Thailand’s new vehicle market expanded by 5% to 50,079 units in June 2025, just up from the depressed year-earlier sales of 47,662 units, according to the latest wholesale data released by the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI).
June was the third consecutive month of growth for the market, after two years of sharp declines, which have been blamed mainly on tight lending criteria by banks and auto finance companies in response to sharp rises in non-performing loans (NPLs). This has left the country’s highly indebted consumers and small businesses struggling to access financing. Vehicle sales last year fell by 26% to a 15-year low of 572,675 units.
The market last month continued to be driven by strong sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), mainly by Chinese automakers, as they continued to ramp up local production to compensate for their earlier imports under the Thai government’s EV3.0 investment incentive programme. Sales of domestic pickup trucks continued to fall however. In the first half of 2025, the Thai vehicle market declined by just under 2% to 302,694 units from 308,027 units in the same period last year.
Vehicle production in the country rose by 12% to 130,223 units in June, but was still down by almost 5% to 724,715 units in the first half of the year. Production for export fell by 8% to 475,013 units in the six-month period, reflecting sluggish overseas demand and rising global competition from Chinese automakers.
The Thai government last month indicated it was considering introducing scrappage incentives to encourage owners to trade in their old pickup trucks for new ones. Earlier this year the government launched a THB 5 billion loan-guarantee programme, which runs until the end of the year, to support pickup truck purchases by small and medium-sized businesses. So far, this has not had a significant impact on pickup truck sales.
The FTI recently revised down its full-year vehicle output forecast to 1.4 million units, from the 1.5 million forecast earlier in the year.
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