There is a rumor that has been circulating on the Internet for a long time, that is, Koreans are too patriotic, generally only buy their own country's cars, like other countries' car brands, sales in South Korea are dismal, this rumor is also used by many Chinese people to criticize their compatriots, you see how Koreans can only buy their own country's cars, we Chinese can't do it? Do you still think that the imported car of the joint venture car is better, is it the knee rooted?
In fact, if you look at the sales ranking of the Korean car market, you will find that although Koreans do prefer local cars, they will also buy Japanese, American, German, French and other car brands, especially German luxury brands like BBA, which are also popular in South Korea.
In fact, compared to Koreans, Japanese people seem to love their own country's car brands more, and the 2023 Japanese car sales list is released, and the top ten are all Japanese brands. Are the Japanese really more patriotic than the Koreans?
As the world's fourth largest auto market, Japan has 4 million+ new car sales every year, but its local brand sales account for more than 90% all year round. I carefully analyzed the environment of the Japanese automotive market and came up with three reasons:
The first point is that Japan's local *** is indeed very developed.
Unlike domestic cars that have only begun to really rise in the past two years, Japan has made great progress after World War II, in the 90s of the last century, it even swept the global auto market, and the American local brands in North America have been defeated, although for various reasons, the dominance of Japanese cars in the world has declined, but Japan is still very strong, and in 2022, Japanese cars will produce about 23.53 million new cars worldwide, accounting for about 27 of the world's 85.02 million production and sales7%。A few years ago, there is indeed a big gap between our domestic cars and joint venture cars, so it is understandable that Chinese people do not support domestic cars, but Japan is different, local car brands are so strong, why choose foreign car brands?
The second point is that long-term local brand protection has cultivated Japanese consumption habits.
In January 2016, Ford announced that it would withdraw from the Japanese market by the end of the year, and its spokesperson explained that it was JapanToo closed and xenophobic, so that Ford wants to continue to make profits in the local area has no way out. Although Japan has zero tariffs on imported cars, in the past few years, Japan has been quite exclusive to foreign brand cars.
For a long time, Japan has limited the number of imported cars, before 1970, the tariff on imported models is very high, and unlike our China, the larger the displacement, the heavier the tax, Japan is the smaller the displacement of imported cars, the higher the tariff, in order to protect the domestic small displacement models. In addition, foreign capital could not invest in the Japanese auto industry, and these policies were not lifted until around 1980, but the Japanese people had developed the habit of buying Japanese cars under long-term local protection.
The third point is that Japanese cars are more suitable for local conditions.
Japan is a small land area and densely populated, especially in Tokyo, Osaka and other cities are one of the most densely populated areas, in Japan, the best selling model is K-car, which occupies one-third of the market share in Japan, K-car consumption tax is 2%, normal car is 3%, weight tax is 4,400 yen a year, regular car is 6,300 yen, in addition to insurance is cheaper, and there is no need to provide a parking space certificate. And which foreign car brand that makes K-Car dares to compete with local Japanese brands?
In addition, Japan, which has experienced a loss of 20 years and is about to usher in a lost 30 years, has a limited increase in national income for many years, and in such a situation, Japanese cars that are fuel-efficient and stable and cheap to maintain are the first choice of the Japanese, and it is naturally difficult for foreign car brands to compete with local brands.
Japan is very important to Japan, more than 60% of the world's top 500 companies in Japan are automobiles and automobile supporting enterprises, every year, the automobile industry directly provides 5.42 million jobs for Japan, therefore, Japan also encourages its own people to buy Japanese cars.
These reasons may explain why the top 10 best-selling car brands in Japan are all Japanese brands. With BYD and other Chinese auto brands entering Japan, it is still unknown what kind of sales results Chinese new energy vehicles can achieve in Japan. We'll see.