The world's automobiles have been suffering from a long time, which is undoubtedly one of the most headaches in the global technology circle this year.
Since the beginning of the year, it is no secret that car companies around the world have reduced production, Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors, Ford... Having to adjust production plans because of the lack of supply of semiconductor chips, the used car market was once booming, and Japan is a typical example.
In Japan and Taiwan Province, used cars have a chic name: Medieval Cars. It is worth mentioning that last month, the transaction price of Japanese medieval cars hit a record high in the past decade.
Based on the data of USS, Japan's largest second-hand car dealer, it is reported that the average transaction price of used cars in Japan in November was 938,000 yen, about 53,000 yuan, an increase of 31.5% over the average transaction price in November 2019, an increase of 16 consecutive months year-on-year, and in the next six months or even a year, the price of used cars in Japan should continue to climb.
After all, a new car is difficult to find, and it is conceivable that the second-hand cars flowing into the market have decreased sharply. On October 12, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association released a set of data, in September Japan's used car sales fell by 7.6% compared with the same period last year to 305,354 units, both new and old supply fell, used car prices rose is expected.
Japan's medieval industry has always been very developed, whether it is luxury bags or clothing and jewelry, but it is interesting that the automobile market has now ushered in the "Medieval Era", or more specifically, the Medieval Car Era has never ended.
Huge "medieval" automobile industry
As we all know, Japan has a rather Mary Sue call "Medieval" for the second-hand market, in the parking lot of a Chinese car dealership in downtown Tokyo, there are more than a dozen Middle Ages cars for sale scattered, including an old Toyota, the price is 2.86 million yen, equivalent to about 170,000 yuan, and this old car produced in 2010 has accumulated more than 80,000 kilometers before flowing into the medieval market.
It is said that the new car landed immediately depreciated, this business routine does not seem to work in the Japanese car market, since 2020, almost no global prices have been spared, oil prices, electricity, food... The price of medieval cars in Japan has not fallen for more than a year. The trade in medieval cars in Japan was relatively early, starting around the 1950s.
Public information shows that the 50s is the Japanese economic recovery, the total sales of new cars is about 200,000, in 1955, some 4S stores in Japan launched the purchase of old cars for new cars, when the replacement of the medieval car source directly stimulated the medieval car market, it was also this year, Toyota established Toyota Zhonggu car sales company, to 1976, Toyota organized Japan's first medieval car auction, a total of more than 100 cars sold.
Interestingly, in Japan during the bubble period, various entertainment methods emerged in an endless stream, and drag racing was one of them. IT IS SAID THAT JD.COM's Capital Expressway was once one of the most complex road systems in the world, covering most of Tokyo and Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba, and even many taxi drivers sometimes couldn't figure out these complicated routes.
Countless drag racing enthusiasts lurk on the road late at night, the cars parked around them are not even complete in shape, the Toyota four-door rear-drive produced in the 90s, and some cars do not even have front and rear bumpers. As a result, in the 1990s, the Japanese medieval car trade gradually matured under the dual impetus of economy and entertainment, and in 1992, the trading volume of Japanese medieval cars exceeded that of new cars for the first time.
In 1999, there were 7.95 million medieval cars registered in Japan, and as many as 3.59 million participated in the auction of medieval china. At that time, some auction houses jointly set up their own "mileage data management systems", and a series of related laws and regulations also emerged, such as the Fair Trade Convention, the Flea Business Law, the Automobile Recycling Law and so on. The favorable external environment indirectly ripened the entire Sino-Gu car trading industry chain, and in 2004, the number of registered Zhonggu cars in Japan was 8.2 million, and the number of Zhonggu cars participating in the auction was 6.82 million.
After entering the new century, Japan's annual medieval car trading volume rarely fell by 6 million. In Japan, there is a certified used car group, the full name is "Japan Nakako Car Vending Association Lianhe Association", in 2008 there were 12,000 members of the country, an average of 2 million units per year.
It is undeniable that the market precipitation and market experience have always maintained the activity of Japan's medieval cars, and in 2008, the operating orders of china's ancient cars were 200,000 to 300,000. Today, there are more than 20 large medieval car trading markets in Japan, and there are nearly 200 auction houses, and the momentum of each one cannot be underestimated.
USS in Chiba Prefecture is said to be the world's largest medieval car trading market, where there are thousands of electronic trading desks in each trading hall, and an average of one car can be auctioned every 5 seconds, with an average daily trading volume of 17,000-22,000 vehicles. Gulliver, a well-known Japanese medieval car company, has more than 8,000 franchised Dealers, and AUCNET, the largest remote Car Auction Company, has more than 7,000 franchised dealers.
Because of this, the competition in the industry is extremely cruel. Relevant information shows that Japan usually treats the Middle Ages car enterprises as beginners within 1 year, the primary within 3 years as intermediate within 5 years, the superiors within 10 years, and the special level within 20 years, and the survival rate within 3 years generally does not exceed 30%.
Japanese cars dominate the global medieval car market?
Overseas, the culture of used cars is extremely lively, which is different from that in China.
Not only Japan, the sales ratio of used cars and new cars in the United States is 2.19, the proportion of used cars and new cars in Europe and the United States is generally around 1.5 to 1, like the United States, Germany, the automobile market is close to saturation in countries, used car sales can sometimes exceed twice as many new cars.
Take the United States as an example, especially in 2008, when the United States financial crisis, used cars took the opportunity to enter the market, and data show that in the past decade, the annual sales of used cars in the United States were as high as 40 million. When the global used car was extremely flooded, Japanese cars were once popular, and the key reason was that Japanese cars maintained their value.
The preservation of the value of Japanese cars is a fact that the entire automotive industry has to admit.
