Cars assembled in Ecuador went from a 10% share of sales to 15% in the first half of 2023.
Referential image of cars from a Chinese brand.
Cars of Chinese origin are the best sellers in Ecuador, but in the first half of 2023, they reported a drop of 4.5 percentage points in participation in vehicle sales compared to the same period in 2022.
And it has been the cars assembled in Ecuador that have gained that space.
Thus, cars of Chinese origin went from having a 39.4% share of sales in the first half of 2022, to 34.9% of the market in the first half of 2023, according to data from the Chamber of Industry Automotive (Cinae).
In the first half of 2023, 24,444 vehicles of Chinese origin were sold in Ecuador, that is, a drop of 0.08% compared to the same period in 2022.
While the participation of vehicles assembled in Ecuador went from 10% of total sales to 15%.
According to Cinae, 10,503 assembled cars were sold in Ecuador in the first half of 2023, the highest figure since 2020. This is a 69% sales increase.
The best-selling car in Ecuador during June 2023 was a pickup truck assembled in the country, according to Cinae.
Sales Affected by Policy
A total of 69,947 cars were sold during the first half of 2023 in Ecuador. Thus, the market closed the semester with sales growth of 11% compared to the same period in 2022, according to the Association of Automotive Companies of Ecuador (Aeade).
Sales were higher because, in June 2022, the sector had a sharp drop in sales due to the national strike. In addition, the dealerships had supply problems, due to a logistics crisis that made importing cars more expensive.
Aeade highlights that sales growth is close to that of record years, such as 2011 and 2018, although the pace slowed down at the end of the semester, “due to the political and socio-economic situation ” in the country, after the ‘mutual death’.
And the prices?
During June 2023, Ecuadorians preferred to buy light vehicles with prices between USD 28,000 and USD 30,000, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service collected by Cinae.
20 % of light vehicles sold in the first semester were in this price range.
And, in contrast, only 0.9% of light car sales; that is, 99 vehicles, corresponded to units with prices above USD 100,000.
