How Has The North American Automobile Market Fared Over The Last Few Years?

The automobile market has seen a slowdown over the last couple of years.  The 4 big players in the automobile market (GM, Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen) have seen fluctuating volumes in the North American Market over the years. Their consolidated volume sold was 10.12 million units in 2015 which increased to 10.79 million units in 2016. The consolidated volume started falling post that, and reached 9.7 million units in 2019. Over the years GM has maintained the highest sales volume among all the 4 players in the North American market.

View our dashboard analysis – North American Automobile Market – to understand how it has has grown over recent years.

Market Size:

• The top players in the North American Automobile space generated over $327.1 billion in revenues over 2019, posting a y-o-y growth of about 0.2%, as the global auto slowdown affected the Top line.
• GM leads the market with about $106.4 billion in revenues over 2019, closely followed by Ford at $98.1 billion. The global leaders Toyota and Volkswagen posted revenues of $75.1 billion and $47.5 billion, respectively.

Market Growth:

• Volkswagen automobile revenues in North America registered the highest growth (among top players) of 10.7% in 2019 and also overall in the last 4 years at 21%.
• Meanwhile, Toyota’s growth rate was the closest to Volkswagen as it registered 17.7% growth over the last 4 years.
• Ford showed a continuous and steady positive growth of 7% over the last 4 years as it chases down GM, while GM’s 2019 revenue remained nearly flat compared to 2015.

Closer look at the volume trends for top players in the North American Automobile Market:

• GM leads the North American automobile market with respect to volume sales, with about 3.2 million units sold in 2019.
• Meanwhile, Ford and Toyota both sold about 2.8 million units in 2019.
• Volkswagen just sold 958K units in 2019, but its volume sold in North America also registered the highest growth (among the top 4 players) by 3.6% in 2019 and also overall in the last 4 years at 1.8%.
• Toyota also registered a positive volume growth at 0.8% over the last 4 years, but the American Giants, Ford and GM, saw a fall in volume by 10% and 4.3% over the last 4 years, respectively.

Conclusion

• Global headlines in the beginning of 2020 have been dominated by the onset of coronavirus in China, with it spreading to various countries across the globe.
• The panic has spooked the equity markets with fears of a further global slowdown, which has, in turn, led to a further fall in sales volume in the automobile sector.
• If the virus is not curtailed in a reasonable time we expect it to affect the automobile industry negatively.

See all Trefis Price Estimates and Download Trefis Data here

What’s behind Trefis? See How It’s Powering New Collaboration and What-Ifs For CFOs and Finance Teams | Product, R&D, and Marketing Teams