AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)02/20 Report--

In January 2023, due to the influence of objective factors such as traditional Spring Festival holidays and early overdraft of consumer demand, the overall performance of the domestic car market is poor, and the luxury brand field is no exception. According to the top10 list of luxury brands in January 2023, according to Automotive Industry concern, the top 10 brands on the list are BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Tesla, Red Flag, ideal, Lexus, Cadillac, Volvo, Lexus and Cadillac, among which only Tesla and ideal car achieved year-on-year growth, while other brands declined year-on-year, and all brands showed a double-digit decline compared with the previous year.

In terms of subdivision, BBA, a first-tier luxury brand, ranks in the top three respectively. More than 62008 BMW vehicles are ahead of Mercedes-Benz and Audi. It should be noted that BBA sales have declined by different degrees compared with the same period last year, with Audi having the highest decline.

According to Shanghai Insurance data, BMW insured 62008 vehicles in January, down 43% from a year earlier and 18% from a month earlier. Among the specific models, BMW 5-Series, BMW X5 and BMW X3 are still the main products, and BMW 5-Series and BMW X5 all sell more than 10,000 vehicles. Among them, the insurance volume of the BMW 5 series is 16375, the BMW X5 is 10070, and the BMW X3 is 9255. In addition, the performance of the BMW 3 series is OK, with 6491 vehicles at risk.

The Mercedes-Benz brand ranked second, with 59297 vehicles at risk, down 36% from the same period last year. Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Mercedes-Benz GLCs are the main sources of sales of Mercedes-Benz, with 15757 and 14496 vehicles respectively, while Mercedes-Benz C-Class only has 7166 vehicles.

Audi is the car company with the biggest decline in BBA, falling 49 per cent to 36837 vehicles in January from a year earlier. Or affected by the environment in January, Audi's main model sales have declined to varying degrees. Specifically, Audi A6L insured 13192 vehicles, while Audi Q5L insured only 7976 vehicles, nearly halving compared with the same period last year.

In addition to BBA, the ranking of second-tier luxury brands has also undergone great changes, of which the most "outstanding" is Lexus. As the overlord of second-tier luxury brands, Lexus did not perform well in January, with only 9031 vehicles at risk, which were crushed by New Power brand ideal cars and Ulay cars respectively.

In fact, Lexus has had a hard time in the past 2022. According to official Lexus data, global sales of Lexus in 2022 were 625400, up 82 per cent from a year earlier, of which Lexus sales in China totaled 176000, down 24.5 per cent from a year earlier. Among the subdivided models, the highest-selling model was the ES series, with cumulative sales falling 7.00 per cent year-on-year to 98439 vehicles, followed by the RX series, which fell 8.35 per cent to 44556 vehicles, and NX series sales fell 47.01 per cent to 19325 vehicles. Sales of other models are mediocre, with Lexus UX, LS and LM selling 9695, 4494 and 3610 respectively.

In January, the new force of car-building, ideal car and Xilai car, respectively, ranked sixth and seventh on the list, with an insurance volume of 15470 and 10067 respectively. At the end of last year, Li Bin, chairman of Xilai Automobile, said bluntly that in view of this year's sales target, taking into account the impact of the withdrawal of subsidies for new energy vehicles, the domestic new energy vehicle market would be under some pressure in the first half of this year. On the one hand, because of the early release of consumption, on the other hand, consumer confidence will take time to repair, but this situation will gradually recover in the second quarter. At the same time, Li Bin stressed that the sales volume is still far behind that of BMW Mercedes-Benz Audi, but it will certainly outsell Lexus fuel vehicles this year, and said he is very confident about this goal. Before that, Qin Lihong said bluntly that he hoped to "turn the pattern of BBA into the pattern of NBA." What are the chances of overtaking Lexus in the coming year? Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO at the time, said: "Lexus sales are expected to be about 200000 in 2022, and it is very likely that the annual sales in 2023 will reach 200000."

According to the plan, delivery of the EC7 and the new generation ES8 will begin in March and June this year, respectively. With the layout of more products, there will be more than 8 models on sale this year, becoming the largest number of models sold among the three "Wei Xiaoli" car companies. According to the official website, the models currently on sale include ES8, ES6, EC6, ET7, ET5 and ES7 models, covering SUV and sedan models. The prices of the six models are all above 300000 yuan, positioning luxury brands.

As for the ideal car, there are only two L8 and L9 models on sale, and the L7 has also been officially released on February 8. the car has launched a total of three models with a price range of 319800 yuan to 379800 yuan. As for the price positioning of ideal car models, ideal car CEO Li Xiang once said in personal social brands that ideal L9 will stick to the price range of 40-500000, ideal L8 and ideal L7 will adhere to the price range of 30-400000, and ideal L6 and ideal L5 will adhere to the price range of 20-300000. In addition, ideal cars will not launch models within 200000 yuan. As more models enter the market, ideal car sales may gradually increase.

Tesla is undoubtedly the best performer on the list, with 27207 vehicles insured in January, up 39 per cent from a year earlier. "Automotive Industry concern" believes that Tesla's year-on-year sales growth is related to the "price for quantity" product strategy adopted by him. On January 6, the prices of Tesla's two domestic cars fell by an unprecedented rate, which shocked the entire automobile industry, with Model 3 falling by 2.0-36000 yuan and Model Y by 2.9-48000 yuan. Among the model segments, January sales of Model Y were 14400 and Model 3 were 12800.

As far as the current car market is concerned, the rapid development of domestic high-end electric vehicles is changing the layout of the luxury car market, which also means that the competition in the traditional luxury car market where BBA is located will become more and more fierce. In the short term, the tripartite situation of BBA is difficult to shake in a short time. After all, BBA still occupies a large market share. What needs special attention is that at present, the BBA brand does not have a good data performance in the new energy layout, and under the improvement of China's new energy vehicle penetration and the promotion of independent high-end, the growth of the traditional luxury car market is weak.

To put it simply, under the electrification trend led by the new power brand, whether it is the first-tier luxury brand BBA or the second-tier luxury brand, if we do not seize the time to lay out the electrified transformation, there may not be obvious changes in the short term, but over time, the market pattern of luxury brands is bound to change greatly in the long run.

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