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US Car Market Clings To Pole Position
General Motors' announcement this week, that China had surpassed the US in car sales, sounded like a moment of great historical and perhaps even political significance.
But while China is on course to become the world's largest car market, that moment has not yet arrived.
“This is the first time in history that China has surpassed the US,” Michael DiGiovanni, GM's head of global sales and industry analysis, said when US manufacturers announced a steep drop in January US car sales.
GM estimated that the overall annualised US selling rate for cars was 9.8m in January, down from 10.3m in December, compared with China's estimated annualised selling rate of 10.7m last month.
However, the two sets of numbers are not strictly comparable.
“It's not apples to apples,” one industry source said yesterday. GM's estimate for Chinese sales includes all vehicles, including passenger cars, commercial vehicles, trucks and buses. Its US figure excludes everything except passenger cars, pick-up trucks and sport utility vehicles.
Figures from JD Power, the auto consultancy, demonstrate why the comparison is so misleading. JD Power says China produced 9.3m vehicles in 2008 – but 2.8m of those were light commercial vehicles and nearly 900,000 were medium and heavy vehicles, categories not included in GM's US totals.
Auto analysts in China believe that January Chinese car sales – preliminary figures for which should be released early next week – may have recovered from very weak levels at the end of last year.
They are expected to have been boosted by seasonal factors, including the Chinese New Year holiday and a cut in tax rates for small vehicles.
JD Power says anecdotal evidence suggests passenger car sales in January were strong – but not strong enough to surpass US sales. JD Power is forecasting Chinese passenger car sales at 5.7m for this year, with all light vehicles – including commercial vehicles not included in the US figures – forecast at 8.5m in 2009.
