General Motors’ 2021 retail sales in China remained flat at 2.9 million despite the industrywide chip shortage that hobbled car and light-truck production.
The results came on the back of robust sales at Wuling, the entry-level brand owned by SAIC-GM-Wuling, GM’s light-vehicle joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp.
In 2021, deliveries at Wuling — minibuses, compact pickups and subcompact EVs — jumped 28 percent to exceed 1.4 million, according to GM’s China unit. The latest sales include some 400,000 Wuling-badged four-seat subcompact full electric vehicles.
At SAIC-GM, GM’s passenger-vehicle partnership with SAIC, Cadillac sales edged up 1.4 percent to a record high of 233,117.
But Buck deliveries dropped 7.3 percent to around 820,000 while Chevrolet sales slipped 21 percent to roughly 230,000.
Deliveries at Baojun, a market-entry car brand under the SAIC-GM-Wuling joint venture, plunged 48 percent to some 210,000.
In 2022, GM will introduce more than 20 new and refreshed models in China, GM China said.
The new models include the Cadillac Lyriq electric crossover, now being produced at SAIC-GM.
GM, China’s second-biggest foreign automaker after Volkswagen Group, didn’t disclose sales for the fourth quarter of 2021.
In 2020, GM’s China deliveries dropped 6.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.9 million.