AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)02/17 Report--

Due to the superimposed outbreak of the novel coronavirus epidemic during the Spring Festival holiday, China's auto market fell sharply in January this year, falling by as much as 20% compared with the same period last year. But despite signs of such a sharp decline in sales in China, it has failed to change the share of the Chinese car market in the world. At the same time, with the impact of the market economy, the global automobile market is also declining rapidly.

According to the global sales data released by the Federation of passengers a few days ago, nearly 90% of the major automobile production and sales countries have experienced a decline, with a decline of more than 5%, with only two regional markets showing slight growth.

From the perspective of various regional markets, such as China, South Korea, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and India, the decline in sales is further expanding, of which China and France are the most severe, with a bluff degree of more than 10%. On the other hand, Japan and Brazil have seen positive growth turning to negative growth last year, and the Japanese market has declined more than most regions.

Of course, there are some regions that performed better than the previous year, including a decline in sales in areas such as Italy, Spain and South Africa, while the United States and Russia achieved small growth.

In fact, the reason for the sharp decline in January sales in China is that the Lunar New year holiday falls in January, resulting in a reduction in normal working days, which will add to the pressure on the car market to grow year-on-year in January. As the Spring Festival happens to be in the last week of January this year, the novel coronavirus epidemic at the same time did not have a major impact on China's auto market, but was not optimistic about the performance in February this year.

Due to the spread of the epidemic virus, most car companies and dealers have stopped work and production, and car companies' production and dealer sales are expected to plummet in February this year.

According to data from the China Automobile Association, China's automobile production and sales in 2019 were 25.721 million and 25.769 million respectively, down 7.5% and 8.2% from the same period last year, although the decline in production and sales was 3.3% and 5.4% higher than last year, and the decline was also much lower than that in January this year.

The slowdown in markets in other Western countries in January is in fact due to recent political instability in various regions, such as Brexit, the French strike, Iran and Syria, and other regional conflicts. In addition, it is also related to the imbalance of interests in the economic sector, such as mutual mistrust between the United States and Europe, mutual imposition of tariffs, the prevalence of trade protectionism and so on.

Since Japan announced an increase in the consumption tax rate at the end of 2019, people in the industry are not optimistic about the Japanese auto market, which has led to a decline in the Japanese auto economy. Sales in India have also slowed because of a weak economy and a local credit crunch, and current economic conditions in Europe are not good for new car sales.

According to statistics, 2019 is the second year in a row that global car sales have declined, and it is also the biggest decline, even more serious than during the financial crisis in 2008. A total of 90.3 million cars were sold in 2019, down from 94.4 million in the same period in 2018 and 95.2 million in 2017.

According to Fitch Ratings, one of the three major international rating agencies in the world, the weakening demand in the two major car markets, led by China and the United States, is the biggest cause of the overall decline in global car market sales.

However, the director of global sales forecasts for LMC Jonathon Poskitt previously said: "at present, mature car markets such as Western Europe and the US are unlikely to have a real impact on the global total, so global car sales are likely to fall below 90 million in 2020."

In this regard, the Chinese auto market is the main region that affects the performance of the global auto market, but affected by the epidemic in 2020, the Chinese auto market will be greatly affected, so that the global market sales will still be further expanded. As for the performance of markets in various regions of the world, some analysts believe that 2020 will also be painful for automakers.

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