads continues to increase, it has become an inevitable fact that market growth will also drop off. In spite of this, it was unexpected by many that market growth rates would fall as far as they did this year. Earlier this year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers revised its sales growth forecast for 2015 from 7% down to just 3%. The sedan segment has been pointed out in particular for slowing the overall market down.
The sedan market has been performing especially poorly this year. Ever since February, sedan sales in the country have been on the downturn, with negative year-on-year growth rates reported on a consistent basis. A total of 8.2 million sedans have been sold from January to September, 8.8% less than the amount sold from January to September of 2014.
The proportion of automobile sales made in China that were of sedan models has also fallen to under 60%, to just 59.4%. That amount is 9.1 percentage points lower than same figures from a year ago. By comparison, sedan sales made up approximately 85% of all automobile sales in the country in 2010.
Looking at sedan sales by manufacturer, only sales of Japanese-branded sedans increased on a whole. Nine month sales figures of sedans made by domestic own brand manufacturers totaled 1.66 million units, down 12.7% from a year ago. Own brand sales fell especially sharply in May, when they accounted for less than 20% of all sedans sold in the country.
Sales of Japanese branded sedans increase 1% when compared with last year’s performance. This was due to the performance of popular models like Toyota’s Corolla and Levin. The gap between Japanese and own brand manufacturers has decreased as a consequence.
German brands continue to dominate the sedan market. Even though their sales fell, the margin they decreased by was not as bad as other brands. German models still account for three-tenths of the sedan market as a whole.
Looking at individual manufacturers, the top seven sellers of sedans all saw their sedan sales decrease over the first nine months of the year. While leader Shanghai VW and Changan Ford were able to keep that decline low, other manufacturers suffered sales growth in the double digits. On the other end of the spectrum, FAW Toyota, Geely and Changan Automobile managed to increase from last year. Among them Geely’s performance was very strong. Geely sold a total of 317,600 sedans from January to September, up a full 36.7%.
Those trends were repeated when looking at sales of individual models. The VW Lavida, Santana, Jetta and Sagitar all saw their sales decrease. The Ford Focus suffered especially greatly, with its sales falling a whole 37.4% year-on-year, although a lot of those sales were recouped by another Ford model, the Escort.
Another point worth mentioning is that sales of smaller sedans have fallen more than those of larger sedans. In particular, sales of the A0 and A00 sedans suffered negative sales growth rates in the double digits.
