Despite showing a drop of 1.1% compared to August, vehicle production in Brazil – which includes cars, light commercial vehicles, buses and trucks – performed well in September, with growth of 10.2% compared to the same month last year. According to a report released this Wednesday afternoon (7) by the National Association of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (Anfavea), this was the best month of September since 2014, with a production of 268.3 thousand vehicles.
In the year to date, between January and September, the increase is 8.7% compared to the same period last year, with almost 2.2 million units produced. However, warns the association, of the 173 thousand more units produced compared to last year, only 50 thousand were manufactured entirely in the country. The rest occurred under the CKD (Completely Knocked Down) and SKD (Semi Knocked Down) regimes, which allow the final assembly of cars in Brazil.
In addition to the growth in production, in September, the sector also presented the highest volume of registrations for the month since 2014, with 281.4 thousand units sold. This was mainly driven by car sales, which increased 22.5% in the year.
“This month of September was the highest volume since 2014. We haven’t had such a good September in a long time,” said the president of Anfavea, Igor Calvet, in a press conference held today.
While there was an increase in production and registrations, exports continued to fall, without showing any sign of recovery. For six months, according to Anfavea, exports have been stagnating at a monthly level below 40 thousand units, mainly because of the situation in Argentina and the loss of share of Brazilian vehicles to Chinese and Mexican models.
In September, 39.8 thousand units were exported, an increase of 0.1% over August and a drop of 24.2% over September of last year.
“We depend a lot on Argentina and 96% of this drop can be explained by the drop [in exports] to Argentina,” said Calvet.
Furthermore, he highlighted, vehicle imports have been increasing, with growth of 34.9% compared to September last year. "Imports have grown 30% year-to-date [for the year] and our exports have grown 20%. So, we are not only increasing what we buy from abroad, but also reducing our sales abroad", highlighted the entity's president.
Review
With the good performance observed throughout this year in both sales and production, Anfavea decided to review the sector's closure projections for the end of 2026.
The association's expectation is that Brazil will end the year with 3.1 million registered vehicles, a level that has not been reached since 2014. If this is confirmed, Anfavea estimates that growth will be 15.2% in relation to 2025, above the 2.7% that had been predicted at the beginning of this year. This advance, says the association, should be driven by the automobile and light commercial segments, whose growth expectation rose to 16.4%.
Production, in turn, should also register a positive performance, but still far from the potential of domestic demand. The growth projection went from 3.7% to 6.7%, with a volume exceeding 2.8 million units, which would be the best result since 2019.
On the other hand, the heavy vehicle segment, made up of trucks and buses, is still expected to end the year with a 6.5% drop in registrations. According to projections, exports are also expected to have a negative performance, with a drop of 17.7%.
