Chinese Car Sales Set to Explode in July

by Bertel Schmitt

Published: July 30th, 2009

chinese car sales set to explode in july

Last June, China’s overall vehicle sales had soared 36.5 percent from a year earlier to 1.14m units. The “passenger vehicle” segment rose 48.4 percent in June from a year earlier to a record 872,900 units. In July, these numbers will most likely be surpassed. While the rest of the world is in tears, China is on a tear. The indicator: GM.

Contrary to back home, GM China is very much alive. Their Daewoo Lacetti-based Buick Excelle if flying off dealers’ lots. China is probably the sole reason for Buick still being around. June sales by model here.

Be prepared to be perplexed: GM China expects an increase of more than 70 percent compared to July 2008, Gasgoo reports. As one of the largest Chinese automakers, GM is a solid indicator for the Chinese market. GM’s China sales in June had climbed 61.6 percent. Volkswagen, number one passenger car maker in China, sold more cars in China in the first half of 2009 than in its home market Germany. All of this taken into account, the Chinese passenger vehicle segment should shatter the 50 percent growth barrier in July.

Bertel Schmitt

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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4 of 9 comments

PeteMoran on Jul 30, 2009
If GM China is doing so well, why are we bailing out U.S. GM? In the absence of an answer from Bertel, and seeing as it seems impossible to find the selling price for the Excelle, I'm going to guess that the retained profit in absolute dollar terms is pretty low. In other words, sell 100,000 units at $1 in China, or 10,000 units for $10 and you end up with the same headline figure for sales. iPods cost about $20 in Taipei and I'm sure they sell buckloads, but that isn't going to return much profit to Apple.

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Allycc on Jul 30, 2009

The Buick Excelle sells for $15,192-plus in China. GM's profit in this market can be as high as you can imagine.

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PeteMoran on Jul 30, 2009
The Buick Excelle sells for $15,192-plus in China. That's pretty interesting. A friend in Wuhan bought one to share for ~$9k as a group of four families. GM’s profit in this market can be as high as you can imagine. Makes it hard to understand how in 2008 they had revenues of $5.3b but profits of $280m then..... That's also a far way off NA revenues of over ~$100b. This suggests to me that it's easy to sell tens of thousands of low priced cars which result in a low absolute profit. In and of itself, GM China maybe profitable, but near-zero ability to help the NA haemorrhaging.

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U mad scientist on Jul 31, 2009
That’s pretty interesting. A friend in Wuhan bought one to share for ~$9k as a group of four families. Cars in china, like pretty much everywhere in the world, are more expensive than in the US. The only really cheap cars there are the unsafe local clones or really old foreign designs made from reused machinery. Prices on anything imported are obscene, tho somewhat less obscene nowadays than they used to be.

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