Demand in most parts of the world will continue to be soft while the US will continue its slow growth, according to General Motors’ president Dan Ammann.
“It’s been more downsides than upsides this year,” Ammann said in a Reuters interview. “I’d say the US has been a little better than we’d planned, but South America has been more challenging and Europe has been a little slower.”
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Competition remained intense in China, he said, and while growth was slowing it was still a “strong market that is simply maturing.”
Ammann said that GM was still on track to make a profit in Europe in 2016 for the first time in a decade but the region had been “a little softer” in the later part of 2014 than GM had predicted six months ago.
The most difficult region to do business was South America, said Ammann, singling out Venezuela because of its unpredictably caused by fluctuating currency rates.
New vehicle sales in the US are expected to reach 16.4m this year, up from 15.6m last year and the industry is predicting sales of 17m next year.
“We’ve been on a slow, steady recovery out of a very deep trough a few years back,” Ammann said. “I don’t see it growing enormously from here, but it doesn’t feel overly stretched to me either.”
