South Africa welcomed 6 new Chinese car brands in 2024 – But don’t expect it to continue

South Africa welcomed no less than six different Chinese automakers in 2024, and it’s a trend that might turn out to be unsustainable should it continue.

While it’s true that a few brands such as Chery and GWM have gone on to become massive hits, the reality is that only so many people can afford new cars, and the market is already saturated with dozens of companies all trying to compete for a slice of the action.

A kitchen with too many chefs

The defining trend of 2024 has arguably been the explosion of new Chinese manufacturers in South Africa, such as Dayun, Foton, GAC Motors, Jetour, Jaecoo, and LDV.

This is on top of another three brands that launched in 2023, including BYD, Maxus, and Omoda.

Altogether, South Africa now has 14 different makes from the People’s Republic, with the remainder consisting of BAIC, Chery, GWM, Haval, and JAC.

To put this in perspective, there are roughly 50 different carmakers in the country, excluding medium and heavy commercial brands, so Chinese names now make up 28% of the market – 12% of which arrived in the last year.

The reason this is important is because South Africa is actually a very small market by international standards, given how little of the population earns enough to afford a car.

Over 60 million people currently live within our borders, but only 7.1 million are registered to pay personal income tax, according to Daily Investor.

Of that total, it is estimated that just 3 million people pay 90% of the country’s income tax, which highlights how little purchasing power the population has as a whole.

This means that 50 different carmakers are competing for a small percentage of the nation’s spenders, and it’s not as if the market is evenly split between all of these names.

Toyota is by far and away the largest auto company in South Africa, selling 12,108 units in a single month.

To put this in perspective, the industry sold a total of 48,585 units in November 2024, meaning that Toyota has a 24.9% market share.

The other top five marques also have a significant share including VW (13%), Suzuki (12%), Ford (6%), and Hyundai (6%).

In other words, five companies represent 62% of a small market, meaning the remaining badges have their work cut out for them if they want to succeed here.

Admittedly, Chery and GWM are doing well and now consistently place in the top 10, but this is actually a problem for other Chinese automakers.

While Dayun and BYD have their own niche as fully-electric stables; Chery, GWM, Omoda, GAC, Jetour, and BAIC are all competing in the crossover and SUV space, and the likely outcome is that all these companies will start eating into each other’s sales as they fight for the same customers.

LDV, Foton, and JAC also have an uphill battle trying to convince South Africa’s loyal bakkie supporters to part with established favourites like the Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, and Isuzu D-Max, which sell in the thousands each month while every other pickup manages a few hundred purchases at most.

The inundation of new brands in South Africa, Chinese or otherwise, speaks to a wider issue that our market is spoilt for choice and heavily saturated given how few people are able to buy a brand-new car to begin with.

It remains to be seen whether the country will be able to support even more manufacturers going forward.