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Asia Pacific Region Research Director Vijay Rao of Frost & Sullivan currently said that the existence of ASEAN is undoubtedly important, as ASEAN is very likely to become the 5th largest automotive market by 2019. According to the research analysis of the Institute, the automotive market of ASEAN is expected to reach a CAGR of 5.8% to 4.71 million cars, due to the fast growing markets of Indonesia and Thailand. Vijay added, the total car production of ASEAN would reach a CAGR of 8% during 2012-2019 and break the record to reach 7.05 million cars in 2019. Thailand will be the car-manufacturing hub within this region. In Indonesia, most of the cars manufactured domestically are for local sales, with the continuous investments of foreign companies in the local automotive industry. In addition, OEMs from Europe and China also consider Malaysia to be their car assembly and manufacturing hub, where they already set up car manufacturing factories.

In fact, 3 of the major automotive markets in ASEAN are Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where the sales records of cars continue to be broken. The sales in Thailand and Indonesia both broke the record of 1 million units; while the sales in Malaysia were 0.6 million units. Vijay forecast that the sales of cars in Thailand during 2012 through 2019 would achieve a CAGR of 1.4% to 1.43 million cars; As for Indonesia, the sales of cars at the same period would be a CAGR of 10.96% to 2.3 million cars.