AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/17 Report--

The luxury car market continues to grow rapidly, and the sales of many brands have soared and ushered in historical highs, which has once again become a major breakthrough in the automobile market this year. Luxury cars rose 86 per cent year-on-year in March, 60 per cent in February and 51 per cent in March 2019, according to the Federation of passengers. Reflects the luxury cars continue to maintain strong growth characteristics, consumer upgrading of high-end exchange demand is still strong.

Under such circumstances, the luxury car market continued to prosper in March, with mainstream luxury brands rising sharply collectively. In the past first quarter, the growth of second-tier luxury brands was more obvious, including Tesla, Red Flag, Cadillac and New Power brands, which also achieved a larger increase during the year.

BBA maintains steady growth

For the domestic luxury market pattern, it is still occupied by the first-tier luxury brand BBA, with all three car companies maintaining sales of more than 70, 000 vehicles and setting a record high in China together. According to the data, BMW won the first place in March with more than 77900 luxury cars, while Mercedes-Benz lagged behind BMW by a narrow margin, selling 75000 new cars. But there is still a big gap between Audi and the first two in the first quarter of this year. Judging from the pattern in the first quarter of this year, the ranking is the same, with the Audi brand having the lowest sales. The Mercedes-Benz brand with the worst year-on-year growth performance is even lower than the industry-level growth performance.

Although BMW did not perform best among the high-end models released by the FIFA, it benefited from the BMW 3-Series model that helped BMW win the top spot in the first quarter of this year. Far ahead of the upcoming Mercedes-Benz C-Class and the declining A4, with the BMW 3-Series showing a total of 47800 sold in the first quarter, compared with 4.09 for the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and 42800 for the Audi A4L. The E-class advantage of the mid-and high-end Mercedes-Benz is significantly lower than that of the BMW 5-Series and Audi A6L, so that Mercedes-Benz carries on the E-class upgrade. Audi's A6L and 15 continue to rank first in high-end models, while the BMW X3 Mercedes-Benz GLC is neck and neck.

First-tier luxury has its own advantages in all market segments, and BMW's success in the next quarter depends on stable sales in various market segments; by contrast, the decline in Mercedes-Benz performance is mainly due to the decline in sales competitiveness; the Audi model performance is more differentiated.

The pattern of second-line luxury is becoming more and more obvious.

The debate between Cadillac and Lexus over second-tier luxury brands has changed significantly this year. Thanks to the strong development of new energy vehicles, the monthly sales of Tesla, who is also located at the high end, rose, surpassing many second-tier luxury brands by an absolute majority in March, and the year-on-year growth was also much higher than that of all other traditional car companies.

So much so that Lexus and Cadillac can only compete for second place in luxury brands. Judging from the performance in March this year, although Lexus exceeded Cadillac's sales by 4000, there was only a difference of less than 2000 between the two major brands in the first quarter. If Cadillac can maintain the strong growth performance in March, it may be able to compete with Lexus again.

As for the Red Flag brand, which is also competing for second-tier first place, there is actually a slight gap between its official first-quarter sales of 70, 000 vehicles and only 54000 vehicles, so it ranks only behind Tesla, Lexus and Cadillac in the first quarter of this year. There is still pressure to compete for second-tier luxury first.

By contrast, the Volvo brand has maintained a relatively stable ranking, but the brand can still achieve sales growth in China under the demand of the transformation of domestic high-end consumption, helping the brand to achieve historical success and remain on the second-tier luxury first-tier echelon.

On the contrary, brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Lincoln have achieved growth, but the overall share is still small. Infiniti, on the other hand, has become the only brand to decline, reflecting the growing pressure on the brand.

The growth rate of new forces is obvious.

Judging from the performance of the entire high-end brand, the high-end new power car companies represented by Lulai and ideal are showing a trend of doubling growth, with an increase of 341.8% and 241.6% respectively in March, which can be said to be the highest growth among all car companies. although the two models still account for a small proportion in the entire luxury market, it also shows that luxury brands represented by new energy are gradually becoming one of the models considered by consumers. According to the analysis of the federation of passengers, the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles in March was 10.5%. The penetration rate from January to March was 8.6%, which was significantly higher than that of 5.8% in 2020.

On the whole, in the luxury car market, the first-tier luxury market occupied by BBA is mature and stable, while the second-and third-tier luxury market competition is fierce, the two-tier differentiation is obvious, and the head brand growth is obvious, especially new energy models usher in opportunities by virtue of good market trends, but some brands are also in the doldrums for a long time, including Infiniti and others have not yet come out of the sales predicament.

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