Largest Market Competition
Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors became the second-largest car sellers in the Chinese market last month, overtaking General Motors (GM) of the U.S. It has been 90 months since the group fell to third place.
According to data from the “Auto Dealer’s Joint Meeting” in China on May 24, Hyundai and Kia Motors sold a combined 146,294 units in the Chinese market in April, up 2.5 percent from a year earlier. Hyundai Motor sold 90,288 units, an 0.8 percent decrease year-on-year, while Kia Motors sold 56,006 units, an 8.4 percent increase.
Accordingly, Hyundai-Kia Motors took second place, following Volkswagen and outselling GM, which posted sales of 138,795 units. Their combined market share reached 10 percent.
In July last year, Hyundai and Kia Motors sold 125,191 units and became the second-largest vendors by overtaking GM, which sold 123,830 units. However, they were outstripped by GM the next month.
Hyundai-Kia Motors’ improvement in sales performance is largely due to the popularity of their strategic new models that were recently rolled out. With their overseas compact SUV models, the ix25 and the KX3, the group targeted the rapidly-growing Chinese SUV market.
GM, which yielded the second position to Hyundai-Kia Motors, has counterattacked by extensively cutting its prices. GM announced that it would reduce the prices of its 40 major models by at least 10,000 yuan (US$1,614 or 1.76 million won) to 53,900 yuan (US$8,698 or 9.5 million won) in China.
Meanwhile, a total of 1.457941 million vehicles were sold in China last month, up 6.9 percent from 1.363223 units a year earlier, according to the data.