The FAW Volkswagen joint venture managed to sell a total of 72,018 vehicles last month. The sales result represents year-on-year growth of 16.48 percent for the manufacturer. The Jetta and New Bora were the joint venture’s best selling models, with a total of 19,217 units and 18,522 units sold during the month, respectively.

It was followed by the Magotan, Golf and CC, whose respective sales numbered 13,007 units, 10,728 units and 2,454 units, respectively. Sales of the brand new Sagitar hit 8,090 units. FAW-VW’s subsidiary Audi brand achieved monthly sales of 106,026 vehicles.

According to reports, FAW-VW manufactured a total of 112,488 vehicles in April. Its first and second sedan factories respectively produced 63,352 and 33,166 units, surpassing the JV’s monthly targets. The third sedan factory, located in Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu, manufactured 15,970 units.

Via: ChinaDaily.

Vehicle sales in China, the world’s largest auto market, rose in April but are down for the year amid tighter credit and slower economic growth.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Wednesday that April’s total vehicle sales rose 5 percent from a year earlier to 1.62 million vehicles. Sales for January-April, at 6.4 million vehicles, were down 1.3 percent.

Passenger car sales showed a bigger jump, rising by 12.5 percent to 1.28 million vehicles. That increase partly reflected that sales a year earlier were low due to auto production disruptions in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

In month-on-month terms, passenger car sales fell nearly 9 percent, the CAAM reported.

Auto sales growth in China has slowed from 35 percent in 2010 to just 2 percent in the first quarter of this year, as local governments imposed traffic curbs, credit policies were tightened and economic growth cooled.

Passenger car sales matched that pace in January-April, rising 1.9 percent to 5.05 million vehicles. But sales of SUVs jumped nearly 34 percent in April and 22 percent in the first four months of the year.

Officials of the industry group said the figures showed “stable” growth.

Spring is often a busy month for auto sales before the slow summer months.

“Some customers may have preferred to buy cars before May Day holiday, and I expect output and sales will edge lower in the next few months,” said Zhang Xin, an analyst at Guotai Jun’an Securities, based in Beijing.

“Autos are a consumer discretionary purchase. With prices of staple goods going up we should not be too optimistic,” he said.

Still, foreign and luxury brands have fared relatively well. General Motors Co. reported sales of GM and joint venture vehicles in China surged 11.7 percent in April from a year earlier, to a record 227,217 vehicles.

GM’s sales have risen 9.4 percent this year, to 972,369 vehicles.

Ford Motor Co. says its April sales in China jumped 24 percent over a year earlier, to 54,881 vehicles.

At the recent Beijing Auto Show, Ford premiered its three-cylinder EcoSport mini-SUV and other new models as part of an expansion intended to double production capacity in China as it strives to catch up with rivals.

Aiming to tap the fastest growing segments of the market, automakers are rolling out luxury models for newly rich urban Chinese and economy models for the low-income rural dwellers who are just buying their first cars.

Via: BusinessWeek.

Ford China vehicle were up 24 percent in April, evidence that the automaker is gaining a foothold in the world’s largest autos market, the company said on Tuesday. The launch of the new Ford Focus drove demand last month, Ford said. The car is the first of the 15 new vehicles Ford plans to bring to China by 2015.

The Focus has been “well-received,” with 3.7 million Chinese customers looking at the car online, Joe Hinrichs, president of Ford Asia Pacific and Africa, told reporters at the Glass House in Dearborn Tuesday morning.

The automaker is forging ahead with its 2010 plan to add capacity and grow sales in China, Hinrichs said.

The automaker is doubling its passenger-car capacity with investments in its plants in Hangzhou and Chongqing, which builds the Focus. “Our brand in China is very strong,” Hinrichs said.

Ford has lagged competitors with its late entry into the market and comparatively few models on offer, he added. “We just didn’t have enough product,” Hinrichs said. Ford’s China sales were down 14 percent in March.

Via: DetroitNews.

Toyota Sales China

China sales by Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp and its two local joint-venture partners rose 68 percent in April from a year earlier to about 81,700 vehicles, according to a company spokesman.

For the first four months of the year, the Japanese automaker sold a total of about 293,200 vehicles, a 14.3 percent increase from the same period last year, said the spokesman, Takanori Yokoi.

Yokoi said the large year-on-year jump in April sales was due chiefly to the fact that sales during April last year were comparatively low because of the massive earthquake on March 11. The earthquake and tsunami paralyzed production of key components and affected Toyota’s vehicle production around the world, including China.

