Brazilian Vehicle Production in 2024
Brazilian vehicle production – Brazil surpassed Spain and returned to eighth place in the ranking of the largest vehicle producing countries in 2024, one more than in 2023. Last year, 2.55 million cars, light commercial vehicles, trucks and buses were manufactured here, a 9.7% increase over the previous year.
The country’s rise and the 2024 figures were released on January 14 by Anfavea. Márcio de Lima Leite, president of the entity, however, stressed that vehicle production could be even higher if exports performed better and, at the same time, imports did not “steal” consumers from national products.
Although the upward trend of the last four years has been solidified — in 2020, nearly 2 million vehicles were assembled — vehicle production has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
In 2018 and 2019, the last year before the emergence of Covid-19, the country had manufactured around 2.9 million units, a volume that Anfavea believes can be recovered by 2025.
With growth of around 14.1%, the domestic market was largely responsible for the acceleration of assembly lines last year. The approximately 2.63 million units sold kept Brazil as the sixth largest market in the world, behind Germany (3.2 million) and immediately ahead of the United Kingdom, where 2.3 million vehicles were sold.
Despite celebrating the advance in domestic vehicle production, the president of the entity warned of the even greater evolution seen in the post-pandemic period in countries with similar consumption profiles and types of products.
In particular, India, which produced 5.6 million vehicles in 2024, and Mexico, 4.3 million, moved up to fourth and fifth positions in the global ranking, respectively, ahead of South Korea (4.2 million) and Germany (4.1 million).
In 2024, alongside the weak performance of foreign trade, imports were the biggest obstacle to Brazilian production, according to Leite. Nearly 467 thousand vehicles imported from other countries were traded on the domestic market, 32.5% more than in the previous year (352 thousand) and almost double the amount recorded in 2022 (273 thousand).
The share of imported vehicles in vehicle licensing increased by 2.5 percentage points compared to 2023: from 15.2% to 17.7%.
The biggest concern expressed by the president of Anfavea is the fact that a large part of the imports come from outside Mercosur and Mexico, especially from China. If in 2023, they represented 25%, last year they reached 38%.
Products imported by companies that do not produce vehicles in Brazil, most of which are electrified, accounted for 28% of the total imported, exactly double the amount in 2023 and almost five times larger than just two years ago.
Anfavea has asked the government for greater protection against imports, such as the immediate, non-scalable reinstatement of the full 35% import tax rate.
According to Leite, with the current level of taxes, the country failed to collect something close to R$6 billion last year. “Imagine this amount invested in universities, in the training of qualified workers… We are talking about protecting labor and industry,” he said.
Leite also argues that a fully open market could cause the automotive industry to miss out on opportunities to develop new technologies.
By: George Guimarães (Journalist)
