China’s biggest (NZ) car brands
Many are new to NZ, but Chinese car brands already sell in the millions
When we come to look back on 2022, it might be the year that Chinese car brands made real inroads in New Zealand, with good volume and (more importantly) good cars.
Many of them are new to Kiwis; an unknown quantity. Understandable, but it’s a huge mistake to think of any as immature or small. In fact, you might be surprised just how big they are.
The precise size of individual Chinese makers really depends on the context, because so many are involved in joint venture (JV) projects with Western brands – for so long a prerequisite for said foreign makers to be in the Chinese market.
However, let’s assume we’re only interested in “own brand” vehicles from the Chinese companies whose products have a presence in NZ. Which are biggest?
Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC, or “Say-ic” to company people) delivered 2.86m own-brand vehicles last year, including MG and LDV.
Even that figure makes it bigger than BMW or Mercedes-Benz and twice the size of Mazda; if we include those JV products the total is 5.86m, making it China’s top carmaker. In the did-you-know category, SAIC is also a state owned enterprise (SOE).
Geely, the third biggest Chinese brand at 2.03m sales in 2021, won’t be familiar to many Kiwis, although it was briefly in the local market a decade ago. It’s a core car brand in China, but better known to NZers are its subsidiary companies: Volvo, Polestar and Lotus.
Great Wall Motors (GWM) is number four at 1.3m sales in 2021. Well-known for its Cannon ute, but it’s also the company behind Haval SUVs (you’ll see a small GWM badge on the back of the Jolion/ H6 models) and will be introducing the Ora EV brand in NZ for 2022/23.
BYD is the newest Chinese brand to enter the NZ market, and the youngest: the automotive division was only formed in 2003, although it’s already one of the top five EV producers in the world. BYD is number eight in China overall, with 740,000 sales last year.