GAC Honda finishes upgrading portfolio, expand rapidly succeeding growth momentum

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai August 3) - Since GAC Honda realized sales growth among overall sales slide in the first half of the year, the joint-venture determined to realize a high sales target of 1000,000 till 2020 through launching many new models and effective marketing measures.

At the end of July, GAC Honda launched new City in a pre-sales show over the cloud, which has rarely been adopted by other automakers to launch new models. It succeeds in using new marketing method, with 1,420,000 person-times online participation in five hours.

With the publication of new City, GAC Honda has completed the upgrading of its production line, including Accord, Fit, Crosstour, Odyssey. Before the publication of new City, old City was the only model that reported 37.45% year-on-year sales slide in the first half of the year, with other models’ year-on-year sales increase of Accord 15.9%, new Odyssey 70.2%, and new Fit 53.1%. The overall sales for the joint-venture in the same period increased 47.2% to 287,751 units.

GAC Honda is struggling to change the slow-expanding image via increasing capacity. At the mid of last year, GAC Honda began the construction of third plant for whole vehicle and engine, which will increase the original capacity of 600,000 units to the future 720,000 units.

In the first half of the year, the accumulative production and sales were 12.1 million units and 11.9 million units, increases of 2.64% and 1.43%, falling far behind the predicted 7%. This is the lowest growth rate since 2011. The three top-sellers of joint-ventures including FAW-VW, Shanghai GM and Shanghai Volkswagen all experienced sales slide in the first half of the year, while Japanese automakers like GAC Honda realized sales growth in the same period.