(Yicai Global) July 28 -- Great Wall Motors, Wuling Motors, SAIC Maxus Automotive and Jiangling Motors all displayed new pickup truck models at the ongoing Chengdu Motor Show in southwestern China as more Chinese cities lift their restrictions on driving small vans on urban roads.

The pickup model is very popular in China but the lightweight truck has been banned from many cities’ streets because of environmental pollution, traffic management, road maintenance and other concerns. Since last year, however, several local governments have scrapped the ban and even first-tier cities are beginning to grant them entry.

The major metropolises of Shanghai and Chongqing have recently announced they will ease restrictions. Beijing is actively looking into it, an official from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said not long ago.

This paves the way for other first and second-tier cities to follow suit and is a rare market opportunity for carmakers, said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association.

"Year 2020 will become 'year zero' of China's pickup vehicle market," Wang Rui, general manager of SAIC Maxus, a unit of China’s biggest car exporter SAIC Motor, told Yicai Global.

"Pickup trucks are our best-selling products overseas, accounting for one third of sales,” Wang said. The Shanghai-based firm’s sales in Australia and Chile are particularly good. Yet the company only occupied 5 percent of the domestic market in the first half, he added.

GWM, which dominates China’s pickup market and held almost 50 percent market share in the first six months of the year, sold 95,900 vehicles worldwide over that period.

Twenty-one percent of China’s pickup sales last year were in the five provinces of Yunnan, Hebei, Hubei, Henan and Liaoning plus the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, all of which have relaxed curbs on entry into cities.

Pickup trucks only accounted for 1.6 percent of China’s vast car market in 2018, compared with 16.5 percent in the US, 17.4 percent in the UK, 19.4 percent in Canada and 3.5 percent in Japan. Thus there remains much room for improvement.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor