This is how much money carmakers earn per second

Monday, 24 August 2020

The T-Roc is here - for good, this time.

The automotive industry is pretty big. In fact, some 92 million cars were produced globally in 2019 alone and, across the top five manufacturers alone, gross revenue for the same period was just under a trillion American dollars.

That’s big money but what’s more impressive is the revenue-per-second metric. Parts Geek broke last year’s revenue down to the smallest point and found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Volkswagen Group was the highest earner, pulling US$9202.88 (NZ$14k) each second. VAG does have a bit of a leg up on its competitors, given it owns a number of brands like Lamborghini, Audi, Skoda, Seat and Porsche, among others.

Out of the Volkswagen Group brands, it’s VW itself that really pulls sales, notching up 3.6 million sales worldwide last year. Sales revenue was an appropriate US$99b (NZ$151b) but, as many VW vehicles are affordable cars for the people, average revenue per vehicle was only US$26,960 (NZ$41.2k).

The Volkswagen Group was the top earner for car brands last year, though that might not come as much of a surprise.

Compare that to Porsche’s 277k vehicle sales and $US29.2b (NZ$44.6b) revenue but average revenue of US$105,491 (NZ$161.4k). Or Bentley, which, despite only selling 12,000 vehicles last year, made US$195,480 (NZ$299k) per vehicle for a total revenue of US$2.3 billion.

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Despite only operating with four global brands, Toyota is right behind VW in the sales charts.

All in, Volkswagen sold just shy of 11 million vehicles over 2019.

Despite only producing vehicles globally under its own brand, Lexus, Diahatsu and Hino, Toyota isn’t far behind VW with a per-second monetary figure of US$8946.58 (NZ$13.6k).

Further putting Toyota’s market might into perspective is the fact that it earned nearly double that of main rival Honda, which made US$4537.67 (NZ$6942.84) per second.

Toyota’s various brands delivered nearly 9 million vehicles last year and pushed the Japanese marque into the top ten most valuable brands overall last year, the only automaker to do so.

Ford was the third most earning carmaker last year, pulling US$4946.58 (NZ$7568.49) and, despite being crowned the most valuable carmaker in the world (according to stock prices), Tesla only earned US$780.06 per second (NZ$1193.53), less than Subaru’s US$904.05 (NZ$1383.24) per second figure.

General Motors earned more than FCA, US$4351.76 ($NZ6658.39) to US$3,856.10 ($NZ5900.01) and BMW earned a smidge more than Mercedes-Benz with $US3708.99 (NZ$5674.92) versus US$3316.84 (NZ$5074.91).

While 2020 will present quite different numbers primarily due to Covid-19, the new sales landscape will make it even more interesting to see which brands emerge on top.