Every fourth (24.5%) passenger car newly registered across Western Europe is from an Asian brand, irrespective of where the model is manufactured.
Toyota, which manufactures a large proportion of its models sold in Europe locally, is set to finish 2024 as the leading Asian brand, surpassing 700,000 annual units for the first time in almost two decades, helping it deliver the second-highest volume of new passenger cars across the 18 market region out of any brand after regional market leader Volkswagen. Toyota, the world's largest passenger car manufacturer by volume, is set to finish 2024 with an all-time record market share of 6.4% across the region. Meanwhile, Nissan sees more than a third of its regional total now end up in the UK, is set to end the year with less than 2.5% of the region, down from a recent high of 4% recorded in 2015, where it briefly surpassed Toyota across the region, on Carlos Ghosn's watch.
Meanwhile, Chinese OEMs strong market entrance faded somewhat during 2024, with full-year data set to finish the year with a 3.3% share of the region's new car market, an increase of just 0.3ppts over the full year 2023. Of those volumes, SAIC's MG continued to soak up the lion's share, accounting for more than half of all the new Sino models entering the region. BYD, which have just launched a second long-term charter Pure Car Truck Carrier (PCTC) shipping vessel at the end of 2024, which is currently underway to the UK on its maiden voyage, following the long-term charter BYD One vessel which made the trip from China to Europe three times during 2024, accounted for just 11% of all Chinese models. That translated into just 40,000 units during the opening 11-months of 2024 according to our own data.
Korean manufacturers, dominated by Hyundai/Kia, but also include Ssangyong/KG Mobility, which delivered over 10,000 new units across 2024 (after 11 months), were slightly impacted by the product cadence cycle at Hyundai/Kia. New models set to enter the market in new sectors from Korea's heavyweights are expected to help Koreans collectively regain market share in 2025 and maintain a market share of above 8%.
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*Western Europe 18 Markets: EU Member States prior to the 2004 enlargement plus EFTA markets Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, plus UK