Shanghai (ZXZC)- FAW Group announced its auto sales jumped 18.9% from a year ago to 420,458 units in January 2021, while its outputs leapt 21.6% to 309,077 units.

Hongqi saw its monthly sales hit a new high of 32,526 units last month, surging 157.5% from the year-ago period. During the same period, the premium brand produced 23,460 new vehicles, a year-on-year hike of 130.3%.

Photo credit: FAW Group

The upscale brand defied China's overall downward trend last year to report vigorous growth. Its full-year sales doubled over the previous year to 200,338 units in 2020. Besides, the automaker also completed its 200,000-unit annual production target 11 days ahead of schedule.

Jiefang, the truck manufacturing subsidiary of FAW Group, output and sold over 46,000 and 79,000 vehicles in January, which were 57% and 27% more than that of the year-ago level.

The Jan. outputs and sales of Besturn-branded cars reached 4,191 units and 7,762 units respectively.

Photo credit: FAW Group

Both FAW-Volkswagen and FAW-Toyota scored evident year-on-year growth in Jan. sales. The Sino-German joint venture sold 215,286 vehicles with an increase of 16.6%, while the joint venture with Toyota witnessed its sales climb 8.9% to 83,062 units. Besides, FAW-Volkswagen and FAW-Toyota produced 150,483 (+7.3% YoY) and 75,042 vehicles (+25.6% YoY) in Jan. respectively.

Moreover, FAW-Mazda's Jan. production and sales volumes amounted to 8,352 units and 1,818 units.

FAW Group aims to make its full-year auto sales grow over 7.9% from a year ago to exceed 4 million units in 2021, according to Qiu Xiandong, President of FAW Group. To be specific, it targets over 200,000 units in annual new energy vehicles (NEV) sales, a precipitous year-on-year rise of 300% plus. The sales goal set for Hongqi brand was 400,000 units, doubling the sales target for 2020.