Chinese car brands will probably increase global market share through 2015, along with Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co., according to a survey of senior auto executives by KPMG International. Chrysler Group LLC is the most likely loser.

In the survey of 200 auto executives, 81 percent predicted Chinese manufacturers will boost their market share in the next five years; 75 percent said Volkswagen’s share will rise; 72 percent forecast South Korea’s Hyundai and affiliate Kia Motors Corp. will advance. Forty-eight percent said Chrysler, the U.S. carmaker run by Fiat SpA, will cede market share.

“As an individual brand, VW is the big winner,” Mike Steventon, a partner at KPMG and author of the report to be presented in London today, said in a phone interview. “It’s the combination of quality and styling that seems to be appealing.”

Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, aims to surpass Toyota Motor Corp. as the world’s biggest automaker by 2018. Expanding Chinese companies include Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., the unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., which bought Sweden’s Volvo Cars from Ford Motor Co. in August.

Wolfsburg, Germany-based VW, which is merging with sports-car maker Porsche SE, and Detroit-based General Motors Co. each had a worldwide market share of 9.7 percent last year, in joint second place behind Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota, which had 11 percent, according to estimates by Andrew Close, a researcher for IHS Automotive in London.

Scania, MAN

“VW’s acknowledged strength is a broad product portfolio from small cars to luxury vehicles,” KPMG wrote in the report. “Through truck brands such as MAN and Scania, they are adding new segments.”

With a dominant 13 percent market share in China in 2009, VW also has a “strong base in the world’s biggest growth market,” KPMG said. China has surpassed Germany as Volkswagen’s largest market since 2009.

Sixty-eight percent of the respondents said Indian brands as a group would climb, while 49 percent predicted Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s leader in luxury-car making, would increase share. KPMG didn’t name specific Chinese and Indian brands.

Thirty-six percent predicted GM’s share will drop and 33 percent made the same forecast for Mitsubishi Motors Corp., maker of the i-MiEV electric car.

KPMG didn’t identify reasons for the lack of confidence in Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler, and said GM may be suffering as the marketplace may still be “reacting to its June 2009 bankruptcy filing.”

Overcapacity

The global auto industry continues to face a problem of overcapacity, KPMG said.

Executives “still consider the U.S. the most overbuilt country,” the firm said, even after at least 18 assembly factories have closed in the country since 2008. Sixty-four percent of the executives said the U.S. has overcapacity, compared with 22 percent for Germany.

Overcapacity drives up costs by making plants less efficient. An automaker typically needs at least 80 percent utilization for a plant to be profitable, according to IHS Automotive.

China and India both are likely to be overbuilt within five years, according to the executives. More than a quarter said China will have overcapacity of more than 20 percent by 2015, KPMG said.

Most major carmakers have been building plants in China over the past few years, and more are in the pipeline. Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn plans to double production capacity in China with two new plants, bringing the total to 11. Volvo Cars may add as many as three plants there, CEO Stefan Jacoby said in October.

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