News 

According to a report released by Japanese Kyodo News Agency on Dec. 26th, a Nagoya, Japan-based market research firm “FOURIN” currently forecast that the global automobile sales in 85 major countries in 2015 will exceed 90 million units of vehicles for the first time. Boosted by the strong performance of Chinese and U.S. markets, as well as the recovery of Southern American countries like Brazil, the global automobile sales grew 3.8% over last year to 90.3 million units of vehicles.  

The firm also forecast that the largest automobile market, China, is expected to grow 8.9% to 25.7 million units of vehicles (with an upward-moving trend). The U.S. is expected to increase the interest rate and the automobile sales will slight grow 2.4% to 16.8 million units of vehicles. In Japan, under the influence of the increasing tax on mini car models, the sales are expected to drop by 7.5% to 4.9 million units of vehicles.

Brazil will gradually get out of the recession resulted from inflations and the sales are expected to grow 3.9% to 3.6 million units of vehicles. 10 countries in Southern America incl. Argentina will also say goodbye to the decline of 12.5% last year and grow 4.1% to 5.42 million units of vehicles. India is also very likely to welcome the economic recovery again and its sales will grow 3% to 3.4 million units of vehicles. In 18 countries in Western Europe like UK and Germany, the sales are expected to grow 1.8% to 14.12 million units of vehicles in total. As for Russia, its sales are forecast to decline 7.5% to 2.45 million units due to the deteriorating relationships with Ukraine, the U.S., and other European countries.

As the recovery of developed countries supports the entire automobile market, it is expected that the global automobile sales in 2014 will grow 2.4% to 87 million units of vehicles. Toyota and Volkswagen are both struggling for the place of world’s no. 1 car sales record. FOURIN, however, forecasts that Toyota will be in the lead by very narrow margin.