China deliveries in its fiscal year: -34%. And not getting better: in April, -45%.
The decline in sales was “due to China,” JLR said. In China, until recently JLR’s fastest growing market, deliveries plunged by 34% from the prior year, to just 98,900 vehicles. The company is now on its fourth consecutive quarter of declining Chinese sales. If anything, the trend appears to be worsening: in April, JLR’s deliveries in China collapsed by 45% from a year earlier.
For decades, China has been a boon for global automakers. Every year since 1990, annual sales have gone up, often by double digits. Between 2005 and 2017, new vehicle sales multiplied by a factor of six, propelling China to pole position as the world’s biggest car market. But that multi-decade trend came to a shuddering halt last year as light new-vehicle sales fell 4.1%, to 23.7 million units. Since July, China has registered 10 straight months of declining registrations…