Still, Toyota’s sales momentum was “fairly strong” so far this year, said Yokoi. Because the company’s sales performance was so bad last year due to the impact from the earthquake Toyota “should be able to post double-digit sales growth at least for the next several months,” the Beijing-based spokesman said.

“If things go as normally as we expect, we should be able to meet our sales goal” of selling one million cars this year, said Yokoi.

Toyota’s China sales last year totaled about 883,400 vehicles, a 4.4 percent increase from 2010, reflecting in part the general slowdown of automobile sales in China last year.

After rapid growth in 2009 and 2010, China’s auto market as a whole slowed considerably last year as sales of smaller-engine cars and commercial vehicles stalled after the government ended some incentives for car buyers.

Various industry forecasts point to overall vehicle sales this year growing about 5-10 percent from 2011.

Toyota would have to grow sales by about 13 percent this year to meet its goal of selling one million vehicles.

Chinese millionaires’ growing appetite for luxury has propelled German sports car maker Porsche to a new quarterly sales record. China has overtaken the US as Porsche’s largest market.

Porsche sales in China soared 79 percent to 7,099 cars in the first three months of 2012, leaving the sports car manufacturer’s deliveries to the US trailing at 6,671 vehicles, the company based in Stuttgart said Thursday.

In its home market Germany, sales were also rising markedly with an increase of 32.6 percent to a total of 3,873 cars, Porsche said.

On a global scale, Porsche sold 30,231 cars in the first three month of 2012, which was 29 percent more than in the last quarter of 2011.

The rise in sales figures also lifted Porsche to new quarterly records regarding revenues – up 32 percent to 3.02 billion euros ($3.97 billion) – as well as earnings before interest and tax (ebit), which jumped 18 percent to 528 million euros compared with the same quarter a year ago.

Porsche traditionally releases net profit figures only at the end of a fiscal year, but said that growth was “hampered” in the first quarter by heavy investments in a new factory in Leipzig as well as in its development site in Weissach, both situated in Germany.

“We have been able to finance these huge investments entirely from our cash flow,” Porsche Chief Financial Officer Lutz Meschke said in a statement, complementing remarks by CEO Matthias Müller, who said that Porsche now boasted the “youngest and most efficient” model range ever.

Big hopes for new 911

Banking on its latest 911 model introduced in December, Porsche expects a further boost in sales figures from China as the low-slung sports car is due to arrive in the showrooms there.

According to car market analysts JD Power & Associates, luxury car sales in China are buoyant, having surged 21 percent in the first quarter year-on, while the overall car market grew only 2 percent.

“People are getting wealthier, and there is more of a tendency to buy luxury in China,” Jacob George, managing director of JD Power Asia Pacific told AP news agency, as he predicts annual luxury car sales to rise from 1 million last year to as much as 3 million by 2025.

Driven by the growing demand from China, Porsche said it hoped to boost global sales to 200,000 vehicles by 2018 from 119,000 in 2011.

Via: DW.de.

Swedish car maker Volvo, owned by Chinese group Geely, said it was on track to meet its long-term goal of boosting sales more than four-fold in China after reporting a fall in 2011 earnings due to costs related to its expansion.

Volvo was bought by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co Ltd from Ford Motor Co in 2010. It plans to boost output from over 400,000 cars to more than 800,000 by 2020.

“Overall, we are on track to achieve our long term objective of 200,000 sales in the Chinese market,” the company said in a statement after reporting a fall in 2011 operating earnings to 1.6 billion Swedish crowns ($237.8 million) from 2.3 billion crowns in 2010.

It sold 47,000 vehicles in China in 2011 out of 449,255, but China was the fastest-growing market, up 54.4 percent.

The U.S. market, which remains its single biggest, grew 24.7 percent to 67,273 units while second-largest market Sweden was up 10.5 percent to 52,894.

It said the sales network in China was expanding and that construction at a plant in Chengdu had begun. Geely is also parent of listed Geely Automotive Holdings Ltd.

Volvo said investigations were “ongoing” for a potential second plant as well as an engine plant in China, where its market share was just 0.3 percent last year.

It said the 2011 profit was hit by research and development costs and industrial capacity to support its expansion plans.

“Additionally, unfavourable exchange rates and higher raw material prices affected bottom line results negatively,” it added. It said costs associated with expansion would affect profitability in the short to mid term.

