Chinese passenger automobile market in April 2015

According to statistics compiled by Gasgoo.com (Chinese), Shanghai Volkswagen once again emerged to rank as April’s best performing automotive enterprise in terms of passenger automobile sales. FAW-VW, Shanghai GM, Beijing Hyundai, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Dongfeng Nissan, Changan Automobile, Changan Ford, Great Wall Motor and Dongfeng Peugeot Citroën.

Shanghai VW managed to take the number one spot in this month’s passenger automobile sales charts thanks to a total sales volume of 140,091 vehicles. The joint venture has benefited greatly from the reorganization of its automobile production assembly lines, something that will continue to be useful as it aims to achieve its goal of selling over 1.9 million vehicles over the course of the year. Shanghai VW has sold 663,800 vehicles over the first four months of the year, over a quarter of its total annual sales target.

FAW-VW and Shanghai GM’s monthly sales volumes totaled 132,200 vehicles and 108,300 vehicles, respectively. Those sales figures mean that the two joint ventures’ gap with leader Shanghai VW are continuing to increase. Looking at cumulative sales results for the first four months of the year, Shanghai VW possesses a lead of over 90,000 automobile sales over its closest competitor.

However, it is worth pointing out that year-on-year sales growth rates for Shanghai VW, FAW-VW and Shanghai GM were all in the negative, decreasing 5.6%, 16.9% and 16.7% from last April’s sales results, respectively.

Beijing Hyundai has returned to its traditional fourth place in the rankings with total monthly sales of 90,300 vehicles, surpassing both SAIC-GM-Wuling and Changan Automobile. However, the gap between the three manufacturers’ monthly sales volumes was less than 2,000 units. Facing increasing pressure, Beijing Hyundai, like many other joint ventures, has reported low sales growth rates.

Also under a lot of pressure, Dongfeng Nissan’s sales actually fell 14.3% from the 91,800 units sold in April to just 77,800 units sold this April. This is the third consecutive month that Dongfeng Nissan has posted a negative sales growth rate.

All of the other entrants on the top ten sales chart have managed to achieve positive year-on-year sales growth, with own brands performing especially strongly. Changan and Great Wall both achieved sales growth over 40%. This strong performance was largely due to the strong performances of new models, like the Changan CS75, whose sales for the month totaled 14,382 units. Changan’s Honor, Eado and CS35 all achieved monthly sales results of over 10,000 units each, while Great Wall benefited greatly from sales of the Haval H2, Haval H1 and especially the Haval H6, whose sales for the month totaled 30,767 units.

SAIC-GM-Wuling also attained a respectable 33.4 percent sales growth rate, with a total of 88,300 vehicles sold. Changan Ford and Dongfeng Peugeot Citroën achieved minor positive sales growth.