Liu Minxia

mllmx@msn.com

TO meet increasing demand from Shenzhen’s middle-class consumers, the city’s largest auto show has dedicated an entire exhibition hall exclusively to one luxury brand for the past two years. This year, Mercedes-Benz will be in the limelight when the annual auto show opens today.

Mercedes-Benz will showcase its latest and best-selling models, including a concept car, at the 2014 Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao International Auto Show in Hall 5 of Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, the show’s venue.

The show will also make auto show history in China by extending the exhibition hours to 11 p.m. today so more visitors can enjoy an up-close look at the luxury cars and car models on display.

Big names like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Bentley and Tesla will all be present during the fair, while several of the latest models not yet launched in the Asia-Pacific or global market will be unveiled.

Ferrari’s California T, BMW’s special year-of-the-horse edition and antique cars shown in world competitions will be on display.

Nearly 100 other carmakers from home and abroad will bring around 1,000 new models, including concept cars and rare limited-edition vehicles, to the seven-day fair, which is expected to attract more than 600,000 visitors from around the world.

New energy cars will be a focus as U.S. brand Tesla challenges local carmaker BYD during the third-largest auto show in China, which has an exhibition area of 120,000 square meters this year.

Overall passenger car sales in Shenzhen rose by 80,000 in the first two months of this year, compared with a monthly rise of 30,000 vehicles last year, to bring the total car ownership to 2.72 million vehicles. Sales across the country grew 13.7 percent last year to bring the total car ownership to 137 million vehicles, 5.7 times that of 10 years ago, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Car ownership in Shenzhen is expected to exceed 3 million by the end of this year, according to Guo Xiangyang, an official with the local transportation authority. By the end of February, Shenzhen had put into use 6,650 new energy vehicles, the most of any city in the world, according to official data.

The premium car market accounts for 9 percent of all passenger car sales in China, according to McKinsey & Co., compared to 4 percent in Japan.

McKinsey forecasts that China’s premium car market will grow at an annual rate of 12 percent through 2020, compared with 8 percent for the overall passenger car market. Sales of premium cars in China will reach 3 million by 2020, equaling those of Western Europe, and surpassing the 2.3 million sales expected in the U.S market, it said.