Singapore's top 10 car brands in the first half of 2022

SINGAPORE - 2022's passenger car sales in the first half of the year looks exactly like business as usual, but if you delve deeper then big changes are rumbling beneath the surface.

While the top five brands see no difference in ranking, Certificate of Entitlement (COE) quota cuts and record-breaking COE prices have altered buying behaviour considerably over the past year.

Smaller market, shrinking pie

2022 sees a considerably smaller car market, thanks to the dearth of COEs. 16,567 cars have been registered here in the first six months of the year, compared to the 25,777 in the same period in 2021 - that's a huge 38 per cent drop. Compared to 2021's total of 45,442, 2022 is expected to see only around 30,000 cars registered.

That springs from a shrinking quota of COEs (no COE = no car), which has translated into very high COE prices, a trend that continued on from the end of 2021 - as you can see in our handy charts. So far this year Category A has not dipped below $60k, and Category B and E, never less than $85k.

Of course the big thing here is that the latter have also reached record-breaking prices in July. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) introduced measures that could help smooth prices out a little, but it doesn't remove the reason the prices are so high in the first place.

And just as we've seen roughly decade ago, high COE prices means mainstream brands suffer and luxury brands prosper, because a S$160,000 Toyota Corolla makes less 'sense' than a $250,000 Mercedes-Benz. 'Prosper' since hardly any brands can expect to equal their previous sales with an overall market shrink of this magnitude.

The Podium : Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW

Toyota's back on top of the pile again in the first half of 2022, to nobody's surprise. While it's very clearly a mainstream brand, the Japanese maker has bolstered its full lineup of cars to quite crucially include medium-sized-and-up cars, which are also well-priced hybrids.

This includes cars such as the Toyota Camry Hybrid sedan, Harrier Hybrid SUV, and the Alphard Hybrid MPV. These will continue to sell relative to say, a Corolla Altis or Vios. That's because consumers are less likely to baulk at the price of a larger, more prestigious car, and they have the added benefit of a VES rebate. In fact, 66 per cent of the cars Toyota sold in Singapore this year were hybrids, compared to 34 per cent petrol-only cars.

Mercedes-Benz takes its usual, second-spot on the podium, but that rank alone does the German luxury brand no justice. Mercedes looks to be the only brand on track to at least roughly equal its 2021 sales, with 2,940 cars registered to date. It was also the only brand in the Top 10 to significantly gain market share - a considerable 3.6 per cent increase.

The interesting thing is that, as of July 2022, Mercedes actually hasn't launched that many new models here, other than its mainstay C-Class which took a bow in January 2022 and is electrified in all versions. But it does have an bigger electric onslaught prepped, with the EQB, EQV, EQE, and EQS electric vehicles all due for launch this year.

Is BMW the top EV brand in Singapore?

BMW soldiers on in third place, which becomes clear once you realise it hasn't launched any clearly strong sellers this year, other than the 2 Series Gran Coupe in Cat A friendly 216i guise, but that only appeared in June.

The interesting thing to note is that BMW is down on petrol car sales compared to the first and second half of 2021, but when it comes to electrified cars it's actually on the up: 575 in this period, compared to 414 in the second half of 2021.

That's not from lack of demand, either. Since BMW debuted the iX3 and iX electric SUV, and the i4 EV sedan, they've been consistently over-subscribed with BMW apparently selling them as fast as it can bring them in. Not surprising, considering they're impressive cars and cost-effective.

As before, the German brand closely beat out Honda in fourth, but keep in mind that it isn't really a surprise anymore and shows just how inverted our car market really is.

Lux makes bucks – and vice versa

Outside of the top five, we see just how tough the car market has become because of the COE situation. There's little hope for even these brands to replicate their sales of 2021, and every one of them have dipped registration figures and lost significant points of market share. In fact, competition is so tight, a mere 40 units spans the entire sixth to tenth position ranking.

On the other end of the scale, the boom in luxury car sales just shows how differently those buyers think compared to the mainstream.

Porsche's the standout here, having gone from 13th place in 2021 to eighth, and a large part of that success is due to the timely Taycan EV. It's become one of the brand's best-selling cars here with 118 sold.

Just as it was in the year Porsche outsold Honda (2013), it's the carmakers with serious brand equity that ride the high COE wave - like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. Need more evidence?

Super-luxury cars are doing better than ever and most are on track to equal their 2021 results. Bentley has sold an impressive 68 cars this year, Rolls-Royce an even crazier 54 - compare that to their total registrations in 2021 at 103 and 90 respectively. Meanwhile, Ferrari has registered 49 cars this year and if it doesn't exceed its previous year total of 61, we'd be quite surprised.

EV brands bubbling up

You're probably thinking - where's Tesla? The American EV maker made a big splash last year by jolting straight into the final Top 10 position. But we didn't expect that situation to last since it was really only a single-model brand (the Model 3 sedan) until now. Still, it's done quite well with 315 units registered to date, and that's good enough for 11th position.

Even more interesting is the 12th placed brand: Chinese EV maker BYD, with 300 units registered. Granted most of those are E6 MPVs for private-hire fleets, but the recently-launched Atto 3 SUV made a big splash here and with 100 orders on hand, it should make BYD's end-of-year results interesting.

That would not have been possible if BYD was a regular petrol car brand. Case in point, MG, the Chinese brand which has both its very bang-for-buck MG HS SUV (petrol) and the MG ZS EV. In 2021, it roughly sold twice as many petrol cars as EVs - and now situation is totally reversed.

MG registered 186 cars here, with 163 being electrified. Last year MG was the second-best selling EV brand (that we know of for sure*), but it does show that EVs are bucking the trend of 'high COE must have luxury brand', thanks to help from rebates and VES.

That's all for our mid-year roundup - we'll also be posting stories about electrified cars and body type, so stay tuned.

*Because the LTA lumps all electrified cars - EV, PHEV, hybrid - together in registration figures, we can't tell definitively unless a brand sells only EVs, as is the case with BYD and Tesla.

This article was first published in CarBuyer.