Great Leap Forward: China World's Largest Auto Market For Second Month In A Row
After overtaking the United States in January car sales for the first time, China extended its lead as the world’s largest auto market in the second straight month, Gasgoo reports.
In February, China sold a total of 827,600 vehicles, up 24.72 percent year on year according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM.)
Last month, the US Commerce Department reported [via Reuters] vehicle sales in the United States of 685,397 units, down 39 percent from a year earlier, the biggest fall in six months. No wonder China widened its lead over the US in February.
Comparing Chinese and US numbers is an inexact science, as China doesn’t have a “light vehicle” count. Pick-ups and minivans for instance are counted as commercial vehicles. That makes the Chinese numbers even more impressive: 607,300 passenger cars were sold in China in February. The US sold a little more than half of that, 354,675 cars. 330,722 trucks made up the rest of the light vehicle segment.
If China retains a semblance of growth (which it seems it will) and if the US doesn’t suddenly mob the dealerships (which is unlikely, unless to burn them) China will take the top spot in world auto sales in 2009. Even very optimistic souls had prognosticated this not earlier than 2015.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Katie- you are right about US. But from China, Japan and UK only two are accummulating money ( china about 200bn a year, and Japan about 120bn a year), while Uk is bleeding money the same way as US. By the way Uk` external debt stands at 10 trillion, so they are screwed the same way. The problem is that UK manufactures almost zilch, zero, nothing. All they had was a withered queen with plundered riches from colonies with aftertaste of sweat and blood. Another country that has regular trade surpluses is Germany, because, guess what, they have strong manufacturing sector.I think the finale for the US economy will be when China has a secret meeting with Japan to sign a contract on dumping US dollar simultaneously.As US is only consumer driven, China will lose interest if she can`t sell her goods there, thus China will stop also buying US treasuries.And what did I say about the meaning of manufacturing just 2 years ago? Did anybody listen to me?
That Golf IV model is still produced over there? I checked the VW site(don't know if it's the ONE, or one of its JV) and saw they still produce the JettaII and Santana. Also some models that look locally brew. As far as the US... decaying empire... tsk tsk. Buuuuuuut... auto industry?, manufacturing?... nahhh, what for?. LOL
The UK is like the US but worse. China has an economy about 20% the size of the US and one third of it's GDP is exports. Japan's industrial sector is in meltdown as their industrial sector/exports collapse. Nobody is going to escape the wrath of this economic meltdown.