For the automotive industry, our focus on the U.S. market may be far less than that of our American counterparts in the Study of the Chinese Market.
On the one hand, the scale of our Chinese market has surpassed the United States more than a decade ago to become the world's largest single market, and its status has risen, and it is naturally less important to the role behind.
On the other hand, China is the largest market for many brands in the United States, and their rise and fall is largely due to the preferences and choices of Chinese consumers, and in the context of such interests, American car executives, designers, engineers and even market researchers naturally dare not look down on the Chinese market.
On the contrary, our domestic car companies are still very limited in overseas business, and mainly concentrated in some developing countries, and there is almost no sense of existence in the developed automobile market such as the United States, and there is a lack of short-term direct interest stimulation. Therefore, even car fans or media peers have paid less attention to the US market in recent years.
However, as the only single market outside of China with more than 10 million (new car sales in the European Union in 2021 have fallen to 9.7 million units), the United States, a mature market that has developed for more than 100 years, still has strong reference significance for China, which is still in the development stage. For the independent brands that are growing rapidly in China, crossing the ocean to land in the US market may be in the near future.
Therefore, not long ago after seeing the detailed sales data of the United States in 2021, Xiaobian has made detailed statistics and collations, and then will take you to make an unprecedented in-depth analysis of the US automobile market based on these data, and make a comprehensive comparison between the Chinese and American markets.
As the beginning of this series of articles, this article will take you through the way of comparison to understand the pattern differences between the macro level of the two major markets in China and the United States, and then go deep into various market segments to see what the American people's preferences for various types of cars are.
Note: The data of this series of US markets is the US new car sales data released by the extranet, and the data of the Chinese market use the new car insurance volume data.
Sales comparison of various levels: the United States prefers SUVs and pickup trucks, and the balanced development of Chinese cars and SUVs
Consumers in both China and the United States have a reputation for "using big for beauty" for their preferences for cars, but in contrast, the sparsely populated United States has a much stronger carrying and accommodating capacity for large-size models than China, a populous country. Although the domestic SUV market has also experienced several years of rapid development, by 2021, the proportion of sedan sales is still slightly higher than that of SUVs, and the two are basically equal.
As shown in the table above, compact sedans and compact SUVs are the two largest segments in China with the largest sales share, with a share of more than 25%, followed by mid-size sedans and mid-size SUVs, accounting for about 10%.
Overall, the domestic sedan and SUVs in the passenger car market share of 48.8% and 44.9% respectively, SUV continued to grow rapidly for many years, and did not completely overtake the sedan. As for MPV models, the overall share is only 5.4%, which is still a relatively niche category.
The above market share calculation refers to the passenger car market alone, pickup truck models are not counted, and the sales of domestic pickup truck models in 2021 are not much, totaling 546,000 units, and the share in the entire automobile market is only about 2%.
The pattern of the US market is very different from that of China. Taking into account the mini car to the large car, to the sports car and other levels, the total share of the sedan market accounts for only 22.4%, which is not as good as the compact SUV segment. The total share of the SUV market is as high as 55.6%, and the sales volume of the whole year last year reached 8.15 million units, but compared with the 9.05 million units in the Chinese SUV market, there is still a gap of 900,000 units.
It is worth noting that the share of mid-size SUVs in the Chinese market only accounts for half of compact SUVs, and although compact SUVs are the largest segment in the US market, the size of medium-sized SUVs is also very close, and both will sell more than 3 million units in 2021.
In addition to the two main categories of SUVs and cars, passenger car sales in the United States usually include pickup trucks, and the sales scale of this category is far beyond the Chinese market, with sales reaching 2.53 million units in 2021, accounting for 17.3% of the overall share.
As for the MPV model, it is also a niche car in the US market, with a market share of 2.1% lower than that of the Chinese market.
Comparison of brands in various departments: local brands account for more than 40%, and foreign brands in the United States prefer Japanese and Korean brands
In the past few years, the Japanese car companies represented by Toyota and Honda have overshadowed the German brands represented by Volkswagen in the Chinese market, but if all brands from Europe are classified as European, the share of domestic European brands is still higher than that of the Japanese, and in the American market, the pattern of each series of car companies is completely different.
For the U.S. market, the U.S. brand is a local brand, and it is also the largest sales volume in the U.S. market, with a volume of 6.16 million vehicles in 2021, accounting for 40.9% of the local market.
This ratio is similar to that of local brands in the Chinese market, where domestic Chinese brands sold 8.3 million passenger cars last year, with a market share of 41.2%, exceeding 40% for the first time.
Japanese cars are the second largest series in the US market, last year's sales of nearly 5.8 million vehicles, market share of 38.5%, and the share of American brands has been very close, and the two show a trend of trade-off, according to the current trend, in 2022, the size of Japanese brands in the US market is likely to achieve overtake of The Us brands.
