The final 2024 sales data are in, and – to no surprise to all who follow this page throughout the year – the ranking again is #1 Toyota Group, #2 Volkswagen Group, and #3 Hyundai Group.
One more time, we witness the failure of breathless predictions that global OEMs will be disrupted and turned into ruins by battery-powered upstarts. Sure, global sales were down by a smidgen, but so were worldwide deliveries of the alleged disruptor Tesla. Keep in mind that we are comparing with a post-COVID 2023 that saw a solid bump after supply chains became unchained, and workers started to work again. Notably, world’s greatest battery skeptic Toyota once more is also world’s largest automaker. And by the way, hybrids favored by Toyota are selling like hotcakes. Meanwhile, global OEMs have demonstrated that they can crank out BEVs as easily as gassers.
The big disruptor isn’t Tesla, but China.
Chinese cars dumped into world’s largest auto market led to a rapid shrinkage of market shares of big foreign OEMs. Longtime market leader Volkswagen Group was outsold by BYD, a carmaker long regarded as a joke. Volkswagen Group’s deliveries in China slipped 9.5 percent to just under 2.93 million units last year, allowing BYD to surpass the German giant as China’s top seller. What’s more, Chinese automakers are exporting aggressively, while U.S.A. and EU are desperately erecting anti-Chinese walls to protect their automakers. For GM, China was long its most important market, now it turned into its biggest problem. It wouldn’t be a surprise would GM retreat from China in the coming years, just as it retreated from Europe, India, etc.
A look at the leaderboard will disabuse us of hopes, suggestions, predictions that the ranking will change anytime soon. Unless the sky will cave, we’ll probably see the same ranking again 12 months from now. What about the Honda/Nissan merger? It won’t become a factor until 2026, if it happens at all.
Caveat: All sales data as reported by the respective automaker. Note that “sales” can be an elastic term, some OEMs report hard registrations, some “sales to wholesale,” which can mean cars placed on dealer lots, or transferred to the OEM’s sales organization. Methods may differ from region to region. Some report “deliveries,” which can be nothing more than cars moved out of the factory door.
