Q1 2024 sales of Chinese brand vehicles in Australia, plus Tesla, with YoY change:
MG 12,429, up 0.4%
GWM 10,201, up 24.5%
LDV 4,545, down 9.6%
BYD 4,481, up 113.6%
Chery 1,983, N/A
Tesla 12,789, up 22.9%
Telsa is included mostly because its sales provide an indication of the broader "EV potential" of the Australian market (where EV sales are creeping up, but still yet to crack 10% of the total in any given month). Also, all Teslas in Australia come from the Shanghai factory.
BYD is clearly enjoying strong growth as the brand continues to establish itself here and broaden its product portfolio (Atto 3, then Dolphin, most recently Seal). As of February, BYD Australia has said that it plans to introduce four new models over the next twelve months. The first of these is expected to be Seal U in the coming months, while the upcoming ute has also been confirmed for Australia, launching first in PHEV form. I suspect that Leopard 5 may be one of the others, just because it fits so well with Australia's penchant for larger SUVs with off-road pretentions.
Because Chery only launched in Australia in April 2023, we don't have directly comparable month-over-month sales as yet, but the managing director of Chery Australia, Lucas Harris, has been on record as saying that sales in 2023, when the brand recorded an average of 655 units/month over nine months, did not meet expectations. In Q1 2024 Chery Australia recorded an average of 638 sales per month, so I think it is safe to say that sales are continuing to not meet expectations.
LDV's Q1 sales decline owes entirely to a significant shortfall in March. For January and February, LDV was actually tracking slightly ahead (4%) of the same period in 2023. As such it could well be a transitory phenomenon. That said, between both SAIC brands flatlining and Chery struggling, I do wonder if Australia is approaching saturation point for the cheap, value-oriented offerings that currently define most of these brands here, and if JAC arriving with its T9 ute is really going to work out for them. That said, these local independent distributor arrangements can be weird: Citroen is still here despite living off the fumes of imagined sales (29 in Q1 2024). BYD and LDV are the other Chinese brands offered here via independent distributors, while Subaru is the most successful brand operated under this model, with Q1 sales in line with GWM.
Calibration of ADAS systems such as lane centering systems, driver alertness monitor, seems to be emerging as the single most consistent major criticism of Chinese brand vehicles in Australia. I wonder how much of this owes to the fact that road signs, lane markings, etc. are not consistent between nations and require some level of custom tuning, and how much of it is down to different customer expectations. To be fair, ADAS complaints are common for new vehicles here irrespective of their origin, but it seems to be a much larger issue, or at least reported as a much larger issue, amongst Chinese-brand vehicles.
GWM have
on their discounts for the Ora EV (read: Good Cat) here. With drive-away pricing from $36,990 for the base model it is comfortably the cheapest EV in the country and really seems to deserve more success than it has earned to date.
A small positive marketing story: by most metrics, Australian Rules Football is the most popular sport in the country, with the Australian Football League (AFL) as its national, top-level competition. This weekend the AFL is operating a 'Gather Round' whereby all matches are played in one location, which this year happens to be my city, Adelaide, South Australia. Earlier today I saw that MG, which is a major sponsor of the Port Adelaide Football Club, had set up a display in Rundle Mall (which is more or less the heart of the city, and sure to get a lot of extra local and interstate foot traffic this weekend associated with Gather Round) with a bright blue MG4 EV that was also being used for some kind of children's football challenge. It struck me as a good use of the marketing budget, reinforcing the association between MG, PAFC and the AFL more broadly. As an indication that this may be a useful brand exercise, consider that Toyota, which towers like a colossus over the Australian vehicle market with 51,738 sales in Q1, is also the "premier sponsor" of the AFL and has its logo plastered all over every game.