(Yicai) March 8 -- GAC Toyota Motor, which is Toyota’s joint venture with Guangzhou Automobile Group, slashed the price of the ninth-generation Camry this week by nearly CNY30,000 (USD4,173), after rival BYD restarted China's car price war late last month.

The Camry 2.0 L hybrid was released on March 6 with a starting price of CNY171,800 (USD23,898), around 15 percent less than previous models. Equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 chip for the first time, it has an even higher configuration than earlier versions.

GAC Toyota will no doubt be hoping that the discount will help halt Camry’s tumbling sales. In January, Camry's shipments plunged 27.7 percent from December to 16,400 units. And last year, Camry’s sales slumped 10 percent from the year before to 225,500 units. As GAC Toyota’s flagship model, this dragged down the Guangzhou-based firm’s annual sales 7.3 percent to 901,000 units.

BYD sparked off a new round in the auto market’s price war after the Lunar New Year holiday last month when the Shenzhen-based auto giant reduced the price of its fossil fuel-powered cars to spur sales. The US' Cadillac and Germany's Volkswagen Passat were quick to follow.

Chinese car brands are becoming more popular in China than those made by foreign-branded JVs. Chinese vehicle brands expanded their market share to 56 percent in 2023 from 38.4 percent in 2020, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. In January, Chinese marques seized another 8.8 percentage points of the market to account for 60.4 percent.

Editor: Kim Taylor