South Korean Vehicles Market in October 2023 falls for the second month in a row, with new sales at 137,819 (-5.0%). YTD figures at 1.42 million are up 5.0%. Renault Samsung is down more than 57.6%.
Market Trend and Outlook
The South Korean Vehicles Market in October 2023 falls for the second month in a row, with new sales at 137,819 (-5.0%). YTD figures at 1.42 million are up 5.0% from the previous year.
Looking at cumulative data up to October 2023 brand-wise, Hyundai maintains 1st with 523,582 sales (+16.5%), followed by Kia in 2nd with 469,781 new registrations (+7.2%), Genesis in 3rd with 104,984 units sold (-3.0%), BMW at 62,514 (-3.1%) and Mercedes in 5th with 60,988 sales (-4.4%).
SsangYong maintains 6th with 54,788 new registrations (-3.4%), in front of GM Korea at 33,525 sales (+0.6%) and Renault Samsung with 18,579 registrations (-57.6%).
Audi maintains 9th spot with 15,258 sales (-10.7%) in front of Volvo closing the Top 10 with 13,770 units sold (+37.7%).
Looking at specific models the Hyundai Grandeur is the best seller, rising 3 spots with an 77.8% increase in year-on-year sales. Previous year’s leader the Hyundai Porter falls into 2nd place despite being up 8.2%.
Medium-Term Market Trend
South Korean automotive industry has been closed to foreign vehicles import until 2012. Then, the entrance of several new competitors fueled the market growth and the domestic sales grew up until the 2015, when the all-time record was established at 1.8 million sales.
Then the market was steady until the 2020, when the strong control over the covid diffusion allowed plus incentives to support the industry, pushed up the market (+5.8%) to hit the new record of 1.87 million. In this data there was a sort of pull-ahead effect, due to the incentives and then market started to moderately decline again.
In 2021 the market lost 8.5% in volume, falling to 1.72 million cumulative sales and in 2022 also lost another 2.5%, dropping to 1.67 million sales.
Perspectives are not positive. The market is fast moving towards electrification, but the high prices offered for EVS is discouraging part of consumers. In addition the industry suffer for the supply chain disruption, for microchips shortage and demand for cars is declining.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models.
