Probably looking at total vehicles on the road would be more useful. Maybe cars got a lot more reliable 20 years ago, and so there are a lot more cars still kicking from the early 2000s which would have been scrapped in the past.
Maybe that's true, but maybe the average cost of a new car in Asia is quite a bit lower, so the overall effect is still declining total overall sales (measured in USD)?
Here's a fascinating video about a city in China that's full of cute electric cars that cost less than $5000 USD each:
that's another problem - inequality in the global value chain,
China is the most important growth market for passenger vehicles for last 20+ years, this is because of China's continuous industrial upgrading, which has gradually shifted from manufacturing low value-added products (such as jeans) to producing high value-added products (such as passenger vehicles).
this brings '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers', same thing happened in Japan/Korea/Taiwan too
but now, china produced 30 million cars (12m evs) in 2024, which means China's passenger vehicle market will quickly approach saturation, even if all Chinese families purchase or replace new vehicles
btw, '10s of millions newly consumers' is a relatively small number
and there will be no other markets with '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers' unless other countries can accompolish industrial upgrading like China's did
and if these countries(India/indonesia/Vietnam) manage to do so, their industrial upgrading will intensify this competition just like what happened in China now
Are trucks like the F150 not being captured by this data? How literal is "cars"?