Honda says China auto deliveries edge down 1.7% year on year in May

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Honda announced that its automobile deliveries in China edged down 1.7% from a year ago to 134,230 units in May, while jumped 18.3% compared to April. 

The slight decrease resulted from the downturn in Dongfeng Honda's retail sales. The joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Corporation handed over 65,534 vehicles to consumers, a year-over-year decline of 3.4%. The other joint venture GAC Honda saw its May deliveries climb 0.1% to 68,696 units.

The Japanese automaker aims to sell 1.55 million new vehicles in the world’s biggest largest auto market this year. With 469,644 units delivered in total, 30.3% annual target has been fulfilled as of May. Due to the coronavirus spread, Honda’s China auto branch also faced a 21.3% year-on-year slide in Jan.-May deliveries.

(Breeze Sport Turbo, photo source: GAC Honda)

The respective year-to-date volumes for GAC Honda and Dongfeng Honda amounted to 243,445 units and 226,199 units, tumbling 22.8% and 19.7% over the year-ago period.

There were six models in total whose respective deliveries in May all surpassed 10,000 units, namely, the Accord, the Breeze, the Vezel, the Civic, the CR-V, and the XR-V, said the company. It is worth mentioning that more than 20,000 consumers took delivery of the Civic cars.

Last month, Honda's China business branch signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chinese Internet giant Tencent to jointly explore the application of the latter's IoV (Internet of Vehicles) solutions into Honda's vehicles.

The newly-formed strategic cooperation will be based on the TAI 3.0, the latest ecosystem IoV solution launched by Tencent Auto Intelligence (TAI) at the CES 2020, which will enable Honda's users to employ the in-car version of WeChat—China's ubiquitous social networking app developed by Tencent, use the non-inductive payment, and enjoy multiple one-stop interactive contents for entertainment, said Honda.