2022 car sales dip and the shifting market for brands
Passenger cars and light commercial vehicles sold in 2022 fell by 58.8 percent from the previous year, totaling 687,370 units, according to the Automobile Manufacturers Committee of the AEB. The downturn set a stark baseline for the year and underscored broader changes in the regional auto landscape.
From February 2022 onward, the market began to evolve rapidly. European and Japanese brands, saddled with surplus inventory, exited the market, creating room for Chinese brands to gain a foothold. The shift signaled a new balance of power in consumer preference and supply chain dynamics across North America and Europe, shaping what brands could compete effectively in the coming years.
When focusing specifically on passenger cars (excluding commercial vehicles) for the full year 2022, sales by several brands reached notably low levels. The list below highlights brands with the smallest total volumes for that year:
- Jaguar: 124 units, down seventy six percent from 2021
- Cadillac: 162 units, down ninety three percent
- Lifan: 166 units, down seventy three percent
- Chevrolet: 266 units, down seventy five percent
- Honda: 368 units, down seventy two percent
- GAC: 437 units, down fifty three percent
- Opel: 694 units, down sixty six percent
- MINI: 745 units, down seventy one percent
- Jeep: 756 units, down fifty three percent
- Infinity: 958 units, down fifty three percent
The Evolute brand, a Russian entrant with four hundred fifty two units, could also be noted among the smaller players. The modest volume partly reflects that the first models entered the market only in October 2022, limiting immediate impact on annual totals.
Looking at sales dynamics across the year, some brands experienced sharper declines than others. The most pronounced drops occurred with Cadillac, Lexus, Suzuki, and Land Rover, while Volvo, Toyota, Skoda, BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Audi also saw substantial reductions in volume against the prior year. In particular, Toyota and Skoda each logged around twenty thousand units for the year, both declines of roughly eighty percent. Volvo and BMW each registered counts near or just above two thousand, signaling a broad contraction across luxury and mainstream segments alike.
By the close of 2023, it was widely anticipated that several of the brands on the list would exit the regional market entirely, making room for newer entrants from China as well as domestic brands seeking to reestablish momentum after the 2022 downturn. This expected reshaping reflects a longer-term trend toward a more diverse brand lineup and a renewed emphasis on regional production and distribution strategies.
Source: AEB statistics
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