AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/07 Report--

After falling to an all-time low in February, China's passenger car market showed some signs of picking up in March. Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, domestic car companies began to stop production in February, so that most car companies stopped for half a month to a month before resuming work, with extremely low production capacity. However, as the epidemic situation was gradually brought under control, the resumption of work and production was achieved in March except in the main epidemic areas.

Although most of the car companies resumed work and production in March, the output performance is still not optimistic. According to the production data released by the Federation of passengers a few days ago, the total production of passenger cars soared in March compared with February, but production was very rare due to the suspension of production by most car companies in February, while cumulative production increased to 902000 vehicles in March. but it still fell by 53.4% from a year earlier, a drop of more than half.

Among them, there are 16% of FAW cars, 12.5% of Guangzhou Automobile Toyota, 15.5% of FAW-Volkswagen, 19.1% of Beijing Mercedes-Benz, 26.1% of Chang'an Independence, and 27.4% of brilliance BMW. Among them, only FAW cars reverse the trend of growth, and this is not only because FAW cars have a relatively low base in previous years, but also show that FAW cars have maintained the growth trend of last year under the leadership of FAW Group.

Second, the capacity recovery capacity of Changan Mazda-41%, Chery-41%, BYD-42.6%, FAW Toyota-43%, Geely-44.7%, Guangzhou Automobile-52%.

Those with slightly lower performance than the industry were Great Wall-59.7%, Guangzhou Honda-60.6%, Dongfeng Nissan-63%, SAIC-68.5%, SAIC-Volkswagen-72%, SAIC Wuling-77.9%, SAIC General Motors-78.6%, Dongben-85.1%, Guangsan-89%, Changan Ford-90%, Shenlong-97%.

The car companies whose production recovered better in March are mainly due to the early resumption of work and production, among which the earliest car companies to resume work include FAW-Volkswagen, Geely Group and Beijing Mercedes-Benz. Nothing is more obvious than the performance of North and South Volkswagen, because according to Volkswagen Group on February 12, six of the 14 assembly plants it operates with local partners in China have resumed production, five are FAW-Volkswagen, one is SAIC-Volkswagen, and SAIC-Volkswagen's eight plants continued to resume production until February 24, so that production capacity was lower than that of Geely and Changan cars of its own brands.

Dongfeng Group, due to its slow recovery at the center of the epidemic in Hubei, almost failed to achieve production throughout March, only to achieve single-shift production at the end of March, including SAIC GM's Wuhan plant. In addition, SAIC GM Wuling also due to the conversion of masks and other reasons, resulting in a sharp decline in production capacity.

It is worth noting that Changfu Ford, Guangzhou Automobile Mitsubishi, Guangzhou Auto Fick and Shenlong Automobile and other car companies have also experienced a very large decline in production capacity, as to whether the specific reason is the passive production reduction caused by the epidemic or the active suspension of production caused by the reduction in demand. After all, these car companies are also on the edge of China's car market, with low monthly sales.

Compared with the performance of the passenger car market as a whole, the recovery of production in the new energy market is relatively good, with cumulative production falling only 16% in March, of which pure electric models increased by 6% year-on-year. In fact, it is thanks to Tesla's earliest return to work, which became the earliest car company in China to resume work on February 10, bringing a production capacity of 10, 000 vehicles. Were it not for Tesla's rising production capacity, new energy vehicles would still be in a downward trend.

Although demand does affect production, according to the current domestic dealer inventory index, it still exceeds the warning line by 59.3%, which means that the short-term supply of domestic dealers can still be guaranteed. Of course, the inventory index only reflects the average performance of domestic passenger cars as a whole, and it will still be tense relative to the best-selling models.

According to Zheng Chunkai, executive deputy general manager of Dongfeng Honda, a few days ago, "Dongfeng Honda dealers have run out of inventory, and there is even one store with only four cars in stock, and the exhibition cars are obviously not enough." As for the models that are not so best-selling, they can still be supplied.

In addition, judging from the current domestic passenger car production data, most car companies have gradually achieved capacity recovery, and those that have resumed work earlier are also more ideal in capacity recovery, and are expected to return to normal in the second quarter.

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