I’m finding it more difficult to keep myself busy/amused during this lockdown and today decided to take a look at the UK car sales during 2020. Figures for the complete year have yet to be published so I had to settle for the 11 months from Jan to Nov.
Car manufacturers have clearly suffered a battering in 2020 – especially Hyundai by the look of things. You can see from the following table that Hyundai have suffered worse that other leading brands. I was also surprised to see that KIA now outsold Hyundai by 16% in 2019 and 51% in 2020. Four years ago Kia sales were well behind Hyundai. My dealership claims that the surge by KIA is down to the Niro which easily outsells the Sportage and their other SUV’s. Hyundai have suffered the worst percentage loss of sales in 2020 than any other brand in the UK and now languish at tenth position in the UK league table. 5 years ago they were eighth and KIA was not in the top 10.
I was not able to find detailed information on each model but being a Niro owner I wondered how it fared compared with the Ioniq which both use the same platform.
I was not able to compare UK sales for each model, but found a chart on the web for the total sales in Europe for the Ioniq and Niro
These were :-
Ionic Niro
2017 22,009 33,972
2018 31,779 44,225
2019 31,978 57,337
2020 N/A N/A
When Hyundai launched the new hybrid platform, sales of SUV’s in Europe lagged behind the sales of Golf/i30 sized hatchbacks – hence decided to build the Ionic hatchback. KIA however, decided that the trend would be small SUV’s and therefore clothed the platform with a larger SUV body. It would appear that KIA won this lottery. I guess the comparison would be even more stark if KIA had been able to produce all the cars on order. Some Niro models, especially the plug-in hybrid, have a 12 month waiting list.
Hope for Hyundai must lie with the hybrid Kona which is a great car and selling well. I think it now outsells its sister – the KIA Stonic. In addition the Hyundai i10 outsells its sister - the KIA Picanto - and is a better equipped and better looking car.
