Gasgoo compiled the top 10 luxury car brands by June sales in China hereinafter. According to automakers' official sales report, Audi, Jaguar Land Rover and Lexus suffered year-on-year sales decline in terms of June sales. With respect to the sales for the first half of 2018, apart from Porsche and Infiniti, the other brands all attained growth over the performance of the year-ago period.
China announced on May 24 that the government plans to reduce import duties on a wide range of goods, including a great number of automobile products, which has officially come into effect from July 1. According to the sales in June, some premium car brands, such as Mercedez-Benz, BMW, Cadillac, Volvo, whose locally-produced vehicles make up rather large sales proportion, were rarely influenced by the tariff reduction announcement. However Jaguar Land Rover, Lexus and Porsche, which heavily relied on imported vehicles, were more or less affected in China sales.
Mercedez-Benz
In June, Mercedez-Benz delivered a total of 56,945 vehicles in China with a year-on-year growth of 13.7%, maintaining the championship by monthly sales in China. For the first six months, the German auto giant saw its China sales grow 16.2% over the previous year to 340,164 units. Out of the total volume, the cumulative sales of the C-class and E-class reached 78,727 units and 70,016 units respectively, jumping 22.3% and 29.8% year on year.
Mercedez-Benz will continue to optimize its product portfolio in the world's largest auto market. It is expected that the C-class sedan's facelift will go on sale in the second half of this year. Besides, the locally-produced A-class sedan model will hit the market at the end of 2018 to fill the vacancy in locally-produced compact sedan segment for the company.
BMW
For the first six months, BMW achieved a slight year-on-year growth of 2.2% with 299,801 vehicles delivered in China despite the effect led by market fluctuations and product life cycle. Its product portfolios have been further improved with the all-new BMW X2 and the all-new BMW X3 hitting the market. Although the all-new BMW X3 has gained rather positive feedback from consumers since the presale started, the sales were less than expected which was mainly influenced by the insufficient production capacity. Reportedly, the automaker has been on course enhancing the plant's capacity so as to drive the sales performance of the all-new BMW X3.
Audi
Audi suffered a year-on-year sales drop of 7.2% in June with 48,177 vehicles delivered in China. Audi still much trailed the champion Mercedez-Benz in Jan-to-June sales despite a year-on-year increase of 20.3%. Most main models under the premium brand are closing the end of their life cycle, which partially led to the less-than-ideal sales performance.
As to the planning, the homegrown Audi Q2L will officially go on sale in October. The locally-produced model will enjoy a longer wheelbase than that of the existing model. In addition, the all-new Audi A6L's China-made version will hit China's market next year. According to the patent image exposed before, the locally-produced all-new Audi A6L will be elongated over the outgoing model and provides several power options, including 2.0T engine, 3.0T engine as well as plug-in power system with 2.0T engine.
Cadillac
Cadillac delivered 13,954 vehicles in China last month with a year-on-year growth of 8.5%, which was much slower than the 25.5% growth rate in May, while still outperformed other so-called second-tier premium car brands. By the end of June, Cadillac China sales totaled 112,325 units in this year, surging 39% from a year ago and completing 56% of the 200,000-unit sales goal.
Apart from the ATS-L, the cumulative sales of the other three models, namely, the XTS, the CT6 and XT5, all attained year-on-year sales growth topping 30%. The locally-produced XT4, a more affordable compact SUV model, will go on sale in August, which is expected to be another sales driver.
Volvo
Volvo boasted an impressive year-on-year sales increase of 15.5% in June with 11,688 vehicles handed over, exceeding 10,000 units for 4 months in a row and narrowing the gap with Cadillac. Sales of the Volvo XC40 SUV, which is ready for sale in overseas market, reached 24,000 units worldwide for the first six months. It is expected that the XC40 will help to promote Volvo's sales performance after being locally produced in China.
Jaguar Land Rover
Following Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover continued the year-on-year drop from the previous month with 10,865 vehicles delivered in June. To be specific, the June sales of the Jaguar and Land Rover were 3,752 units and 7,113 units respectively. However, the automaker achieved positive year-on-year growth of 7.0% in terms of the Jan-to-June sales.
The second phase of Jaguar Land Rover's Changshu plant was officially put into operation at the end of June, enlarging the plant's annual capacity to 2,000 units by adding a capacity of 7,000 units. The Changshu plant will start to produce the Jaguar E-PACE, the first locally-produced SUV model under the Jaguar brand, which is expected to propel the overall sales for Jaguar Land Rover.
Lexus
Lexus June sales dropped 12.9% year on year, while soared 46.8% month on month. Besides, its cumulative sales by far this year jumped 14% to 68,726 units. The sales decline in May and June possibly was a temporary phenomenon caused by the imported tariff slash policy. A large number of consumers chose to wait until the tariff reduction policy officially went into effect on July 1. Thus, there is still a reason to expect that Lexus will have a better sales performance in the second half of the year.
Lincoln
Last month, Lincoln's China sales climbed 12% over a year ago to 4,350 units. The total sales for the first two quarters reached 24,314 units, edging up 4% from the year-ago period. However, considering the comparatively small sales volume, “4%” was not an uplifting number in terms of growth rate.
In the second half of 2018, Lincoln will release the new Lincoln MKC and the all-new Lincoln Nautilus in China and aims to expand its sales outlets to 125 from 109 at the end of this year.
Porsche
As to the performance for the first half of the year, China was still the largest single market globally for the luxury car brand Porsche, with a total of 33,363 vehicles delivered there.
However, the German brand suffered a year-on-year sales decline of 7% in China for the first six months. The sales drop partially resulted from the forthcoming WLTP (worldwide harmonized light vehicles test procedure) and the RDE (real driving emissions,) required by European Union, which made the automaker reconfigure the capacity of its plants, therefore the vehicle supply for Chinese market has been somewhat curbed as well. Besides, the import tariff slash policy announced in May, which let some consumers hesitate to buy a car, could also explain the low-performing sales in some degree.
Infiniti
Thanks to the newly-launched QX50, Infiniti China sales skyrocketed 55% year on year to 3,492 units in June. However, the sales in the first half of the year decreased 9.9% over the year-ago period.
Reportedly, consumers who purchase Infiniti cars will no longer enjoy the extra 8-time maintenances for free in addition to the first-time maintenance. The regressive after-sales service may not be conducive to the sales' picking up.
