Preferences among Chileans have changed dramatically in the last five years, as revealed by Chileautos.
There are various factors that affect Chileans when looking for and choosing cars. For example, in 2018 in the country they were interested in SUV models, leaving sedans in second place, which until then were the favorites.
At that time, the most requested model was the Hyundai Accentwhile the preferred car color was white. Meanwhile, 65% of the vehicles published in Chileautos had mechanical transmission, while the search for low-emission vehicles was almost nil.
Five years after those figures, the picture is not that different, but there are some parameters that have changed. within the SUVwhich is the category that concentrates preferences, the most popular model was the Toyota RAV4very different from the classic sedan.
Automatic vs. mechanical
A noteworthy fact is the preference that vehicles with automatic transmission have been gaining, a figure that rises to 54.1% of searches in Chileautos and that is related to the increase in publications of this type of vehicle by 4%.
Besides, the difference in the price of cars with an automatic versus manual gearbox has been narrowing in recent years.
According to Andrés Cooper, general manager of Chileautos, this is very interesting: “The fact that 39% of published vehicles have an automatic transmissionand at the same time they concentrate 54% of the searchestells us about a preference and trend of users for this type of vehicle, which is what we observe in the most developed markets”.
Preferences by type of fuel
In the case of the type of fuel, or energy source, we see that hybrid and electric vehicles still do not reach 1% of searchesbut they have risen a few tenths compared to 2018.
The preference by far is taken by the cars with a gasoline engine, achieving 76.8% of the searchesversus 22.1% of vehicles with engines powered by diesel.
Other preferences
Regarding the type of bodywork, SUV cars continue to lead preferences among Chileans, with 44.5% of the searches if we compare it with the sedanes (18,2%), hatchbacks (20,6%) and vans, which are at the end of the most sought after vehicles with 16.7% of preferences.
