GAC Group’s 2019 sales down by 3.99%, still better than expected

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- GAC Group said its full-year auto production and sales of 2019 were better than expected. Last year, the automaker output 2,023,814 vehicles (-7.76%) and sold 2,062,160 new vehicles (-3.99%), and had roughly 2.0849 million vehicles delivered to consumers.

In spite of the group's overall downturn, two major Sino-Japanese joint ventures eventually maintained their rising impetus. In 2019, GAC Honda boasted a year-on-year growth of 3.98% with 770,884 vehicles sold, and GAC Toyota's annual sales leapt 17.59% to 682,008 units.

Both of them gained growth in cumulative deliveries as well. GAC Group stated that retail sales of GAC Honda and GAC Toyota amounted to 765,000 units and 665,700 units, rising 4.2% and 14.7% year on year respectively. The less prominent joint venture, GAC Mitsubishi, also achieved an increase of 3.5% in 2019 deliveries.

Self-owned brands were somewhat eclipsed by the aforementioned joint ventures. GAC Motor saw its last year's sales tumble 28.14% over a year ago to 384,578 units.

As for monthly performance, the Guangzhou-based auto group sold 186,041 new cars in total, a slight drop of 0.35% from the year-ago period. Among subsidiaries, only GAC Honda, GAC Motor and GAC FCA posted decrease.

Last month, the sales of the second-generation Trumpchi GS4 and GAC Honda's Breeze were 12,800 units and 7,273 units. Besides, the sales volume of the all-electric iA5 surpassed 1,000 units for the first time, amounting to 1,178 units.

With reference to full-year performance, there were seven models whose respective sales exceeding 100,000 units. Of which two models featured sales volume topping 200,000 units—223,700 units for GAC Honda's Accord series and 221,600 units for GAC Toyota's Levin family.

GAC NE, the group's self-owned NEV arm, saw its Dec. sales zoom up 205% from the previous year to 9,457 units, of which 8,460 units were the Aion S BEVs.

During the past 2019, GAC Group sold a total of 56,900 new energy PVs (+135.9%), among which 42,200 units (+110.6%) were the contribution of GAC NE (photo source: GAC Group's WeChat).