It saw global economic uncertainty continuing to affect consumer confidence this year, with the European car market expected to decrease and the U.S. market projected to improve.

“The luxury segment of the car market in China is projected to increase,” it added.

Via: Reuters.

The Chinese battery and car maker BYD Co Ltd, partly owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, said its profit for the first quarter of the year fell as much as 90 percent as its two biggest businesses were harmed by China’s slowing economy and Europe’s debt crisis.

BYD, a Shenzhen-based company, said in a financial report filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Wednesday that it had 11.73 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) in revenue in the first quarter, up only 0.2 percent from the same period last year. Its net profit of 27 million yuan for the same period was down 89.86 percent year-on-year.

The company blamed the lackluster profit on a decline in vehicle sales in the first quarter of 2012. That period saw 108,755 vehicles sold, down 8.01 percent year-on-year.

Moreover, its sales of cellphone batteries have slowed as makers of conventional mobile phones lose market share and revenue to smartphone providers. And its solar battery business was harmed by the European debt crisis.

The listed company’s shares dropped by 3.69 percent to 26.39 yuan apiece in Shenzhen on Thursday.

Also in the first quarter, sales in China’s automobile industry decreased by 3.4 percent year-on-year as a result of an increase in fuel prices and the Central government’s decision to end stimulus measures it had previously adopted.

The same period saw domestic vehicle brands’ market share falling by 3.2 percent year-on-year.

In 2011, BYD made fewer than 1,000 of its F3DM dual-mode electric vehicles and E6 electric sedans. The demand for electric vehicles has been stymied by the products’ high cost and the inconveniences entailed in charging them.

Shenzhen now has only about 3,000 new-energy vehicles on its roads, far short of the official plan for 34,000 by the end of this year.

Earlier this month, the central government set an ambitious target of having 500,000 electric and plug-in vehicles on the roads by 2015, and more than 5 million by 2020.

Analysts said the use of electric vehicles is being hampered by their high cost and a lack of charging stations.

Via: ChinaDaily.

Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co plans to double sales in China to about 1.2 million vehicles by 2015 through an expanded local lineup and ramped-up production.

The company’s China chief Seiji Kuraishi announced at a recent news conference that Honda will introduce more than 10 new and revamped models to China from 2013 to 2015 to support sales growth.

Local content

He noted that the company will also develop cars especially for the Chinese market and increase purchases of components from local suppliers to lower cost.

Honda will unveil two concept cars designed for China during the upcoming Beijing Auto Show, he said.

Without elaborating, he added that the carmaker is considering building a local design facility.

Honda now has a joint venture in South China with Guangzhou Automobile Group with annual output of 480,000 units and another with Dongfeng Motor Corp in the central province of Hubei that is able to produce 240,000 vehicles a year.

The company said that a new Dongfeng Honda plant will be operational in July that will have annual output of 100,000 units a year at the outset. The number could rise to 240,000 units depending on market demand.

Its joint venture in Guangzhou will also raise capacity by adding a new production line scheduled to begin operation by 2014, it said.

Sign of change

The latest plan is seen as a sign that Honda will change its strategy in China, considered conservative by industry analysts, that resulted slower growth than the overall market over the past several years.

China’s car market increased rapidly from 2009 to 2011, bringing unexpected benefits to many foreign carmakers. Barely affected by the financial crisis that began in 2008, continued growth was largely driven by tax breaks on cars with 1.6-liter engines and smaller.

Honda admitted that its projections for the Chinese market were off target.

“The company didn’t expect the Chinese government to take strong stimulus measures to support the auto market, which then went into a golden period of development, ” Kuraishi said.

Fit and City

Honda plans to retool, double annual sales

The company had only two small models – the Fit and the City – that qualified for incentives and did not introduce new models that meet the criteria, he said.

The poor performance continued in the first three months of this year as Honda reported a 10.6 percent year-on-year fall in its China sales to 148,000 units amid a weakening market and fierce competition.

The decline came at the same time when its Japanese peer Toyota sold 211,500 vehicles in China, up 1.8 percent from a year earlier, and Nissan’s sales surged 12.2 percent to 334,400 units.

Analysts said Honda’s sluggish sales were mainly caused by the fading popularity of its previous best sellers, the Accord and CR-V.

The CR-V is at the end of its life circle and sales have dropped significantly, said Jenny Gu, a senior analyst at LMC Automotive.

