Picture of the Week – Foton’s Auhawk R Crowned Chinese Truck of the Year 2021

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Foton’s Auhawk R has been elected Chinese Truck of the Year (CToY) 2021 during the 5th International Commercial Vehicle Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China’s Guangdong Province. The 10-day exhibition opened on 20 Nov 2020 with the participation of national and international Commercial Vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers.

The accolade, announced by Ms. Yu Jing, the President of CToY Jury, was handed to Gu Dehua, Vice President of Foton Motor.

As a new truck generation developed on a new platform, Auhawk R has made many improvements on the cab, power transmission, technology and payload, to keep up with China’s latest strict road regulations.

Since the introduction of toll-by-axle policy in January this year, China has abolished manual weighing of trucks and is charging tolls based on how many axles configured. The jury confirmed that Auhawk R could reduce TCO as these two-axle trucks’ Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) reach 18 tonnes.

Ms. Yu Jing, President of The Jury of China Truck Of the Year, in announcing the jury’s comments said:

“The Auhawk R is a new generation of medium trucks developed by Foton Motor. The design integrated European standards with China’s new regulatory requirements and new market demands. With its beautiful appearance, optimized structure, intelligent, safe, comfortable and reliable first-class configuration, it provides us with excellent driving experience and sets a new benchmark for the Chinese truck market.”

The previous winners of the coveted CToY include the Auman EST (2017), JMC Weilong (2018), FAW J7 (2019) and Dongfeng KL (2020).

Since 2020, despite the impact of the pandemic, the production and sales of China’s CV/truck market have increased month by month after the resumption of work and production and are expected to reach a record high this year.

According to the latest authoritative statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the production and sales of commercial vehicles in the first 10 months of this year were about 4.2 million, with year-on-year growth of 22.5 percent and 20.9 percent respectively.

Among these, the sales volume of medium trucks increased by 40.79% year on year, which shows the strong market demand.

According to the analysis from industry insiders, here are two factors behind this phenomenon: the change of people’s lifestyle in the post-COVID era has brought a sharp increase in the demand for consumer logistics; the government’s support for

all kinds of infrastructure investment projects related to the national economy and people’s livelihood, which has produced a key positive effect on the growth of commercial vehicles, especially trucks, against the global recession.

With the growth of the truck market, Chinese truck manufacturers have continuously launched new trucks to keep up with the latest policies, regulations and consumer demand this year, leading to an increase in consumer logistics and infrastructure investment.