AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/09 Report--

Under the impact of the global COVID-19 epidemic, the global car market has been affected. But since the first outbreak has been in Asia since 2020, first-quarter sales figures released by luxury brands show that overseas regions are significantly better than Asia.

On April 8, Daimler released Mercedes-Benz sales figures for the first quarter of 2020, which showed that from January to March 2020, the cumulative delivery of Mercedes-Benz cars worldwide was about 477400, down about 14.9% from a year earlier, of which the Smart brand sold 5863 vehicles in the first quarter, down as much as 78.3% from a year earlier. Since Daimler does not release Mercedes-Benz sales figures for the first three months, it is not possible to know the details.

However, according to Beijing Mercedes-Benz sales previously released by the Federation of passengers, they all outperformed the industry, with a total of 6 or 760000 vehicles in January, an increase of 18.8 per cent over the same period last year. It was hit hard by the epidemic in February, falling 65 per cent year-on-year to 11300 vehicles. Although the Chinese market is Mercedes-Benz's main market, it only accounts for about 20%.

According to the brand's global regional data in the first quarter, North America was the least affected, with sales of 78500 vehicles, down 6.7 per cent from a year earlier, of which 67700 were sold in the US, down 4.8 per cent from a year earlier. This was followed by the European market, with cumulative sales of 189000 vehicles, down 15.9 per cent from the same period last year, while the local German market sold 64000 vehicles, down 8.8 per cent from the same period last year. Nothing is more serious than in the Asia-Pacific region, where sales fell to 17.1 per cent to 198800, with sales in China falling 20.3 per cent to 139000.

In spite of this, Bessig, director of global sales and marketing for Mercedes-Benz, said that China's performance, although affected by a severe epidemic in the first quarter, has begun to recover gradually. "our dealerships in China and South Korea have fully resumed business, we have seen an increase in demand for cars and we are very confident," she said. But Daimler expects novel coronavirus to continue to influence the company in the coming weeks.

According to the impact of the current epidemic continuing to spread overseas, many overseas car companies, such as Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW, have announced adjustments to their production plans one after another. Even in April, it remains to be seen whether production can be resumed.

To this end, according to the data released by the BMW Group on the date, the decline in the Chinese market is also greater than in any other region. Of this total, BMW sold 116452 new cars (including MINI) in China, down 31 per cent from a year earlier. But compared with the Mercedes-Benz brand, BMW performed slightly poorly in other overseas regions, with first-quarter sales down 18% in Europe and 17% in the United States. As a result, BMW's global sales fell 20.6% to 477000 vehicles in the first quarter.

Overall, however, the BMW brand fell more sharply than the Mercedes-Benz brand in the first quarter, but there was a difference of only 3000 vehicles in cumulative sales. This is mainly due to the fact that the BMW brand has surpassed the Mercedes-Benz brand with a stronger model layout in the past year, surpassing 2.46 million Mercedes-Benz by more than 2.52 million vehicles in 2019.

Although the Audi brand did not release first-quarter sales, in the face of its adversity in February, Audi far surpassed the BMW brand in the Chinese market, with sales of 8266 vehicles down 77.6% year-on-year, slightly lower than Beijing Mercedes-Benz's 11272 and higher than brilliance's 3927. This means that Audi sales will "strongly return" under the expansion of Audi discounts for many models this year. According to FAW-Volkswagen sales in the first quarter, it totaled 319596 vehicles, down 26.3% from the same period last year.

Although Mercedes-Benz failed to overtake BMW in overall sales in 2019, Mercedes-Benz led the BBA in the first two months of 2020, topping the list for two consecutive months. With the gradual recovery of the market in China, as well as the launch of a number of new cars of the Mercedes-Benz brand and the continued discounts of the Audi brand, the BMW brand will be affected to some extent this year.

At the same time, with the gradual recovery of the domestic auto market and the spread of the epidemic in overseas markets, the sales of luxury brands in the second quarter will be led by the Chinese market, so the sales in China in the next few months will directly affect the future sales of various brands.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat