Geely sales down and Great Wall’s Haval sales up

The decision to take aggressive export strategy and the buy-in to Proton will pay off in the long run for Geely.

Sales at Great Wall Motor Co., China’s largest light-truck and SUV manufacturer was up in August this year on demand for their new crossover and pickup trucks. But deliveries at Geely Automobile Holdings, the largest domestic Chinese auto manufacturer was declining in lower domestic demand.

Last month, Great Wall’s sales advanced 9.5 percent year on year to 70,199 units. The Haval-badged F7 crossover (see pictures below), which hit the domestic market in November, generated a volume of 10,036 units.

The new Haval crossover enabled Great Wall’s sales of crossovers and SUVs to jump 17 percent to 50,239.

Pickup sales at the company, China’s largest pickup manufacturer, rose 12 percent to 11,637.

For the first eight months, deliveries at Great Wall gained 5.8 percent to 624,094 units, making the company the only major domestic Chinese light-vehicle maker that has maintained sales growth for the period.

By contrast, sales at Geely dropped 19 percent to 101,223 vehicles last month. Through August, the company’s deliveries contracted 17 percent to 844,278 units.

Geely faces an uphill battle to achieve its 2019 sales target of 1.36 million but with the help of Proton and its the ASEAN buyer market, Geely should have no issue.

Haval on the other hand has been very quiet in its marketing activities in Malaysia with concentration only with supermarket roadshows and sales dealership promotions. Using just a minimum advertising budget, they are losing ground to Geely’s high stakes marketing program in Malaysia and soon the ASEAN region.

Last week, BYD Co., China’s largest electrified vehicle manufacturer, reported its sales slipped 14 percent to 36,009 in August. It was the second straight month the company posted a sales decline after Beijing completed a new round of subsidy cuts for full-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in June.