Small SUV surge more than 3-fold, Chinese automakers in an advantageous position

Small SUV has reported sales growth of more than three-fold in the first half of the year on a year-on-year basis, with an increasingly large market share of 26%. The hot-selling models have served as a major engine for Chinese automakers sales increasing.

The accumulative sales of Chinese compact SUV in the first half of the year jumped 326% from a year earlier to 743,000 units, while other SUV models didn’t gain such high sales growth. Compact SUV sold 1,170,000 units, a 22% year-on-year increase. Mid-size SUV reported sales of 176,000 units, increasing 4% on a year-on-year basis. And Full-size SUV only sold 9,000 units, dropping 9% from a year earlier.

Amidthe hot-selling small SUV situation, Chinese domestic automakers took an advantageous position in promoting their sales through launching many new small SUV models and strengthening their existing small SUV models. For example, Beijing Hyundai launched ix25 small SUV in October last year, with sales in the first half of the year of 8,000 units.

SUV sales accounted for a large part of the overall sales volume of Chinese domestic automakers. In particular, Changan Auto reported SUV sales of 624,200 units, accounting for 28.1% of the overall sales of 624,200 units.

However, there exist potential dangers of losing the edge that, SUV consumes much more energy compared with small cars and that most buyers of domestic SUV are first-time buyer while most non-first time buyers choose the joint-venture brands.