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According to traditional practice, the car market is bleak due to the tide of returning home and tourism during the Spring Festival holiday, but it is obviously different this year. Affected by the epidemic, the "local New year" policy has been introduced in many places across the country, which has further promoted the consumer market, causing new energy vehicles to be sold out, and orders in some areas have even reached 10 to 20 times.

With the end of the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, China's consumption in the Spring Festival of the year of the Ox got off to a good start, with a number of indicators growing from February 11 to 17, according to the Ministry of Commerce. National key retail and catering sales increased by 28.7 percent over the Spring Festival Golden week last year and 4.9 percent over the Spring Festival Golden week in 2019. JD.com big data showed that during the Spring Festival, in first-tier cities, orders for new energy vehicles and some other products increased 10 to 20 times compared with the same period last year.

CCTV financial commentator said that from the past Spring Festival sales market, the general market is in the off-season, many stores will choose to have a holiday during this period, but this year, the vast majority of 4S store market is still hot. According to the manager of a BYD 4S store in Shanghai, compared with the past, due to consumer demand, the store can keep a certain number of customers coming to see cars every day during the Spring Festival, and the delivery volume reached 260 in January, an increase of more than 50% compared with January 2020.

It is learned from some consumers that the reason for buying new energy vehicles is not only that the cost of new energy vehicles is lower than that of fuel vehicles, but also because some first-tier cities can send license plates to buy new energy vehicles, which stimulates the release of part of the demand.

In fact, car sales have shown obvious differentiation since 2020, falling off a cliff in the first half of the year and picking up quickly in the second half; in addition to the popularity of medium-and high-end cars, new energy vehicles are more popular, which also makes some high-end new energy vehicles more popular.

A salesperson of Tesla in Nanjing revealed that there were more people in the store every afternoon during the Spring Festival, after the store launched a special offer. Vehicles delivered before February 15, 2021 can enjoy a 10-day free experience of EAP (enhanced autopilot) function, and the exhibition cars are often surrounded by people. Another Nanjing Lai sales staff said: "ES6 is a best-selling model, high popularity, consulting the largest number of customers."

The above situation undoubtedly shows that new energy continues the hot sales trend in the second half of 2020, and this is still the case at the beginning of this year. According to the Ministry of Commerce, the decline in automobile production and sales narrowed to less than 2% in 2020, while the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached an all-time high, up 7.5% and 10.9% respectively from the same period last year.

According to KuaiBao, the first month of 2021 sales released by major new energy car companies, in January, BYD sold 20178 new energy vehicles, an increase of 182.8% over the same period last year; Xilai sold 7225 vehicles, an increase of 352.1% over the same period last year; Xiaopeng sold 6015 vehicles, up 470% from the same period last year; and ideal cars were 5379, up 355.8% from the same period last year. SAIC sold 58000 new energy vehicles, up 446.6% from the same period last year, while Tesla sold 13843 vehicles, up 461.4% from the same period last year.

Through the list of single model sales of new energy in January, we can see that sales growth has been achieved without exception. This also proves that with the gradual maturity of new energy products and the continuous improvement of market acceptance, new energy vehicles are expected to become a strong contributor to the increment of the car market in the future.

However, for consumers who buy new energy vehicles at present, most of them already have a fuel vehicle at home and want to buy another one or directly use the first new energy vehicle for commuting use, so most consumers are looking at high-end brands such as Tesla and NIO or entry-level mini new energy vehicles.

According to the analysis of the China Automobile Circulation Association, the new energy target in Beijing will be allocated in May in 2021, the new energy license plate policy in Shanghai is not clear, and the urban increment of new energy purchase restrictions has entered a bottleneck period.

By contrast, because the "initiative" for the Spring Festival this year has affected the sales of cars before a certain holiday, the China Automobile Association has analyzed that because part of the car consumption before the Spring Festival is contributed by those who have returned home, these people are unable to buy cars because they have returned home. This will slow down the growth rate of the car market that started in 2021, especially consumers who buy cars for the first time.

People in the industry are still optimistic about the overall trend of the domestic automobile market in 2021. The China Automobile Association predicts that annual vehicle sales in 2021 are expected to exceed 26 million, an increase of 4 per cent over the same period last year, of which 1.8 million new energy vehicles were sold, up 40 per cent from a year earlier.

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