With half of the year having already past, most Chinese automobile manufacturers have released their official sales figures for the first five months of the year. Changan Automobile ranked as the domestic own brand manufacturer with the largest number of automobile sales from the five-month period from January to May. It was followed by Great Wall Motor and BAIC Group, which rounded out the top three. These three manufacturers accounted for nearly half of all own brand automobile sales made by the top ten own brand manufacturers and have been a major factor in driving the own brand market as a whole closer towards being able to compete with joint venture manufacturers.
According to officially released company sales figures, Changan Automobile has sold over 620,000 vehicles from January to June of this year. That figure is equivalent year-on-year growth of 13%, a rate that, while slightly lower than previous years, still represents stable growth for the manufacturer. Changan owes its successful performance to the popularity of its SUV and sedan model offerings.
Changan’s two popular SUV models, the Changan CS35 and CS75 (pictured above), have managed to achieve combined average monthly sales volumes of 1,500 units. The two models have managed to achieve respective year-on-year growth rates of 8.59% and 45% for the first half of the year.
Another advantage Changan has over its fellow own brand manufacturers is the diversity of its product offerings. Unlike other manufacturers which have shifted almost all their focus into a specific segment, Changan has taken great effort to diversify product offerings ranging from SUVs to sedans.
On the other hand, Great Wall Motor, which has traditionally been a mid-level contender among Chinese own brand manufacturers, has benefited from a strategy almost exclusively targeted at SUVs. According to recently released sales figures, Great Wall sold a total of 450,300 SUVs from January to June, representing year-on-year growth of 8.4%.
A large portion of those sales came from the Haval H6 (pictured above), whose sales grew approximately 60% in the month of June. The newer Haval H7 has also performed well, with its sales growing 29% in June. In all, Great Wall’s SUV sales grew 13.09% from 334,890 units sold in the first half of last year to 378,718 units sold in the first half of this year. SUV sales now account for 84.1% of Great Wall’s overall sales volume.
With the Haval H6 continuing to lead the market by a comfortable margin and Great Wall having announced plans to increase production capacity and reduce prices for the Haval H7, the manufacturer looks forward to growing sales and profits in the future. Great Wall has also learned from the lackluster performances of the Haval H8 and Haval H9 to make the appropriate changes to its strategies in order to ensure further success in the future.
BAIC Group’s recently released sales statistics show that the group managed to sell a total of 203,001 vehicles over the first half of the year. Among that figure are 98,000 SUV sales, which is nearly nine-fold from the previous year. BAIC’s strategy to focus on developing its SUV sales is already proving to be very successful and has been praised by industry analysts.
In its attempts to make its presence known in the SUV segment, BAIC has released a series of SUV models this year, including the Senova X55 (pictured above), Senova X65, Senova X25, Weiwang S50, Senova X3, Huansu S3, Huansu S2 and BJ80. BAIC has clearly seen how crucial the SUV segment can be for own brand manufacturers, with fellow own brands seeing up to 80% of their total sales volume coming from SUV sales.
