HANOI: Vietnamese people bought more than 24,400 cars in June, an increase of 31 per cent compared with the same period last year, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said. Passenger cars were the market leaders with sales of 12,916 units, following by commercial cars with 10,325 units and special-purpose vehicles with 1,180 units. In the first half of this year, nearly 126,800 cars were sold, a 31 per cent year-on-year increase. On average, about 700 cars were bought each day.
Truong Hai Automobile Joint-Stock Company (Thaco) continued to monopolise the market last month, with sales of 9,246 units, claiming 42.3 per cent of the market share. Thaco said it produced 51,000 cars in the first half of this year and developed 11 new models of buses, tour cars and trucks.
Thaco plans to design a new bus under the National brand later this year as a Việt Nam brand promotion strategy in the ASEAN Economic Community and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Two truck and bus manufacturing plants will be built later this year, with a capacity of producing 16,000 buses and 100,000 trucks per year, while the production capacity of the Kia Thaco plant will be raised from 28,000 to 30,000 cars, and of Vina Mazda to 30,000 vehicles.
Thaco’s sales were more than double of Toyota Motor Vietnam (TMV), which ranked second with sales of 3,979 units, claiming 18.2 per cent of the market share. These were followed by Ford Vietnam, Honda, GM Vietnam and Mercedes-Benz Vietnam with sales of 2,369 units, 869 units, 765 units and 655 units, respectively.