The Accord now has more strong rivals in the mid-sized sedan segment and also faces pressure from entry-level luxury vehicles, she said.

As fuel prices rise and the country is about to implements stricter standards on fuel consumption, Honda said it will greatly improve the efficiency of its products in China and make every vehicle the most efficient in its segment.

The company said it will use its latest powertrain technology on all China-made models by 2015. In addition, it will start making hybrid vehicles in China, but the timetable is still unclear. The carmaker will first import three hybrid vehicles – the CR-Z, Fit and Insight – beginning this year

Hybrid future

“We believe that in the near future China will certainly become the world’s biggest hybrid vehicle market,” Kuraishi said.

The company also plans to make an all-electric car at its joint venture in Guangzhou by the end of 2012.

Acura’s plans

Under the new medium-term plan by Honda, the company’s luxury division Acura plans to also bring new products to change its weak sales performance.

Though it arrived in China in 2006, Acura only sells a few thousand cars in China, and its Japanese counterpart Lexus sold more than 50,000 units and Infiniti imported nearly 20,000.

The company said that it will bring the Acura ILX and RDX to China this year and the flagship model RLX next year to add its current lineup of only four vehicles, all with large engines surpassing 3.5 liters in displacement.

Via: ChinaDaily.

Sales in China by Volkswagen and its joint ventures rose 15.6% in the first quarter from a year earlier, due to strong demand for its Audi and Volkswagen brands. Sales in China, Hong Kong and Macau by Volkswagen Group China and its joint ventures totaled 633,800 cars in the first three months of the year, Volkswagen said in a statement Friday. Volkswagen-brand car sales rose 12.5% to 483.400 vehicles.

Growth was particularly strong for the company’s higher-end brands: Sales of Audi-brand vehicles rose more than 40% to 90,000 vehicles, and Bentley sales rose 84% to 555 cars, the statement said.

The increases come despite weaker sales overall in the Chinese auto market as economic growth has slowed. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Wednesday passenger car sales fell 1.3% in the first quarter to 3.77 million vehicles.

Volkswagen operates two joint ventures in China: Shanghai Volkswagen, together with SAIC Motor Corp. and FAW-Volkswagen, together with FAW Group Corp.

Via: MarketWatch.

Ford’s sales in China fell almost 16% in the first quarter from a year ago, but its partnership in Russia reaped a 30% sales increase for the same period. Both are growing markets where Ford is investing to build more vehicles. China is the biggest global market, but the new car market has slowed after a decade of double-digit annual growth.

March passenger car sales of 1.4 million were only 4.5% higher than a year ago, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. March was better than January and February, but the quarter’s 3.77-million passenger car sales were down 1.3% from a year ago.

Analysts expressed concern that sales fell below output.

The sales report shows prices are starting to decline as well.

Western automakers are faring better than domestic companies — General Motors had a record quarter as sales rose 8.7%.

Ford is still a minor player in China compared with heavyweights like GM and Volkswagen. Ford is expanding its complex in Chongqing, where a new plant is under construction. Last week, the automaker said it will spend another $600 million to boost capacity by 350,000 vehicles annually. When finished in late 2014, total capacity will be 950,000 vehicles.

Ford China sold 121,393 wholesale vehicles in the first quarter, down from 140,566 in 2011, and March sales of 49,439 were down from 55,292 a year ago.

“Ford’s aggressive plans in China are on schedule,” said David Schoch, head of Ford China, referring to plans to launch 15 vehicles by 2015.

Ford’s other Chinese venture, Changan Ford Mazda Automobile, sold 27,374 Ford brand vehicles in March, down 17% from 33,113 in March 2011.

Ford’s commercial vehicle venture, Jiangling Motors, saw sales dip slightly to 22,005.

Later this month at the Beijing auto show Ford will unveil versions of the Explorer, Kuga (Escape in North America) and EcoSport utility vehicles. It also will show the new Focus being assembled in Chongqing.

In Russia, the Ford-Sollers partnership, which builds the Focus and Mondeo, reported sales of 27,232 Ford vehicles in the first quarter, from 20,919 in 2011.

Focus, which was named Russia’s Car of the Year in a recent survey, accounted for 19,596 sold, up from 15,343 in first-quarter 2011. The Transit commercial van, which Ford imports, saw sales almost double in the quarter to 1,067.

Via: DetroitFreePress.