Germany VS Japan: Conflict over Chinese market: China Automobile Manufacturers Association
Volkswagen (VW):
On March 16th, it announced its full-year financial results for 2020.
The annual performance of VW, Daimler, and BMW, the three major German manufacturers, has been completed.
Financial statements of the three companies:
The reality is that the Chinese market is becoming more and more important for German cars.
China’s performance recovery:
In China, automobile sales will recover sharply from the latter half of 2020.
VW:
3.8 million units will be sold in China in 2020.
This is 41% of VW’s global sales.
VW’s sales in Europe, North America and South America have fallen by nearly 20% since 2019.
However, China was down only 9.1%.
Daimler:
Mercedes-Benz’s sales in China in 2020 accounted for 36% of global sales.
BMW:
Among the three companies, the dependence on China is relatively low.
In 2020, his BMW also exceeded the 30% mark for the first time, with 33.5% of global sales coming to China.
Pursuit of Japanese manufacturers:
China has historically been an important market for Germany.
VW entered China in 1984, the earliest foreign-affiliated manufacturer.
Since then, it has maintained the undisputed number one position in the Chinese passenger car market.
However, in recent years, Japanese manufacturers have steadily increased their market share.
China Automobile Manufacturers Association:
Data from the China Automobile Manufacturers Association.
The market share of German passenger cars was 19.6% in 2017, 2.6 points behind Japanese passenger cars.
However, the share from January to February 2021 is
Germany 22.1%,
Japan is 21.9%,
The difference has almost disappeared.
Rapid increase in Japanese car share:
The reason why Japanese cars are increasing their market share is that they have a wide selection of popular SUVs.
In addition, Japanese manufacturers are good at low-cost production of hybrid vehicles (HVs).
Strong sales of HVs in 2020 also helped.
Toyo Keizai Online