AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/12 Report--

According to the latest data from the Federation of passengers, retail sales in the domestic narrow passenger car market were 1.587 million in March 2023, an increase of 0.3% over the same period last year and 14.3% month-on-month. The Federation said that the weak retail sales in March was the result of a combination of factors such as sluggish consumption and increased wait-and-see atmosphere brought about by market price chaos. As consumers gradually realize that March is a small increase in regular promotion policies, the phenomenon of holding money in the market has gradually cooled down. At the same time, Shanghai Auto Show will become a powerful platform and accelerant to promote domestic automobile consumption, and the return of consumption vitality to normal is just around the corner.

In March, dozens of car companies participated in price cuts, which did give a boost to the performance of the end market, but the large-scale price cuts also made consumers wait and see to buy cars, and the performance of the major car companies was not very optimistic. From the list, a total of seven car companies showed a decline in sales, including Changan Automobile, Geely Motor, SAIC GM, Guangzhou Automobile Toyota, Dongfeng Nissan, Great Wall Automobile and so on, with Great Wall Motor falling the most, by 31.5%. While SAIC GM Wuling and Guangzhou Auto Toyota also fell by more than 30 per cent.

It is a clich é topic that BYD has become the top seller of manufacturers. In March, BYD retail sales of 192289 vehicles, up 86.3% year-on-year, is still the biggest increase in car brands. In terms of car segments, the Qin family sold 43230 cars in March, topping the list of cars, while dolphins ranked second with 27687. The Song family retails 40114 vehicles, second only to Model Y. in addition, the Han family has 13834 vehicles, the Yuan PLUS 27907 vehicles, and the Tang family 11954 vehicles.

Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, said that the development of the auto industry is not too much in terms of "dynasty change" and "revolution", and some joint venture brands will die faster than Nokia. Wang Chuanfu believes that what is needed at this time is fast, and competitors should have countermeasures the next day; secondly, they should have core technology, and assembly alone will certainly not be able to beat others; and then there is strategy, some enterprises are still strategically vague, and fuel vehicles are over, and they have to save it. It is impossible to sell fuel cars and electric cars in one store at the same time.

When it comes to BYD's sales target this year, Wang Chuanfu gives a very clear figure: 3 million vehicles. He said that excluding exports, BYD's 3 million sales this year can be said to be certain, and will strive to achieve 3.6 million. He said that BYD has pricing power in the range of 10-200000, and the reason for setting the 3 million goal is to be stable, not to make everyone uncomfortable, and it is not good for others to have no way to live.

With the exception of BYD, other independent brands performed poorly, with Chang'an down 22.7% and Great Wall down 31.5% year-on-year. As a member of China's local manufacturing industry, Great Wall Motor has performed worse than a joint venture. In March, Great Wall sold only 50710 cars, down 31.5% from a year earlier. At present, Great Wall plans to have four major passenger car brands: Harvard, Wei Brand, Tank and Euler, of which the Harvard brand accounts for 50% of the total sales of Great Wall cars, and the H6 model is responsible for the sales of the Harvard brand. Once upon a time, Great Wall could sell 400000 vehicles a year on the H6 alone, but now the H6 model has fallen to the altar, with Harvard H6 selling just 14841 in March. At the same time, the performance of Wei Pai, a high-end brand owned by Great Wall, is hard to compliment. Official figures show that Wei brand sales in March were only 1275, down 73.19% from a year earlier, halving year-on-year for six months in a row.

Precisely because of the price reduction subsidy, some joint venture car companies have performed well. For example, FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC-Volkswagen, FAW-Toyota and so on have all achieved year-on-year growth. FAW-Volkswagen, in particular, increased 16.4% to 146816 vehicles, becoming the mainstream joint venture brand with the biggest increase. SAIC-Volkswagen also grew 7.7% year-on-year.

In the context of price reduction subsidies, there have also been "trampling incidents" among car companies, especially Japanese joint venture brands, whose sales are particularly dismal. Specifically, Guangzhou Auto Toyota fell 31.1% year-on-year to 60626 vehicles, Dongfeng Nissan dropped 27.1% to 49416 vehicles, while Guangzhou Auto Honda and Dongfeng Honda fell off the list again, with Guangzhou Automobile Honda falling 28.4% to 41813 vehicles and Dongfeng Honda down 15.1% to 40228 vehicles.

SAIC GM, a joint venture brand of SAIC, survived the gap, with March sales falling 7.1 per cent from a year earlier to 65021 vehicles. As a joint venture brand that once wrestled with North and South Volkswagen, SAIC GM has three major brands: Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet, which also covers high-end, mainstream, middle and low-end markets, and has long been at the forefront of domestic passenger car sales. However, SAIC GM's influence has not been as good as it used to be in recent years.

In terms of sales volume in the first quarter, the performance of China's automobile market was not good. Only two car companies, BYD and Tesla, achieved year-on-year growth, of which BYD grew by 77.0% and Tesla by 26.9%. Other car companies all showed declines, including Great Wall Motor, which plummeted 41.7% year-on-year, while SAIC GM Wuling, Dongfeng Nissan and SAIC GM all fell by more than 30%. Honda's two joint ventures in China fell off the list.

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