Top automakers projected sales growth of up to 10 percent this year in China, but this lone bright spot among major car markets is also producing ambitious potential rivals to the industry's main players. At the Shanghai Auto Show, the Chinese industry's premier annual event, domestic producers that have long relied on foreign partners' technology unveiled upmarket models under their own brands that they hope will propel them onto the world stage.
"Even as other markets shrink due to the global crisis, China has taken appropriate and timely policy steps to secure stable economic and car market growth," Toyota Motor Corp President Katsuaki Watanabe told a news conference at the auto show on Monday.
"We have even more hopes and expectations for the future of the Chinese market than ever before." China overtook the United States as the world's largest auto market this year and year-on-year sales growth in March rebounded to more than 10 percent as government stimulus measures helped fuel a recovery in demand.
General Motors Corp's China CEO Kevin Wale said at the show that his company, which is racing to complete a restructuring that could include a bankruptcy filing, expects its sales in the country to grow 5 to 10 percent this year. Japan's Honda Motor Co also projected China sales would rise, by 10 percent to 520,000 units. GM posted a nearly 25 percent year-on-year rise in vehicle sales in China in March to 137,004 vehicles, a monthly record.
"To remain a global industry leader, GM must remain an industry leader in China and Asia Pacific," added Nick Reilly, the company's Asia-Pacific chief. Most other automakers have also seen strong sales growth in China this year, with Volkswagen's March sales up 9 percent to a monthly record of 112,466, while BMW said its first-quarter China sales rose 13.8 percent to 16,580 units.
Nissan Motor Co Senior Vice President Andy Palmer said sales in China, including light commercial vehicles, jumped almost 30 percent in the first quarter, making Nissan the No 1 Japanese carmaker in China during that period. Rival Toyota, meanwhile, saw its sales fall 15 percent while Honda's grew just 2.5 percent. But global heavyweights will be facing stiffer competition from Chinese firms in future.
GM's joint venture partner in China, SAIC Motor, said sales of its own-brand passenger cars surged four-fold in the first quarter, though to a relatively modest 18,000 units. China's BYD Co Ltd, a battery maker with lofty ambitions in electric cars, said it expects its auto sales to double this year to about 400,000 units. And Chongqing Changan Auto, Ford Motor Co's China partner, suggested the downturn that has battered so many foreign automakers could give Chinese companies a chance to leap onto the world stage through acquisitions.
"The longer the crisis lasts, the bigger the chance of failure or a scale-down of some American and European automakers," Changan Auto Chairman Xu Liuping told reporters on the sidelines of a news conference on Sunday. "And that has provided a chance for entry by Chinese manufacturers." Changan is among several Chinese automakers that have expressed interest in Ford's Volvo car brand, which the Detroit automaker is seeking to sell to raise cash.
But foreign auto executives at the Shanghai gala mostly remained focused on opportunities in the newly crowned world leader among auto markets. "We are at the moment on the lucky side in this part of the world because the financial crisis hasn't changed our approach or our forecast here in China," Ulrich Walker, head of Daimler AG's Northeast Asia operations, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.
His boss, CEO Dieter Zetsche, joked that things in China were so good he wished he could stay "for the rest of the year." Zetsche said the premium car market was looking especially robust, and he expected Mercedes-Benz to overtake archrival BMW AG in China in about two to three years.
BMW's global sales chief, Ian Robertson, said it was too early to predict what Chinese sales would look like this year, but agreed with Zetsche that the premium segment would fare better than the mass-volume market. Robertson noted that high-end cars accounted for just 5 percent of China's total car market, compared with a global average of 9.3 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed.