November’s Auto Industry
According to industry sources, Hyundai Motor sold 408,533 cars last month, including 354,302 units sold overseas, down 2.8 percent from a year earlier. Kia Motors sold 38,952, with 218,521 overseas sales, also down 0.3 percent from the same month last year.
Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors sold 54,302 and 38,952 cars, respectively, in the domestic auto market, suffering a double-digit decrease in sales compared to the same month last year, while GM Korea, Renault Samsung, and Ssangyong sold 14,100, 6,540 and 5,301 cars each, enjoying a sales increase of 2.4 percent, 48.5 percent, and 2.3 percent, respectively, from a year ago.
In particular, GM Korea recorded the highest-ever monthly sales since 2005. Ssangyong and Renault Samsung also enjoyed their biggest monthly sales in the year. Market shares of Hyundai and Kia have continued to fall.
Hyundai's and Kia’s combined market share, which was 82.8 percent in January, fell to 82.2 percent in June and further to 78.2 percent in November. During the cited period, GM Korea’s market share jumped from 9.6 percent to 11.8 percent while Samsung and Ssangyong saw their share increase to 5.5 percent and 4.4 percent from 3.9 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively.
The recent struggle of Hyundai and Kia Motors stems from the poor sales performance of this year’s new cars. In addition, they have gotten a hard time because of quality issues related to their cars. The previous year’s sales performance, which was hiked due to the special individual consumption tax, has this year’s sales look relatively smaller.
In exports of cars in November, GM Korea's shipments decreased 13.7 percent, and Hyundai and Kia showed a 1.3 percent and 2.2 percent decrease each from a year earlier, respectively. Ssangyong Motors’ shipments increased 5 percent while that of Renault Samsung increased 20.1 percent by selling 120,000 cars.