Every second counts... in thousands
How much would you say Toyota generates in worldwide sales every second? Go on, guess. Stumped? Well, UK motor trade insurance company Staveley Head has crunched the numbers, and they’re pretty staggering.
The actual figure is €6,670 every single second (of which €482.23 is pure profit), which means it takes Toyota less than two days to rack up €1bn in sales. It takes Mercedes-Benz roughly 1.8 minutes to earn the average UK industrial wage of €31,000, and while the No.2 sales generator Ford actually shifts more cars, Mercedes generates more profit.
When it comes to luxury brands, Porsche is ahead, earning €43,723 every minute, with Ferrari (€6,360) and Bentley (€3,430). Worldwide, Toyota sells 17 cars every minute of every day, while Ford sells 12 and Mercedes sells four. By contrast, the luxury brands sell only – and it’s a very qualified ‘only’ – one car every hour. On a daily basis, Toyota sells 24,577 cars, Ford sells 18,081, Porsche sells 675 and Ferrari sells 23. To put those numbers in an Irish context, Toyota sells roughly twice as many cars worldwide in a single day that it did in Ireland across all of 2017, while Porsche sells more cars worldwide every three hours than were bought here in 12 months.
In total, global new car sales reached 79.02million last year, of which Ireland accounted for 131,332, or less than one-fifth of 1% – on the world stage, we’re a minnow. Worldwide sales this year are expected to rise to 81.5million new cars. That’s more than double the annual average recorded throughout the Nineties. With standard combustion engines facing redundancy as more and more countries announce plans to ban them over the next 25 years or so, the league table easily could shift. Staveley Head managing director Ashley Peter says next year will see further industry disruption with increased investment in electric car technology and charging infrastructure, but wisely adds: ‘The automotive market has seen a lot of change in recent years, but one thing is clear – they still make a lot of money.’
That’s for sure, as they no doubt remind themselves. Every second.