Chilean Vehicles Market in October 2023 falls for the 15th month in a row, with 24,911 new registrations (-12.7%). YTD figures at 259,727 are down 27.9% from the previous year. Chevrolet falls 1 spot into 2nd, almost halving its year-on-year sales (-45.5%).
Market Trend and Outlook
Despite reaching a new all-time high in 2022, the Chilean Vehicle Market in October 2023 falls for the 15th month in a row, with 24,911 new registrations (-12.7%). YTD figures at 259,727 are down 27.9% from the previous year.
Looking at cumulative data up to October 2023 brand-wise, Toyota becomes the new best seller with 22,008 (-20.7%), followed by Chevrolet at 17,665 (-45.5%) in front of Hyundai at 17,065 (-14.3%) and Kia -up 4 spots- with 14,870 sales (-11.8%).
Peugeot rises 2 spots in 5th position with 14,634 sales (-14.8%), followed by Suzuki at 14,325 sales (-23.2%), Nissan at 12,666 (-2.2%) and Ford -up 6 spots- with 10,707 new registrations (-3.3%)
MG falls 3 spots into 9th position with 9,695 sales (-45.8%), followed by Mitsubishi -up 1 spot- closing the top 10 with 9,056 new registrations (-33.7%).
Looking at specific models the Toyota Hilux is the best seller with a 5.5% year-on-year growth in sales, followed by the Mitsubishi L200 down 43.6%.
Medium-Term Market Trend
In the last decade the Chilean vehicles market has had many ups and downs. From 2011 to 2015 the market fluctuated in the low 200k range. First rising to a maximum of 263,146 in 2013 to then fall down to a minimum of 211,810 in 2015. By the end of 2016 the vehicles market in Chile had already gained 9.0% compared to the previous year, with 2017 following suit growing 52.5% and 2018 reporting a peak of 372,646 sales. 2019 marked the end of this 3 year uptrend, with sales reaching 369,864 but the end of the year.
The arrival of the pandemic in 2020 caused the market to drop 29.9% back down to 259,299.
It is clear that the issues faced during the pandemic weren’t due to structural problems in the industry, in fact, in 2021 the market reported an amazing growth, gaining 60.3% up to an all time high of 415,612 sales. The positive momentum continued into 2022, that totaled 425,856 new registrations, a 2.5% growth from the prior year. Despite the new-all time high, the second half of the 2022 strongly underperformed, with the last 5 months of the year posting losses.
A combination of factors are behind the current industry struggle: the disruption in the global supply chain caused by a lack of raw materials, in particular for the production of microchips and Governments push towards Evs, an expensive alternative for low income consumers. At the moment affects from this last point are very mild, due to the low adoption of BEVs in South American countries (0.45% of total market share in South America).
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands and Top 10 Manufacturers Group.
