China Full Year 2015: Discover the Top 137 brands (BSCB Exclusive)

Foton sold almost half a million trucks in China in 2015.

* See the Top 137 All-brands by clicking on the title *

Imports, medium and heavy commercial vehicles (Bus, Heavy Trucks, Semi Trailers) have now been added to form the very first All-brands Ranking for China ever published online. This data is exclusive to BSCB, you won’t find it anywhere else. The sales data is detailed by China-Made (Passenger Cars (PC), Commercial Vehicles (CV) and Imports. Given official imports data for December isn’t available yet, when not communicated by manufacturers it has been calculated based on year-to-date figures. This table finally shows the gigantic size of the Chinese vehicle market with a total of 137 brands listed, more than in any other country in the world. Among them, 84 brands or 61% of the total are Chinese, some of them so obscure chances are you have never heard of them before. The Top 3 overall brands are Volkswagen (2.76m), Wuling (1.54m) and ChangAn (1.29m) and there are nine millionaire brands in 2015 in China.

Best-selling Commercial Vehicle Brands in China FY2015:

While Passenger Cars and LCV data was studied in the FY2015 reports, Medium and Heavy Commercials and Imports are very rare to come across and this is a great opportunity to study them in full detail.  Chinese manufacturers have an quasi monopoly over the Commercial Vehicle market (only Iveco and Ford sell in significant numbers), and as a result there are 10 of them in the overall Top 20 brands. Below Wuling still at stratospheric heights thanks to its micro vans and pickups, Foton sells almost half-a-million trucks vs. just 6.374 passenger cars, shooting into the overall Top 20 brands as a result. Dongfeng follows close behind with 465.000 units or 46% of its total sales, and Jinbei sells ten times as many minibuses as it does passenger cars (314.000 vs. 32.000).

Shaanxi Trucks are very successful in the Chinese Racing Truck Championship.

Other notable best-selling truck brands include FAW at 227.600 units, China National Heavy Truck Corp. (aka CNHTC) with 158.000 sales, Shaanxi (pictured above) with 85.000 deliveries, Qingling at 82.000, Yutong Bus at 67.000, Shandong KAMA at 58.500 and Dayun at 39.800. Dozens of smaller brands can also be found in sales charts, such as Hualing (CAMC), Hubei Tri-Ring, SAIC-Iveco’s truck brand Hongyan, Beiben, Ankai, Lushan, Sunwin Bus, Hengtong, Guizhou Space Yuantong, Linghe and Hunan Zhinglian Zhongke…

Lexus is the most popular all-importer in China in 2015…

Over in the imports aisle, a specific update by model will be published once data is available. For now let’s point out that BMW (147.000), Toyota (109.000) and Mercedes (107.000) are the only brands whose imports into China reach six-digit sales figures. Now that Jeep has started manufacturing the Cherokee locally (8.000 sales in two months), Lexus is the most popular “pure” importer in the country with an estimated 85.500 sales, stable on 2014. Don’t expect Toyota to change their mind and start assembling Lexus cars locally any time soon though. Land Rover drops 26% to 80.000 sales but does not communicate how many Evoque are manufactured locally. The next all-importers are Porsche at 58.009 (+24%), Subaru at 47.041 (-14%), Mini at an estimated 30.000 sales and Renault at 20.700.

…followed by Porsche.

Previous FY15 post: China Full Year 2015: Market up 4.7% to 24.61 million despite sluggish summer

Full Year 2015 Top 137 All-brands Ranking Table below.