Global New-car Sales to Challenge 80 M. Units in 2013: ARTC

Driven by high growth in emerging markets, especially China, global sales of new cars have been rapidly expanding in recent years, with successful  rise of German automaker Volkswagen (VW) and Korean player Hyundai helping to fuel already intense competition in the market.

Impacted by global recession and sovereignty debts in Europe, global new-car sales dropped in 2008 and 2009, the only two years with declining sales in the past few decades. Many governments, however, tried to provide more incentives to stimulate consumer demand to turn around economic development, and help  automakers weather financial challenges. The global automotive industry was on the way to recovery in 2011, but the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, as well as the serious floods in Thailand (where major Japanese automakers have set up parts supply chains), again heavily impacted the production and sales of Japanese automakers.

The 2012 was a better year for the industry, when the production capacity of Japanese automakers normalized, while the increased demand in China and the United States, the world's largest automobile markets, successfully drove up  global new-car sales. Demand continued into 2013, but down-turning sales in Europe deterred the obvious global volume growth, leading to a mild 2.5% year-on-year (YoY) growth in the first three quarters of the year, to 60.81 million units, according to statistics compiled by domestic Automotive Research & Testing Center (ARTC).

Hot in China, Cold in Europe
In the first three quarters, global rankings of the top-three automobile markets stayed  unchanged in sequence as China, the United States and Japan, which together accounted for more than half of the global new-car during the period.

Strong demand from China, with a huge population of about 1.35 billion people, led to sales of 15.88 million units from January to September, a higher-than-expected YoY increase of 13%. Thanks to the more attractive products offered by the Big Three automakers in the nation and stronger consumer purchase willingness, some 12.04 million new cars were sold in the United States in the first three quarters, up 8% from a year earlier. The sharp depreciation of the Japanese yen did not sizably stimulate the nation's economy in the first three quarters, and only about 4.07 million new cars were licensed during the period, a 5% YoY decrease.

Regarding passenger-car sales in Europe, the U.K. was the only significant market to record an increase (+10.8%). Downturn prevailed across other major markets, ranging from -1.6% in Spain to -6.0% in Germany, -8.3% in Italy and -8.5% in France, leading to an overall 3.9% contraction in the EU 27, compared to the first nine months of 2012.

VW & Toyota
Among major global carmakers, VW reported a 4.8% sales volume gain with 6.82 million units sold in the first three quarters, temporarily being the No. 1 automaker, due to its long-term development in the Chinese market, which has become the brand's largest single national market by accounting for 35% of its global sales.

Toyota's global ranking slipped to No. 2 due to market decline in Japan, selling 6.79 million units in the period; while General Motors (GM) of the United States enjoyed a 2.2% YoY growth thanks mainly to increased volume in China and its home market, delivering 5.91 million new cars. Renault-Nissan ranked the No. 4 with 5.06 million units, due to slowing European market; and Hyundai, successfully consolidated its world's fifth position by vending 5.05 million units worldwide (compared to 2.88 million units in 2005). The No. 6 Ford sold 4.38 million units, up 10.5% YoY, thanks to the company's stable and continued business advancement in recent years.

Conclusion
ARTC, a transportation vehicle R&D hub in Taiwan, analyzes that the economic environment is the pivotal factor of new-car sales. Except Russia and India, whose automobile markets fell far short of most experts' expectations, other markets' performances basically met the original forecasts made in early 2013.

The Chinese market saw higher-than-expected new-car sales growth in the first three quarters, implying high potential in future market growth, the center says. While hovering languidly without clear  sign of overall recovery, the European car market saw the year's record monthly high in September, yet ARTC believes that when the region returns to normal, the global new-car market will start recovering.

Another trend in the global automobile market is the increasingly fierce competition between automakers, all of whom have a degree of brand competitiveness in different regional markets, with the priority being expanding share in the global market.