After the spreading of the new Coronavirus all over the world, the automobile market was one of the first things affected by the virus and car sales dropped fastly in almost every country. However, unlike the US and Europe, the Chinese car market recovered quickly from COVID-19 lockdowns.
By February, the car market in China dropped by 81.7% and the drop rate reached 48.8% by March. The market showed a good recovery as the decline in April was just 5.2%. Until November, the market grew by almost every month while in December it dropped again a little from 10.9% to +6.2%. All in all China market experienced 19.7 million sales in 2020.
Crossovers are the leading segment as they have a 47.4% share that is grown by 5.1%.
In 2021 it is the first year that crossovers and SUVs outsold passenger cars.
About share of the market for domestic and foreign brands, domestic cars sale was the lowest since 2014. American brands share dropped by 1.3% and European brand sales down to 9.8%.
The leader in the Chinese market was VW while it sale was dropping every month in 2020. After VW, Honda and Toyota are the best selling foreign cars in China.
The best-selling domestic brand is Geely and sold more than 1 million cars. Geely is narrowly ahead of Nissan.
Among luxury brands. The best selling brand was Audi, while Mercedes and BMW are after that. Hyundai was one of the unlucky brands in China in 2020 because it couldn't manage even to beat Chery.
The annual sale record-holders are Cadillac by +8.2%, Hangqi with +98%, and Lynk & Co by +37%. Hangqi which is one the most successful Chinese brands could manage to sell near 200k cars.