Chinese passenger automobile sales in January exceed 1.7m units

Chinese passenger automobile sales reached a new high in January, when a total of 1.72 million units were sold, auto.sina.com.cn reported today. The figure is 17.95 percent higher than the amount sold in December, and represents year on year growth of 48.68 percent. German manufacturers performed especially well last month.

Sales of crossovers last month were 9.07 percent and 1.59 percent lower than they were in December and last January, respectively. Sales of all other vehicle types increased. Respective year-on-year growth rates for Chinese sedan, minivan and SUV sales in January were 48.9 percent, 170 percent and 90.54 percent. Sales growth rates for the three segments from December to January were 19.02 percent, 140 percent and 16.21 percent, respectively.

Domestic Chinese brands accounted for 747,300 of the passenger automobiles sold last month, growing a full 53 percent from last January. Chinese brands made up 43.31 percent of all passenger automobiles sold over the course of the month, up 3.76 percent from December. Among foreign brands, German passenger automobiles performed especially strongly. Their combined monthly sales totaled 328,000 units, 56.06 percent higher than the previous month's figure and 69.6 percent higher than last January's. Their combined market share was 19.01 percent, up 4.64 percent from December. Sales of Japanese, American, Korean and French passenger automobiles totaled 224,000 units, 204,300 units, 163,000 units and 54,400 units, respectively. As expected, sales growth of Japanese vehicles was fairly slow last month.

Shanghai General Motors was January's most successful sedan manufacturer, selling a total of 142,000 sedans. It was followed by Shanghai VW (134,300 sedan sales), FAW VW (132,200), Beijing Hyundai (83,700), Dongfeng Nissan (66,200), Geely (55,100), Dongfeng Peugeot (49,200), Chery (46,100), BYD (45,400) and Changan Ford (43,700). The above ten enterprises were responsible for 67.19 percent of all sedan sales last month.