Due to the weak momentum of Volkswagen brands in the United States, the share of the entire European brand in the US market is only slightly higher than that of the Korean system, of which the sales scale of luxury brands such as BBA, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover, Porsche and so on reaches more than 1.2 million vehicles, while the sales contribution of volkswagen brands in the European camp is less than a quarter, as a comparison, the European brands in the Chinese market, Volkswagen + Skoda contributed nearly half of the sales.
The above is the overall pattern of each department of brands in the Chinese and American markets, and then we will look at the performance of specific brands in each department.
U.S. brand comparison
In the Chinese market, SAIC-GM, which covers three brands of Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac, is the absolute main force of the US camp, with an overall sales scale of more than 1.28 million vehicles, accounting for 65% of the entire US brand. However, in addition to the slight growth of Cadillac, Sales of Buick and Chevrolet declined last year. In this context, Tesla, which surged 1.2 times last year, became the second largest brand in the US camp after Buick, and the overall scale was comparable to the total volume of Ford + Lincoln.
In the U.S. market, Ford is the leader of a single brand, with sales reaching 1.8 million units last year, close to the size of the entire U.S. brand in the Chinese market during the same period. Chevrolet is close behind Ford, and the gap with Ford has widened due to a 17.7% decline suffered last year.
Jeep, which sold less than 50,000 units in China last year, remains one of the most popular brands in the United States, with sales of 779,000 units in 2021, followed by large-size SUVs and pickups such as Ram and GMC, which are popular, but few people know about it in the Chinese market.
Tesla's sales scale in the United States is very close to the Chinese market, but it is only sixth in the Us brand, while Buick, which ranks first in China, is only eighth in the US market, with annual sales of 180,000 vehicles, less than a quarter of its Chinese market.
Comparison of Japanese brands
In recent years, Toyota and Honda have grown rapidly in the Chinese market, with sales of more than 1.5 million vehicles last year, and although the third-ranked Japanese product brand has only opened a joint venture, the annual sales scale remains above one million vehicles, and the share of the three major brands in the Chinese market has reached 19.8%, but in comparison, the share of the Japanese top three in the US market is even higher.
As the single brand with the highest sales volume in the US market, Toyota sold 2.028 million units in the United States in 2021, the only brand in the local area to sell more than 2 million vehicles, with a market share of 13.5%. Although Honda still ranks second among Japanese brands, the gap with Toyota is already relatively large, accounting for 8.7% of sales of 1.309 million units, while Nissan ranks third with 919,000 units.
Subaru's focus has completely shifted away from the Chinese market, selling less than 17,000 vehicles last year, and its contempt for the Chinese market is its achievements in the US market. In 2021, Subaru sold 584,000 vehicles in the United States, second only to the Japanese top three and significantly ahead of Mazda.
Lexus in the luxury camp has reached an annual sales scale of 200,000 vehicles in the past few years, but its largest market is still the United States, which sold more than 300,000 vehicles in the local area last year, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW only have a gap of 20,000 or 30,000 vehicles, and far away from Audi.
Comparison of European brands
In the Chinese market, the Volkswagen brand is the absolute representative of the European camp, supporting half of the European camp with its own strength, and its position in the Chinese market is equivalent to Toyota in the US market. However, in the US market, Volkswagen and Toyota are far from being opponents in size.
In 2021, Volkswagen sold a total of 375,000 vehicles in the US market, as a mainstream brand, the sales scale is not much higher than Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and in addition to Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, Skoda and other European mainstream brands, the performance in the US market is close to blank, in addition to Volkswagen, the entire European camp in the US market relies on luxury brands such as BBA, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover, Porsche, etc., resulting in European brands occupying only 10.7% of the US market.
Looking back at the domestic market, in addition to Volkswagen, the three major German luxury brands of the BBA have made great contributions, and the combined sales volume has been comparable to Volkswagen. It can be seen that the German brands in the European camp occupy a large proportion in the two major markets of China and the United States.
Korean brand comparison
The composition of the Korean camp is very simple, with only three brands: Hyundai, Kia and Geniseis. In the Chinese market, the sales scale of Korean cars has declined year by year, hyundai and Kia last year's sales fell by 23.2% and 27.8% respectively, while the emerging luxury brand Jenises was just introduced to the Chinese market last year, and its future market performance remains to be seen.
The setbacks of Korean cars in the Chinese market have many reasons, one of which is the impact of their own brands. However, the lost sales of Korean cars in the Chinese market seem to have been compensated by the US market, Hyundai and Kia's sales in the United States last year increased by 18.6% and 19.7%, respectively, and their local market share is close to 5%, while the sales scale of Jenises is also close to 50,000 units, a year-on-year increase of twice.
brief summary
Today, we have analyzed the main differences between the two major automobile markets in China and the United States from the macro level, whether it is the size of the market segments at various levels or the share of each brand, the two countries have shown their own obvious characteristics. Limited by space, the sales performance of specific models of each level and each brand will be left for future articles to analyze in detail.
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