Taiwan’s Automobile Sales by Segment: SUVs Increased 20%, While Passenger Cars Declined 10% in 2020

Taiwan’s automobile market expanded to 457,000 units in 2020, an increase of 4.0% over the previous year.

Passenger cars decreased 9.7% while SUVs increased 19.5% and premium brands rose 6.8%, indicating a shift in demand from passenger cars to SUVs and premium brands. Passenger car sales continued to decline, going down 9.7% to 112,000 units. The C segment, which is the best-selling passenger car segment, decreased only slightly, while the B and the D / large / luxury segments decreased over 20%. The B segment fell 20.2% to 32,000 units. The Toyota Yaris remained at the top of the segment with a 7.6% decrease to 11,000 units, while the Toyota Vios, ranked second in 2020, dropped 22.0% to 8,895 units. The C segment declined 2.6% to 71,000 units. Although the Toyota Corolla Altis maintained its top position in the 29,000-unit range, down 4.9%, sales began to decline. The Ford Focus maintained its second place with 14,000 units, up 25.1%, while the Nissan Sentra, which was fully-redesigned in October 2020, rose 2.2-fold to 5,002 units, rising from 9th to 3rd place. D / large / luxury segment went down 22.7% to 6,497 units. In this segment, the segment-leader Toyota Camry fell 24.5% to 4,102 units.

SUVs continued to expand in 2020, rising 19.5% to 148,000 units. Of which, small SUVs rose 17.8% to 43,000 units. Although the top two models declined, the Nissan Kicks decreasing 6.8% to 16,000 units and the Honda HR-V falling 13.4% to 8,000 units, models launched in 2019 and 2020 pushed up sales. Specifically, the Mazda CX-30, which was launched in October 2019, ranked third with 3,761 units, the Suzuki Jimny, which was reintroduced in May 2019, ranked fourth with 2,905 units, and the Hyundai Venue, which was launched in September 2020, ranked fifth with 2,722 units. Sales of medium and large SUVs increased 20.3% to 105,000 units, showing an increase of more than 20%. The market-leader Toyota RAV4 increased 7.2% to 32,000 units. The Ford Kuga, which was fully redesigned in June 2020, ranked third with 12,000 units, up 2.7-fold. The Corolla Cross’s sales target for 2021 is expected to be 40,000 units, possibly becoming the best-selling model in Taiwan.

Premium brands rose 6.8% to 97,000 units. Although the ranking of the top three brands has not changed, BMW, ranked third in 2020, increased 7.9% to 18,000 units.