Small displacement engines: the trend of SUV market
- Source: Ce.cn
- [14:10 July 28 2009]
- Comments
Compared with other segmented market, the sport utility passenger vehicle (SUV) has been quite active in recent years. Even when the growth of China's overall automobile market slowed down last year, SUV market still had a good performance.
According to statistics of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the production and sales volume of SUV was 448,000 and 447,700 respectively in 2008, each increasing 24.41 percent and 25.28 percent year on year.
In the first five months of this year, China's SUV market also had a steady growth. From January to May, the production and sales of SUV reached 192,400 and 198,400 respectively, up 4.54 percent and 10.73 percent respectively year on year.
An obvious characteristic of China's SUV market in recent years is that SUV has been increasingly taking the fancy of consumers. In comparison with traditional SUV, urban SUV, besides the off-road capability, also has comfortability equal to car and economic fuel consumption as well.
In the statistics of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), the five top SUV-brand sellers are basically taken up by urban SUV, like Honda CR-V, Hover, Tiggo, Tucson, etc.
This year, there is another strong contender Toyota RAV4. The ready sale of urban SUV is related to the release of consumers' individualized requirement, and to some extent, it also reflects consumers' demand and recognition of energy saving and environmental-friendly SUV.
SUV is known as "gas guzzler", large displacement and high fuel consumption are the major characteristics. The key issue for healthy and sustainable development of SUV market is to clear consumers' concern on fuel consumption.
It is known that in the Shanghai International Automobile Exhibition this year, there were 20-odd new SUV types displayed, in which nearly 90 percent were middle and small displacement vehicles lower than 3.0 liters. All of the independent brands, such as Great Wall, Geely, and Chery, have launched new small displacement SUVs.
