China Passenger Car Sales Rose 11% in April on Growth
China’s passenger-car sales rose 11 percent in April, as economic growth made vehicles affordable to more people in the world’s second-largest auto market.
Automakers sold 604,900 cars and sport-utility vehicles in the country last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in an e-mailed statement today. Sales rose 24 percent in March, the biggest increase in seven months.
General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and other overseas carmakers have opened plants in China as economic growth of more than 10 percent a year boosts demand. The country may surpass the U.S. as the world’s biggest auto market by 2020, according to GM.
Car sales jumped 18 percent in the first four months of year to 2.46 million, according to the automakers’ group.
GM, the biggest overseas automaker in China, expects to boost annual sales in the country by about half over the next three years to 500,000 vehicles, it said last month.
Toyota, the world’s second-largest automaker, aims to raise China sales 36 percent to 640,000 vehicles in the year ending March 2009, it said yesterday.
Tags: automaker, car, General-Motors, Toyota