Audi CEO Rupert Stadler has told reporters that the brand saw ‘good showroom traffic’ in China in August, echoing remarks made by other company bosses that China’s automotive sector may have weathered the worst of the country’s recent economic volatility. Some analysts have been concerned that recent sharp falls on Chinese stockmarkets could result in a rapid downturn in car demand.
While some automakers have reported recent falls to sales, others have been more upbeat. In his latest remarks, Audi CEO Stadler suggested that trading conditions were good in August. “We have once again quite good showroom traffic, at least as much as August is concerned,” he said.
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However, he did not offer a forecast for sales for the year and said that people should ‘stay calm’ and “wait for the [China] undulation to subside.”
Audi first half sales in China were up by a modest 1.9% to 273,853. However, in June Audi sales declined by 5.8% to 47,831 cars delivered.
Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche has said this week that though growth in the Chinese economy and automobile market is slowing, Daimler still sold 53 percent more Mercedes models in August than it did in the same month last year. Dieter Zetsche told Bild am Sonntag that the company is targeting record sales of 300,000-plus vehicles in 2015.
“It’s not a crisis; the financial market reaction and all these gloomy forecasts are overdone,” Zetsche told the newspaper.
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