What people drive in Shanghai? this guy counted 1,000 cars on the street

TLDW

60% EV, top three on the road, Taxi (Roewe), BYD and Buick.

Not surprising about Buick. They have a strong brand cache there due to history, not sure if it's waining by now.

Yeah, numbers look about right for my daily experience. Nobody beats Roewe due to their complete takeover of the taxi fleets (which used to be almost entirely VW, BTW). But BYD, Buick, and Tesla battling out for the top 3 of private ownership definitely tracks. VW needs to get their ass in gear, though, otherwise they are going to very rapidly fall out of the top 10, let alone the top 5. Most of the VWs on the streets now are older gas models - they aren't doing well at all in EVs.

BUICK???

Yeah the only place I see more Buicks than Toyota lol and coming from a smaller asian country my first time seeing a Buick (Regal) in the metal was in China in 2015.

Back in 2016-2017 when I went to Shanghai, most taxis were VW. And mostly Hyundai sonata from early 2000s in Guangzhou

In my recent trips, I don’t see new Buicks anymore. Only older GL8 vans

I think they’re mostly present in the corporate car fleet market with cars like the GL8. Gl8 was an iconic model in China, like the VW Lavida, Audi A6L, Toyota Land Cruisers, etc. If your company had a GL8 to transport guests/foreign customers, it was deemed prestigious. When I first came to China for my interview (2023), I was picked up from the airport on a GL8 lol. Having said that, the company replaced it with the Zeekr 009… But I’ve hardly ever come across regular people driving around in new Buicks that they purchased with their own money. You see older ones, like the Buick Regal, but rarely any of the new models in the sedan, crossover, and SUV segments. Don’t know about official sales figures. But this is what I see every day as someone who drives about 55km daily for my daily commute, and 300-400km on Sunday for recreation.

Taxis are very regional fwiw. In Guangzhou, they're all GAC. In Chongqing, they're Changans and Maples (Geely).

Buick is still there but I don't think they're doing well. They already lost their dominant position on business MPV's.

Buick is basically a Chinese brand over there. The joint venture that makes them is SAIC-GM…not GM-SAIC. :)

Thanks

Buicks everywhere in Shanghai/Zhejiang/Jiangsu. Not so much in many other parts of China.

VW and Buick have massive plants in Shanghai. Pretty sure it's the cheapest place in China to buy one.

And in Beijing the brand is literally Beijing. Interestingly, for zhengzhou city, their taxis are xpeng. The brand is from guangzhou so it is really odd when I see it

Xi'an has a lot of BYD taxis, or at least they did at one point. Beijing taxis used to be dominated by Hyundai, but not anymore.

This was a very interesting video. It shows that EVs are taking over. Even in my recent trip to the UK I seen a lot of EVs on the road. But the dominant EV in the UK was VW.

Remember when GM went bankrupt, and had to get rid of brands like Saturn, Hummer, and Saab? Those were the easy cuts, but the harder choice thru had to get rid of either Pontiac or Buick, and they cut Pontiac in large part because they sold a ton of Buicks in China. There was also a story about long ago when GM was setting up its JV with SAIC, and tried to sell the cones on Chevy or Cadillac, only to have SAIC come back and specifically request Buick as the brand they want to build in China.

Not surprising about Buicks in Shanghai at least. The local carmakers have outsized marketshare around the cities where they are built, if only because the taxi fleet will be from the local car company. Lots of VWs and FAW cars up north, lots of BAIC in Beijing, lots of Changan in Chongqing, GACs in Guangzhou, Geelys in Hangzhou, and so on. Shanghai is thus gonna be filled with Buicks and VWs. In recent years the only cars you will see commonly everywhere would be BYDs.

The automotive industry actually relies heavily on car manufacturers and dealership networks. Tesla, Roewe, and Buick all have factories in Shanghai, and they have also opened more 4S stores in the surrounding areas. There are more Toyota and Aion dealerships in Guangzhou (since GAC is based there), while Xiaomi Auto dealerships are more densely concentrated in Beijing than in other regions.