H1 2015 Sales in Thailand: Down 16.3 Percent
- Thailand's automobile sales volume in the first six months of 2015 went down 16.3 percent to 369,109 units. Rising household debt, after-effect of spiking sales in 2012-2013 and economic slowdown due to recent drought resulted in the shrinkage of the automobile market. The passenger car (PC) segment fell 20.1 percent to 146,862 units, while utility vehicles declined 13.6percent to 222,247 units. The volume-selling small passenger car, PPC and one-ton pickup truck segments fell double digits. In contrast, SUVs rose 22.3 percent to 26,980 units. Strong SUV sales were driven by the launch of the Honda HR-V in November 2014.
- Apart from Honda which realized double-digit increase, all other top brands declined. Toyota dropped 24.9 percent to123,125 units. The fully-remodeled Hilux, launched in May 2015, is expected to sell 164,200 units in 2015. Isuzu declined 16.7 percent to 69,281 units. Honda increased 15.9 percent to 54,793 units, driven by the HR-V, released in November 2014. Mazda decreased 1.8 percent to 16,837 units. Significant decline of one-ton pickup trucks wascounterbalanced by the Mazda2 launched in January 2015. Other major brands, namely Nissan, Mitsubishi, Ford and Chevrolet dropped double digits.
- Looking at market forecast for 2015, Toyota projected a four percent increase to 920,000 in the beginning of the year; however, sluggish results in the first half of the year prompted the Japanese automaker in July to revise its forecast to below 800,000 units, setting a low annual figure for the first time in four years. If the upper limit were set at 800,000 units, passenger cars would account for 300,000 units (down 18.9 percent) and utility vehicles for 500,000 units (down 2.3 percent), of which one-ton pickup trucks would account for 390,000 units (up 4.8 percent).
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