China's automotive markets across the globe in 2014

Automotive markets around the world are, on the whole, maintaining low-level growth. According to OICA statistics from Gasgoo.com (Chinese), China was the largest automotive market in terms of both annual production and sales volumes.

According to statistics, China was the largest producer of automobiles in 2014. It was followed by the US, Japan, Germany, South Korea, India, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and Canada.

A total of 23.73 million automobiles were manufactured in China in 2014. That figure was over twice as much as the 11.66 million automobiles made in the US and the 9.77 million automobiles made in Japan. China’s year-on-year growth rate of 7.3% also leads the 5.4% of the US and 1.5% of Japan.

Compared with the top three, other nations’ production volumes are quite a bit smaller, with none exceeding six million units. Some nations like Spain and Mexico have achieved remarkable double digit year-on-year growth rates, with the former posting growth of 11.1%, while others like Brazil and India have seen their production numbers fall over the same period of time. As bad as declining production growth of 1.5% for India and 15.3% for Brazil is, it is nothing compared to the 23.5% negative growth that Thailand suffered, pushing that country out of the top ten chart.

Looking at sales numbers, the highest number of automobile sales was made in China. It was followed by the US, Japan, Brazil, Germany, India, the UK, Russia, France and Canada.

A total of 23.49 million automobiles were sold in China in 2014, up 6.9% from the previous year. China was the only country where over 20 million automobiles were sold in 2014. By comparison, the second largest market, the US, only had 16.84 million automobile sales, up 6.0% from the previous year. Number three Japan’s automobile sales for the year totaled 5.56 million units, a slight 3.5% more than the amount sold in 2013.

2014 automobile sales in other markets were less than four million units. Some of these nations experienced high positive sales growth, with the UK achieved positive sales growth of 9.5%, while countries like Brazil and Russia suffered negative sales growth. Russia’s sales totaled 2.54 million automobiles, down 15.1% from the previous year, while those of Brazil totaled 3.49 million units, down 7.1%. India’s sales also decreased 2.0% year-on-year.

Although China, the US and Japan are by far the largest automotive markets in the world, both China and Japan have much more automobile sales than automobiles made. The UK, Russia and France are still among the largest automobile producers.