Low-emission cars see sales rebound in Jan-Sept

Shanghai, October 21 (Gasgoo.com) The latest report by China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM）shows that low-emission cars sales is rebounding in 2008 after sales slump in 2007. In the first three quarters of this year, cars below 1.6L, especially the models below 1.0 L, saw a significant rebound amid a widely weakening sales growth in the domestic passenger vehicles market.

The report said cars at and below 1.6L still took half of the sedan market, the weak demand for MPV tended to be worse, except the models at 1L-1.6L kept a fast year-on-year increase, and the cross passenger vehicles posted a better performance than the same period of last year, with models below 1L saw demand rebound.

Analysts pointed out that domestic consumers have changed their car buying ideas to some extent as a result of the surging oil price, traffic jamming and sluggish stock market. However, the impact on vehicles below 1L by cutting the consumption tax 2% is rather limited. Meanwhile, the coming of new small cars such as Toyota Yaris and Mazda 2 has also stimulated the sales growth of low-emission cars.

The report from China’s National Passenger Car Information Exchange Association on September auto industry also emphasized the low-emission cars sales growth. The low-emission cars posted a big sales growth in this September as a result of the rising oil price, the fuel tax hike by the government and car owners’ pessimism about future wage increase.

But the report also noted that the policy for energy saving and emission cutting hasn’t arrived where it should be, because the current policy may still weaken low-emission car market once China's economic adjustment period is over and the economy regains high growth or the global oil price goes down by large amount.