KIA Sales In Vietnam Rise By 127 Percent In January 2021.
News just in from Vietnam showing their automotive market rebounding very strongly in January 2021 with total vehicle sales jumping an impressive 60 percent from 15,123 units in January last year (2020) to an impressive 24,216 units last month. These figures have just been shared by the Vietnam Automotive Manufacturers Association (VAMA).
This included a 127 percent sales jump in Kia sales to 4,486 units, making it the country’s best-selling vehicle brand last month ahead of Toyota, while Mazda sales increased by 30 percent to 2,429 units.
Meanwhile, the fastest and best selling auto brand in Vietnam was Vinfast (Vietnams very own homegrown car manufacturer who is working with BMW and Opel for its platforms and engines) with 29,485 cars sold last year (2020).
Once dominated by Japanese car manufacturers, new car buyers in Vietnam are now buying more Korean cars than ever before. Hyundai is selling very well and has seen the biggest sales growth in the past year, gaining an impressive 1,238.8 percent over 12 months.
In December 2020 alone, 47,865 units were sold, up 31.6 percent month-on-month. Of these, 36,856 were passenger cars, up 28 percent; 10,673 were commercial vehicles, up 50 percent; and 336 were special-use vehicles, down 30 percent.
Sales of domestically-assembled vehicles stood at 29,382, up 25 percent, while 18,483 were imported cars, a month-on-month increase of 44 percent.
Analysts said the figures do not reflect overall consumption in the domestic automobile market as they exclude sales by manufacturers that are VAMA members, such as Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, and Volvo.
The combined sales of TC Motor and VinFast, which are not VAMA members, reached 110,853 units during the year. Combining the figures of VAMA, TC Motor and VinFast, 407,487 units were sold on the domestic market last year.
With 81,368 units sold, Hyundai was the best-selling brand in Vietnam in 2020, followed by Toyota with 70,692, Kia 39,180, Mazda 32,224, VinFast 29,485, Mitsubishi 28,954, Ford 24,663, and Honda 24,418.
Vietnam is considered as the ‘land of opportunity’ in Southeast Asia and Hyundai Motor has succeeded in growing its business well. It all started when Hyundai established Hyundai Thanh Cong Manufacturing Vietnam (HTMV), a joint venture between Hyundai and Thanh Cong Manufacturing.
The Vietnamese government poses high taxes on private cars, so people mostly drive cars with engine capacity below 1,500cc. As these vehicles get to replace motorcycles, the cost-efficient and compact Hyundai Grand i10 is also getting popular (see pictures below) among the Vietnamese people, which is called the ‘People’s Car’.
Starting from the end of June 2020, the Vietnamese government had approved a plan to lower 50 percent of registration fees for domestically assembled cars to boost the economy. And to meet the increasing demand, Hyundai has plans to build a second factory of HTMV capable of selling 100,000 units annually. Along with the production plant in Indonesia, this would be one of the core production facilities to survive the ASEAN market.
The best selling vehicle for this year remains the Toyota Vios (+10 percent) with 29,891 units sold, followed by the compact Hyundai Accent, which jumped 40 percent registering 20,776 new vehicle sales this year. The Hyundai Grand i10 (+77.6 percent) rounds up the top three with 17,569 new units sold.
