Skoda Kodiaq SUV discontinued in China

Skoda has just announced that it will stop distributing the Kodiaq SUV model in the Chinese market due to "sluggish" sales. These are signs that the car company from the Czech Republic may be preparing to say goodbye to the world's largest car market as the wave of Western manufacturers abandoning Chinese consumers is spreading due to lack of sales, due to pressure from domestic car companies.

At the press conference to launch the second generation Kodiaq globally, Skoda CEO Klaus Zellmer said that the company will not continue to distribute the new Kodiaq SUV to China and left open the possibility of completely stopping the distribution of all Skoda products to this market.

Skoda's decision to stop selling its flagship product line in China will cause a lot of turmoil but is a must when the company's sales are falling sharply. Previously, Autonews assessed that Skoda may have to say goodbye to the world's largest market so that the parent company Volkswagen can focus on its flagship products under the Volkswagen brand in the face of extremely fierce competition with local automakers.

According to Autonews, Skoda's sales in China have been falling continuously since 2019 and have dropped sharply in the past year.

Sales in the first eight months of 2023 at Skoda dealerships in China reached only 15,290 vehicles, down 52% compared to the same period last year, based on data released by the aggregator Bestsellcarsblog.com.

To put Skoda's dismal sales picture in China into perspective, at its peak in 2018, the Czech carmaker sold a total of 341,000 vehicles, more than 22 times more than it does today.

Skoda has recently officially entered the Vietnamese automobile market with the promising Kodiaq SUV model, priced at 1.189 billion - 1.409 billion VND, which will compete directly with Volkswagen Tiguan (1.699 billion - 1.899 billion VND) and Peugeot 5008 (1.099 billion - 1.319 billion VND).