Registration Report Analysis - 2022 July Taiwan Car Market

By Jeff Lee / Mike Song 2022-08-02

The car market in July performed way better than June, getting out of the downturn sales period in the past few months. The total registration this month is 38,191 units, which is 17.0% or 0.4% higher than last month or YOY, and the accumulated registrations in the first 7 months this year is 241,349 units, which drops by 7.1% YOY, but it’s getting closer to last year’s number than June’s result. Certainly, the last working day of July is the first day of Ghost month, which sort of accelerates the pace of registration process in last week of July. Generally, almost all domestic carmakers have very excellent performance, either compared with last month or YOY, which makes the monthly market share of the domestic cars the record high in the past few years – 59.7%! This overwhelming performance that is closed to 60% demonstrated the strong promotion and the effectiveness of dealer sales contest of domestic car brands during the hot-selling season, and also revealed that the unstable supply of imported brands is still an issue. In the situation that the supply chain is still unstable, the whole market must achieve 42,000 units in every one of the upcoming 5 months to reach the annual level of 450,000 units like last year; and the possibility is very close to zero. Therefore, my prediction of the market in H2 this year is still conservative. Even though many brands have many outstanding orders to be delivered, but taking the recent trend of leading indicators like the stock market index and the timing that is closed to the election day in the end of this year into consideration, my prediction of the annual market in last two months is 425,000 units, and it’s now slightly raised to 430,000 units.

Market share of brands:

The market share performance of each brand is still led by Toyota/Lexus (36.4%) and CMC Mitsubishi (11.2%) as the first and second place, and these two have better performance than their averages in the first 7 months. In addition, Honda is the big winner this month, which takes the 3rd place with 7.7% market share and about 3,000 units of registration, widening the gap between competitors including Nissan, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and the accumulated market share in the last 7 months reaches 6.8% to settle in the 3rd place. On the contrary, Mercedes-Benz plunged to 3.9%, which is significantly lower than the level of 5.5% in the past. Moreover, there are other two brands worthy of attention… Hyundai’s market share has gradually increased to 3.7%, which is ahead of BMW, and slightly behind Mazda by only less than 20 units; Tesla, with usually unstable supply, had only delivered 1 unit this month again, which makes its accumulated annual market share dropped to 1.9%, but it’s still 51.6% better than YOY, and the growth rate is way better than all the other major brands. Furthermore, Subaru’s and Hyundai’s growth rates of accumulated sales are 2nd place (19.0%) and 3rd place (13.4%) respectively.

Comparison between domestic cars and imported cars (excluding heavy duty trucks):

The sales ratio of domestic cars and imported cars is 59.7% vs. 40.3% this month, and YTD ratio is 56.1% vs. 43.9%. Domestic cars have better sales YOY, but imported car brands still have unstable supply issues. Increase or not, the sales ratio of imported cars brands depends on the supply situation in H2.

Outstanding models:

In this month, Toyota Altis took back the sales champion of midsize sedan that had lost for 1 month. Moreover, Corolla Cross is the king among all car models in Taiwan that had been delivered for 4,064 units. The 1,458 units of Altis, ranked as the 2nd place, is even less than half of Corolla Cross’s. In addition, most car models that have excellent performances are SUVs… HR-V has 1,401 units, Kicks has 1,297 units, CR-CV has 1,167 units. In the competition of light duty trucks, CMC Veryca surpassed Toyota Town Ace again (1,080 units vs 1,023 units), which became the stiff competition month by month that can be regarded as the most exciting sales dual fight in recent years!

BEVs market:

The registration of BEVs is only 246 units this month, and the reason doesn’t have to be asked…  Tesla’s lack of supply. However, Ioniq 5 has been delivered for 85 units, and Taycan has been delivered for 56 units, which are still performed well. To view from this insufficient supply situation, the total annual market share of BEVs in Taiwan will be absolutely less than 3%, which is way behind other developed countries.