Global automobile production increased by almost 10% in 2023
- While the global vehicle market (PC+UV = passenger cars, light and heavy utility vehicles) increased by almost 13% in 2023 compared to 2022, catching up partially the sales missed in 2020-2021-2022. The global volume production of light vehicles increased by almost 10%.
- This observation indicates that the year 2023 was a period of destocking (more sales than production) after a year 2022 which had been marked by massive restocking after two years of destocking (2020-2021) due to the COVID crisis followed by the semiconductor crisis, which had disrupted the activity of automobile factories.
- The volume of PC+UV production has thus exceeded the 90 million mark in 2023, after having plunged to less than 80 million units in 2020, but we are still far from the figures recorded in 2017 and 2018, which were close to 100 million.
- The main producing countries remain China (33% of world automobile production), Europe 29 countries (16% of world production), the United States (12% of world production) and Japan (10% of world production). Seven out of ten vehicles leave an assembly plant in these countries.
- Behind, we note the presence of India (6% of world production) ahead of South Korea (5% of world production), Mexico (4% of world production) and Brazil (2% of world production). Note that production in Russia remained as low as in 2022, the sharply increasing market in 2023 having been mainly supplied by imports from China.