Gasgoo.com (Shanghai December 9) - Despite decreasing sales growth, the Chinese luxury automobile market is shaping up for more competition in 2015. This competition has been marked by increasingly intensive localization plans that include grander and more expansive domestic production schemes. Competition is expected to be especially fierce among emerging second-tier brands.
Cadillac is a prime example of a strong up and coming brand in the Chinese luxury automobile market. At a conference for its recent brand strategy, Johan De Nysschen (pictured) announced GM's intent to release 11 new Cadillac models covering the sedan, sports car and SUV segments. The Chinese market is set to play an especially important role of the manufacturer. China is already the brand’s second largest market after its native US. So far this year 64,359 Cadillacs have been sold in the country, representing year-on-year growth of 50.7 percent. GM has plans to release nine brand new Cadillac models for the country over the next five years, as well as achieve a domestic production rate of 95 percent for the brand by 2018. The brand new 4GLTE technology is expected to appear in a new Chinese Cadillac next year.
The Chinese market is growing in importance for luxury automobile manufacturers around the world. Among them, 26.3 percent of Jaguar Land Rover’s sales come from the Chinese market, up five percent points from the 21.3 percent recorded a year ago. Volvo and Infiniti have also seen their Chinese sales grow substantially, while one-third of GM’s sales come from the country.
Analysts point out that the reason other luxury automobile manufacturers lag behind the big three of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz is due to how late they implemented their localization programs. According to Gasgoo.com (Chinese) statistics, of the 1.29 million luxury automobiles sold over the first three quarters of this year, nearly one-third of them are from the German big three. How successful second-tier manufacturers are in bridging this gap in the coming years is something that remains to be seen.
