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Affected by the Spring Festival holiday in January, the overall sales performance of the car market is not good. After entering the car market in February, models in different segments of the market have an obvious warming trend. According to the Top10 list of luxury brands in February 2023, according to Automotive Industry concern, the top 10 brands on the list are Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Tesla, Red Flag, ideal, Volvo, Lexus and Cadillac. Among them, only Lexus and Cadillac declined in February compared with the same period last year. Lexus is the brand on the list with the highest decline, with a decline of 21.5%.

In terms of breakdown, the overall ranking in the list is basically the same as in January, with the main change being that Mercedes-Benz leads BMW with 57397 vehicles at risk. In terms of breakdown, the top three car companies in the list are still the first-tier luxury brand BBA, with all three companies growing year-on-year, but only Audi grew, with Mercedes-Benz and BMW down 3.2 per cent and 10.8 per cent respectively.

Mercedes-Benz overtook BMW in February to become the top seller on the February Top10 list of luxury brands, according to risk data. Mercedes-Benz insured 57397 vehicles in February, up 42.3 per cent from a year earlier and down 3.2 per cent from a month earlier. Among the specific models, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Mercedes-Benz C are the main sources of sales of Mercedes-Benz, with a risk of 12362 and 11279 respectively, of which the Mercedes-Benz C increased by 50.4% compared with the previous month, while the Mercedes-Benz GLC only had 7166 vehicles, down 42% from the previous month.

The BMW brand ranked second, with 562008 vehicles at risk, up 41.8% from a year earlier and down 10.8% from a month earlier. Among them, the BMW 5-Series, BMW X3 and BMW 3-Series continued to bear the main sales of the BMW brand, with 10342 vehicles, 9685 vehicles and 8435 vehicles insured in February, respectively. In addition, the BMW X1 and BMW X5 also had good sales performance, with 7102 and 6772 vehicles respectively.

Compared with January, the Audi brand rebounded strongly, becoming the only car company in the BBA camp to achieve year-on-year double growth. Audi insured 40221 vehicles in February, up 1.8 per cent from a year earlier and 9.2 per cent from a month earlier. Among the subdivided models, the Audi A6L is insured for 11380 vehicles, while the Audi Q5L is insured for only 7513 vehicles.

Compared with the first-tier traditional luxury brands, after entering 2023, the pattern of the second-tier traditional luxury brands has undergone an obvious reshuffle, including Volvo, Lexus, Cadillac and other brands have been crushed by the new power brand ideal car and Xilai car, of which the most "outstanding" is the Lexus brand.

Lexus insured 10154 vehicles in February, down 21.5% from a year earlier, making it the biggest decline on the list, but fortunately, it was up 12.4% from January. Among the specific models, Lexus ES2, which used to take on Lexus' volume models, sells only 5530 vehicles a month. February 14, Lexus China's new RZ and RX two new cars launched, the new RZ launched a total of three models, the price range of 36.99-459900 yuan; the new generation of RX a total of 6 models, the price range of 40.5-619000 yuan, of which the RZ as Lexus's first pure electric model based on the e-TNGA platform is regarded as a new starting point for the electrification of the Lexus brand.

This is the second month in a row that Lexus was run over by ideal car and Ulay car in 2023. In fact, Lexus has been a little weak in the domestic market since 2022. According to official figures, Lexus sales in China totaled 176000 vehicles in 2022, down 24.5% from a year earlier, the first decline in Lexus's 16 years in China. Among them, the ES series has the highest sales volume, with the ES series down 7.00% year on year to 98439 vehicles, the RX series down 8.35% to 44556 vehicles, and the NX series down 47.01% to 19325 vehicles. The performance of other models is mediocre, with UX, LS and LM selling 9695, 4494 and 3610 respectively. In other words, sales of many mainstream Lexus models declined in 2022.

Of course, there is a reason why Lexus's market share has been carved up. On the one hand, the rise of domestic luxury brands. The latest risk data show that cumulative sales in the first two months of 2023 are 35648 vehicles, ahead of second-tier luxury brands. On the other hand, the domestic new energy market is growing rapidly, including Lexus, ideal and other new car-building forces have begun to seize the market share that originally belongs to Lexus, whether the product price or the brand service tone has an obvious competitive relationship with Lexus.

"next year, our annual sales will be far behind those of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, but I am still very confident that next year's sales will surpass that of Lexus," Li Bin, CEO of Lexus, said at a media conference in December 2022. In addition, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, also said bluntly that he hoped to "turn the pattern of BBA into the pattern of NBA."

From the first two months of 2023, the risk analysis of Lexus and Lexus shows that the target of surpassing Lexus fuel vehicle sales in the coming year is still relatively high. For reference, in the first two months of 2023, the cumulative insurance volume of Lexus was 19185 and that of Lexus cars was 21971. According to Qin Lihong, "Lexus is expected to sell about 200000 vehicles in 2022, and it is very likely that the annual sales in 2023 will reach 200000."

Tesla also had a good performance in the list. In February, it ranked fourth on the list with 34064 vehicles insured, second only to BBA. Of these, 25789 were insured by Model Y, leading Mercedes-Benz GLC to return to the top of the luxury SUV list, while Model 3 was 8275, an increase of 160.7 per cent over the same period last year.

According to statistics, the volume of luxury brands in February was 276904, of which 64643 were new power brands, accounting for 23.3% of the total sales, with a particularly significant growth rate. For comparison, new power brands account for 13.3% and 18.7% respectively in 2021 and 2022. In short, the market share of "new" luxury brands, including ideal cars and Lilly cars, is getting stronger, while the market share of "old" luxury brands is gradually being diluted.

"Automotive Industry concern" believes that in the context of electrification becoming a major trend, whether it is first-tier luxury brand BBA or second-tier luxury brand, if we do not seize the time to lay out the electrified transformation, there may not be too obvious changes in the short term, but over time, the market pattern of traditional luxury brands is bound to change greatly in the long run. With the improvement of the penetration of new energy vehicles in China and the promotion of independent high-end, there is not much time left for traditional luxury brands.

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