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Affected by the epidemic and the slowdown in the momentum of the global economy, the domestic imported car market has declined significantly this year. From January to September, the country imported a total of 618000 cars (including chassis), a cumulative decrease of 21.3% over the same period last year. However, the decline in the imported car market this year is obviously not the impact of the economic market.

On November 28th, AVIC released the Research report on the Development of China's imported Automobile Market (2020-2021). The report shows that after excluding the impact of parallel imported cars, China's imported cars in 2020 are basically the same as those in 2019.

Throughout the passenger car market this year, even though the COVID-19 epidemic has seriously affected it, luxury cars have rebounded since March and achieved year-on-year growth in May. This also includes many luxury imported models. Therefore, the decline in imported models this year is mainly restrained by the policy on the development of parallel imported models.

According to Chen Youquan, chairman and secretary of the party committee of Guoji Automobile Co., Ltd. "regardless of parallel imported cars and the switching from 'National 5' to 'National 6', China's imported cars performed well in the first 10 months of this year, which is generally the same as that of the domestic car market in the first 10 months."

Since July 1 this year, the sixth grade environmental protection information has not been made public, and the parallel imported cars that meet the sixth national standard cannot be sold normally, so most enterprises have stopped the business of parallel imported vehicles. According to statistics from the Automobile Circulation and Post-Market Policy Research Office, imports of parallel imported cars are almost stagnant at present, with only 33 parallel imported cars imported in July, down 99.8% from the same period last year. At present, most parallel imported car dealers are selling "national five" models in stock.

According to the "report" analysis, in terms of brand structure, the brand concentration of imported cars further increased in the first nine months of this year, with the top 10 brands selling a total of 617000 vehicles, accounting for 88.5% of the total passenger car sales, up 4.4 percentage points from 84.1% in 2019.

While luxury brands are still the main force of imported car sales, accounting for 80.3% of total sales, the decline of luxury and ultra-luxury brands is much lower than that of non-luxury brands. The overall pattern is stable, and the top three remain unchanged, namely, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Among them, Lexus remained strong, with the number of imported cars growing in the first half of 2020, while the Mercedes-Benz brand became a regular brand, while other brands declined.

From January to September this year, imported passenger cars still sold mainly cars and SUV, accounting for 95.8 percent, with cars, SUV and MPV falling by 14.9 percent, 17.5 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively. In September, the decline in SUV continued to shrink, to 0.8 per cent, and the decline expanded to 3.2 per cent, while cars grew by 1.6 per cent. It is worth noting that SUV fell the most among the three models, but its share rebounded slightly to 54.9 per cent.

The "report" believes that the scale of the import market is expected to return to one million next year, but due to the complex and changeable international environment, the intensified changes in the trade pattern, and the development of the COVID-19 epidemic, there is still uncertainty, which adds uncertainty to the prospects of the imported car market in 2021. However, due to a relatively low economic growth base in 2020 and a series of policy adjustments in 2021, growth is expected to be at least more than 5 per cent.

It is reported that 32 new imported cars will be put on the Chinese market in 2021. The new products are mainly ultra-luxury, high-end luxury and personalized models, while the replacement models are mainly complementary models, and there are not many cost-effective models, which has a limited pulling effect on the scale of the imported car market.

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