China's Vehicle Exports Amount to Only 2.98% of Production

A total of 18.27 million vehicles might have been produced in China during 2009, but the country has been slow to export its models on the global market. Only 2.98 percent of the cars made there in 2009 were bought by foreign customers, according to statistics released by China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

China’s car exports in 2010 amounted to just 544,900 units, a number which seems very low when compared to exporting giants like Japan, Germany and South Korea. The figure is lower even than what other developing auto markets, such as India and Brazil, managed to achieve.

Germany, for instance, exported some 4.24 million units last year, 76.29 percent of the total build in the country. Meanwhile South Korea's export volume last year was of 2.77 million units. Growing at a rate of 17.9 percent per year, India exported around 1.8 million vehicles in the period between April 2009 and March 2010, achieving an export ratio of 12.84 percent in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, up from the 6.63 percent of the 2003-2004 fiscal year.

To make matters worse, China’s exports were split between cars and commercial vehicles. In 2010 included 282,900 passenger cars, while 261,900 commercial vehicles were also shifted. The financial result of $1.66 billion for cars translates to am average price of exported passenger vehicles in the region of $6,500. This result is considerably lower than the $17,800 worldwide average for commercial vehicles.

Vehicles made in the country have a poor reputation in Europe, where they are synonymous with below-average workmanship and build quality. But they are proving popular with customers in the Middle East and Africa.