AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/18 Report--

Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, the global multi-national automobile market is in trouble, so that the domestic imported car market must be hit hard. According to a report on the sales of imported cars released by the China Automobile Circulation Association, imported cars were delivered to consumers in March, down 28.8 percent from a year earlier, narrowing the decline.

Although the imported car market hit a new low in 2020, the overall performance is still better than that of the domestic passenger car market. According to the performance in the first three months of this year, customs imported a total of 200000 vehicles, down 15.5% from the same period last year; of which 11000 were parallel imported vehicles, down 56.1% from the same period last year, accounting for 5.5% of the total imports. In terms of sales, imported cars delivered a total of 164000 vehicles to consumers, down 34.3% from the same period last year.

In terms of imported passenger models, imports of cars, SUV and MPV models, the three major imported models, all declined to varying degrees in the first quarter of this year. Thanks to the fact that SUV models have always been the best performing market, the decline in the third quarter of this year is also the most obvious, falling 26.4 percent compared with the same period last year. Judging from the performance in the previous March, the SUV market still performed slightly better, with cumulative sales reaching 92800 vehicles, a decline that was also better than the other two major market segments.

From the perspective of imported car brand structure, the decline in sales of imported brands is inevitable, so it is not surprising that the decline is slightly larger. However, compared with the performance of various car companies in the import market, nothing is better than Lexus, which still occupies the peak of the domestic import market with sales of 33000 vehicles, maintaining a strong momentum in 2019, falling only 12.7% in the first three months compared with the same period last year. second to the 5.7% decline of Porsche brands, it does not mean that the performance of these two brands in China has recovered more rapidly.

Ranked second and third are still the largest brands of Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the domestic market, with sales of about 30,000 vehicles and a decline of about 30%. In contrast, Audi, the domestic first-tier luxury brand, is relatively inferior, with sales of less than 6000 units in the first three months of this year, the most obvious decline of all brands, down 64.4 percent from the same period last year.

As for second-tier luxury brands such as Land Rover and Lincoln, they are equally affected by the epidemic and are lower than the market average. It is worth noting that in the top 10 reports of data sales in the first quarter of this year, we did not see the sales of the Tesla brand. Perhaps it is due to the sharp increase in sales of domestic Model 3 that consumers naturally choose fewer imported models. At the same time, the sales performance of Model S and Model X models in China is only negligible, resulting in a huge decline in import sales to fail to be included in the list.

On the whole, it is inevitable that the import market has been affected by the epidemic this year, but its overall performance is better than that of the domestic passenger car market, which shows that consumers who choose imported models are affected by the epidemic, and the reasons for abandoning car purchase plans are still in the minority. most of them are caused by the closure of dealers and insufficient supply of models. At the same time, for brands that are more popular in the domestic market, such as Lexus and Porsche, their decline has narrowed, and they have taken the lead in stabilizing.

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