Luxury Segment in China may Remain Low Growth, Carmakers Turns to Export to Avoid Excess Capacity

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai Jan 28th)– Influenced by an overall slowing down economic, we can witness an obvious slowing down sales growth in China’s luxury vehicle segment. Many mainstream domestic models are experiencing slowing down or negativegrowth while the car factories here in China keep churning out large amount of vehicles. According to the report’s incomplete statistics, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Infinite and Cadillac plans to produce at least 1.6 million vehicles in China totally.But according to China’s Passenger Car Association, the sales of all these six luxury brands only totaled 1.19 million in 2015 and the growth rate of luxury vehicle segment in China has dropped to 2.5%. We can see the capacity is clearly exceeding demand. Under this background, carmakers turn to automobile export in a bid to boost growth. According to an insider of SAIC GM, a hybrid Cadillac CT6 will be manufactured domestically in China and exported to North America on a small scale for the very first time in Cadillac’s more than 100 years’ history. But made in China models exported to USA is not new at all for many other brands. Back in 2011, a small batch of domestically manufactured BMW 5 Series was exported to the rest of the world, mainly Middle East and Europe. Mercedes-Benz is also expected to export some version of its C-Class and E-Class from China. Under this background, China is expected to become not only the largest luxury vehicles consuming country, but also the largest exporting country.