Changan Auto VP foresees SUV market to be saturated in 2018 in China

Gas-goo.com (Shanghai September 9) - Chinese SUV market will probably have slowed down and reached saturation in 2018 and MPV might not enjoy much development, according to the anticipation of Gong Bin, Vice President of Changan Auto uttered in the China Chengdu Auto Show.

In the show, SUV models are the main course of many big automakers, as SUV market segment against odds surged in the first eight months while the general automobile sales and output slumped in the country.

The vice president affirmed that SUV and MPV market segments are on the stage of growth while predicting that the two market segments will suffer growth rate decaying from current 50% to 10% in 2018, reaching saturation.

Beginning to surge two years ago, MPV once shared the same expansion rate of SUV and even higher than the latter in some months. But it has been encountered by slump since the beginning of this year. The model still has a substantial market but not as wide as SUV. MPV is targeted at limited consumers and its development is hindered by high cost, unfavorable traffic condition and inadequate parking space, stated Gong Bin, and the recent fast expansion of SUV is partly contributed by cheaper oil gas for SUV consumes relatively much more fuel than cars.

Gong pointed that automakers taking a lead to trigger a price reduction war have hardly won in it or achieved much effect. He believed that industry evolution and competition will bring about price increase. Most of the automakers cutting price are joint-ventures, who should have lowered price years ago since they have encroached on consumers’ benefits. They products have been always sold at a high price extremely higher than real values, and they have finally come back to rational level after the price reduction.