Vehicle Assembly Grows 6 Percent in June: AMIA

Light vehicle manufacturing in June 2022 grew by 6 percent when compared to the same month in 2021, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The automotive industry is recovering with 285,318 vehicles produced in Mexico last month of the year, while car exports grew by 1.4 percent for a total of 237,674 units, reports the Mexican Association of the Automotive Industry (AMIA). 

Despite steady improvement over the past few months, these production and export levels are still far from the 2019 numbers, with vehicle assembly being 16.8 percent less than before the pandemic. The sector is also facing new challenges. “The possibility of a recession in the US economy poses another risk to an early recovery of the industry. June vehicle production ties two consecutive months of year-over-year increases, while cumulative exports match last year's levels,” said Fausto Cuevas, Director, AMIA.

During the month, production capacity also increased by 78.2 percent, maintaining the upward trajectory it took in recent months, said Cuevas. JAC increased its production capacity by 500 percent, Volkswagen by 250 percent, Mercedes Benz by 78.5 percent, KIA by 37 percent and Ford by 12 percent. 

The report comes shortly after INA forecasted that Mexico would produce 3.47 million vehicles in 2022, which means a 16.53 percent recovery in comparison to last year. This would represent 68 percent of Mexico’s installed production capacity, as the country has a total capacity to produce over 5.32 million units. However, this depends on many external factors such as raw material and microchip availability and vehicle demand, as reported by MBN. 

The Mexican Association of Automotive Distributors (AMDA) reported that 90,368 vehicles were sold in Mexico during June for a 1.9 percent increase year over year. “With these figures, the light vehicle market in June was higher than AMDA's expectation of 86,685 units. The estimate showed a percentage difference of 4.1 percent with respect to the observed figure of 90,368 units. This level of sales is still below sales in the same month of 2019, being 15.4 percent lower” said Guillermo Rosales, President, AMDA. 

Total vehicle sales during the first six months of 2022 were 0.4 percent smaller than 2021’s. In 1H21, Mexican dealers sold 518,424 vehicles but they sold 520,524 in 1H22. During this period, the Japanese automotive company Nissan led in sales with 13,975 units, followed by General Motors and Volkswagen with 12,712 and 11,800 cars sold, respectively, as reported by MBN.