The US car market should see a modest recovery next year, with sales possibly reaching between 11.5 million and 12 million vehicles, General Motors Co (GM) chief executive Fritz Henderson said on Thursday.
“[The year] 2010 will be a modest improvement,” Henderson told reporters at a business roundtable in Orlando, Florida.
Henderson said the US market this year was on track to reach 10 million to 10.5 million unit sales and on track for a continued gradual recovery.
In a subsequent interview with CNBC, Henderson said he expected that 2011 sales would rise to around 13 million units, near the level of sales last year before the sharp downturn began.
The GM executive repeated a forecast that the company, which is undergoing restructuring coming out of bankruptcy, expected to achieve its break-even point for the US market by next year.
“Break even ... would be a 10 million-unit market and an 18 percent market share. We’re going to achieve that goal. We don’t need the market to be 14 million or 15 million [units] to make money,” Henderson said.
Speaking from Orlando on CNBC, Henderson said he sees a more gradual increase in US auto sales than his counterpart at Ford Motor Co, Alan Mulally, who earlier this week said 2011 US sales could reach 14.5 million units.
Henderson said a figure of near 13 million to 13.5 million units “would be closer to where we would see it at this point.”
Henderson also said China would “very much” be a priority market for the company this year, adding, “not just for GM.”
“The China market this year will be over 11 million units,” he said, adding that this compared with just 2.3 million in 2001.
He recalled that back in 2002 he had predicted the Chinese car market would outstrip the US market in a decade, but said the Chinese market had grown faster than he had expected.
GM said in July that it expected more than 10 percent growth in its vehicle sales this year in China, its second-biggest market after the US.
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