{"id":52890,"date":"2026-07-11T16:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T16:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/52890\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T16:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T16:18:09","slug":"german-carmakers-are-suffering-some-of-their-worst-declines-ever-in-china-as-sales-plunge-30-41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/52890\/","title":{"rendered":"German carmakers are suffering some of their worst declines ever in China as sales plunge 30%-41%"},"content":{"rendered":"

Major German carmakers saw sharp quarterly sales declines in\u00a0China<\/a>\u00a0as domestic demand weakened and competition heated up in the world\u2019s biggest auto market.<\/p>\n

At Volkswagen<\/a>, Mercedes-Benz<\/a>, BMW<\/a> and Porsche, China sales for the April-June quarter plummeted between 30% and 41% compared with the same period a year ago, according to company data released over the past week.<\/p>\n

For the first half of this year, they all reported a more than 20% year-on-year drop in China. The falling China sales have squeezed their overall profits and in some cases offset gains from other regions.<\/p>\n

This also comes at a time when these legacy German carmakers are faced with intensified competition from Chinese automakers outside of China,\u00a0including in Europe<\/a>, as leading Chinese brands like BYD\u00a0make inroads<\/a> overseas.<\/p>\n

The latest quarterly sales declines were some of the steepest seen for the German automakers in China, said Lei Xing, an independent auto analyst.<\/p>\n

Volkswagen group, for example, saw deliveries in China down 36.6% during the quarter to 424,300 vehicles, which dragged down its global sales to a 8.6% decline, even as deliveries increased in Europe and the Americas.<\/p>\n

The Wolfsburg, Germany-based auto group, which has been\u00a0betting big<\/a>\u00a0on the Chinese market, said it would be\u00a0slashing its model lineup by up to half<\/a>after the latest sales declines.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s prolonged\u00a0property sector downturn<\/a>\u00a0and an economic slowdown have hurt consumer sentiment, with more people shunning big-ticket purchases.\u00a0Strong competition<\/a>\u00a0in its domestic car market and a yearslong fierce price war\u00a0have also hit<\/a>\u00a0many European carmakers, with drivers opting for affordable Chinese car brands.<\/p>\n

Porsche, part of the Volkswagen group, called China\u2019s market environment \u201cchallenging\u201d in a statement, while Mercedes-Benz said China is facing \u201ca significantly weaker overall market and macroeconomic environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

China\u2019s passenger car sales at home fell 24% in the first half of this year\u00a0to nearly 8.3 million<\/a>, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry group.<\/p>\n

Consultancy AlixPartners expects sales of light vehicles, including passenger cars, in China will likely fall about 10% for the whole of this year.<\/p>\n

As Chinese car brands become increasingly preferable in China, \u201cforeign automakers are going to have to fight for every share of (the) market,\u201d Stephen Dyer, Asia-Pacific leader of the automotive practice at AlixPartners, said at a news briefing last month.<\/p>\n

German auto groups remain much stronger in making internal combustion engine vehicles, such as gasoline cars, than electric vehicles, said Chris Liu, with the research and advisory group Omdia, at a time when EVs sales in China are doing better than conventional fuel vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe German automakers are bearing most of the brunt,\u201d said Xing, the independent analyst.<\/p>\n

Chinese carmakers also have a competitive edge over foreign automakers as they typically update their model lineup a lot more frequently than their rivals, Dyer added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major German carmakers saw sharp quarterly sales declines in\u00a0China\u00a0as domestic demand weakened and competition heated up in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20951],"tags":[20596,3622],"class_list":["post-52890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mercedes-benz","tag-autos","tag-mercedes-benz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}