Shanghai (ZXZC)- With a total of 954,290 new cars (+3.81%) sold through November, Great Wall Motor (GWM) has already accomplished 89.2% of its 2019 sales target.

According to the automaker's latest sales report, the increase in the year-to-date sales of the mainstay SUV brand Haval and the BEV-focused ORA as well as the participation of the P Series pickup have sufficiently counteracted the decrease in the sales of WEY SUVs and Wingle pickups.

In November, the Baoding-based automaker saw its new car sales fall 13.08% over a year earlier, terminating a five-straight-month increase. The dwindling sales should be mainly attributed to the decline in GWM's SUV sales.

To be specific, Haval suffered a 21.63% slump with up to five models, including the best-selling Haval H6, hit by year-on-year drop. Besides, the premium SUV brand WEY witnessed its Nov. sales fall 8.16%, 3.38 percentage points more than that of a month ago. The double-digit decrease in VV5 sales was the primary fact that brought the total sales down.

Some bright spots are still noteworthy. For instance, the sales of the P Series pickups reached 6,259 units in November, jumping 24.68% compared with the previous month. On December 5, the 10,000th passenger pickup of the P Series officially rolled off the production line at GWM's Chongqing-based smart plant, only three months after the plant started production.

P Series Pickup, the first global pickup brand in China, is set to compete head-on with Toyota, Ford and other global mainstream pickup brands, and help GWM achieve the “1-2-3” pickup-focused strategy, namely, to maintain the dominant place in terms of domestic and export sales; to realize annual sales of 200,000 units by 2020; and to reach cumulative global sales topping 3 million units by 2025.

Moreover, the automaker also achieved two-digit growth in both Nov. and year-to-date export volumes.

On November 29, GWM and BMW Group officially initiated their 50:50 joint-venture project, Spotlight Automotive, marking the first joint venture between foreign and privately-owned automakers in China would be soon established.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held only a week after the joint venture was given the governmental green-light to produce internal combustion engine-powered vehicles (ICEVs) and conduct R&D activities for all-electric PVs. However, the approval is not available to BEV production.

Reportedly, Spotlight Automotive is scheduled to produce its first model, a compact all-electric SUV with range of over 500km, in 2021. The second model is likely to be the BEV version of the MINI (photo source: Great Wall Motor's WeChat account).