According to a relevant survey report in 2020, according to the retention rate of used cars from January to September last year, Japanese cars are more popular among all mainstream car brands, and there are only 5 brands that can maintain a retention rate of more than 70% in three years, namely Porsche, Lexus, Toyota, Honda and Subaru, and the average retention rate of 3-year car age is 78.79%, 80.70%, 76.54%, 75.21% and 71.41%, which is almost the world of Japanese cars.
The remaining Japanese brands also have a good retention rate, with Nissan and Mazda at about 64%, Isuzu and Suzuki at 63.80% and 62.91% respectively. So for a long time, Japanese cars were able to dominate the global used car market, and in the early years, the number of used cars exported by Japan was considerable, reaching about 1.4 million in 2006, 1.34 million in 2008, and more than 560,000 in the first half of 2013, an increase of 13 percent over the same period in 2012.
Myanmar, in particular, loves Japanese used cars. According to data released by the Japan Trade Organization, Myanmar once imported more than hundreds of thousands of vehicles from Japan in a year, and 90% of them were used cars within three years. Coincidentally, used cars in Marwila, Africa, are also everywhere.
It is said that there are about 60 cars in the largest car market here, all of which are used cars, of which only one is from Singapore, one is from India, and the rest are all from Japan. Perhaps the exaggeration is exaggerated, but this side supports the popularity of Japanese used cars.
Previously, several major countries where Japan exported used cars were Bangladesh, New Zealand, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines... Today, Chile, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates are also gradually surrounded by Japanese used cars. But do Japanese cars really dominate the global used car market? It should be noted that this is not the case in countries where the new car market is developed or the car is saturated, at least in China, it is BBA that balances the used car market.
"September 2021 China Automobile Retention Rate Research Report" shows that in September, the overall price of domestic luxury brands increased, of which the brands with the highest month-on-month increase in retention rate were BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, and the changes in the rest of the brands were not obvious, but the retention rate of the most popular Honda hot brands in the past did not increase but declined, and Honda's retention rate in August was 80.5%, and in September it was 80.0%.
Although there is only a slight decline, the enthusiasm for Japanese used cars in China has not been very high, after all, consumers prefer BMW Audi Mercedes-Benz. German cars in China absolutely pressure the Japanese system, Mercedes-Benz brand 3 years of car age average retention rate of 68.18%, Volkswagen brand is 62.88%, BMW and Audi are 61.56% and 60.96%, the lowest Skoda also has 54.45%, in short, the overall retention rate of German cars in China will not be less than 50%.
When the supply of car cores was weak this year, some regional dealers in the domestic BBA even carried out the activity of "issuing fares to buy back used cars".
From a certain point of view, Japanese cars have some ups and downs in the global second-hand market, and the state is far less stable than before. Even Myanmar, which loves Japanese used cars, has had several Waterloo appearances, and in 2018, there were more than 130 car sales centers selling Japanese used cars in Yangon and Mandalay, myanmar, and more than 30 of them were exposed to violations.
All kinds of signs show that Japanese cars can't conquer the global used car market, which is just a beautiful illusion.
The tide of lack of cores must continue?
The world's second-hand cars are getting better and better to sell, nothing more than new cars are getting less and less, everything has traces to follow, it is true that the price of car chips is staggeringly high, and no one can ignore this point in the long overdue delivery of new cars.
How ridiculously expensive are chips? Previously, there was gossip that Ideal Car had purchased thousands of electronic parking chips at a high price on the black market in order to deliver the volume, and the purchase price of a single piece was as high as more than 5,000 pieces, which was more than 800 times the normal price. Although the ideal official came forward to refute the rumors, the heartache of the car companies behind the lack of core tide was highlighted.
This year, the price of chips on the black market is rampant, and some media have reported that the original price of 13 yuan / ESP chip at Bosch, the current black market price is speculated to 4,000 yuan / piece, nearly 300 times higher. Prices in normal channels have also risen, with more than 35 chip suppliers announcing price increases between April and June this year.
But the price increase is not a fatal injury, the most fatal thing is that the chip has money and nowhere to buy.
The last wave of core shortage frenzy is closely related to the industry environment, after all, the previous automotive chip in the entire chip market accounted for only 5% to 6%, in 2019, the scale of global automotive chips is less than 50 billion US dollars, car companies never expected that one day will be "a core is difficult to find", the industry prejudgment error can only eat its own fruit, can not make up.
But now, whether it is the chip market or the automotive industry has clearly witnessed the madness of missing cores, will the next wave of missing cores roll in? The answer is probably not optimistic.
Unfortunately, 2021 is destined to be unfavorable for the chip industry, reality seems to be always more magical than drama, in addition to the general environment, everything that chips encountered this year is enough to make the industry collapse. In March, a fire destroyed a chip factory in Renesas, Japan, damaging 11 devices and taking a month to restore the production line.
Coincidentally, in September, 95% of Dresden, Germany's semiconductor powerhouse, was plagued by nearly two hours of power outages, affecting the factories set up by global chip foundry giants such as GF, Infineon, and Bosch; in November, ST's three factories in France went on strike continuously...
All kinds of flying disasters came without warning, making the chip, which was not rich in the first place, worse. Moreover, the production cycle of automotive chips is not short, and this ups and downs of the plot are obviously seriously hurtful. Of course, natural disasters are not the most headache factor in the industry, and more critically, the production of raw material wafers for the chip itself has become less and less in recent years.
According to the data of the International Semiconductor Industry Association, the number of global 8-inch wafer production lines reached 200 in 2007, and then began to decline, falling to 188 in 2016, and the automotive chip industry itself did not have rice under the pot.
Although in order to solve this problem, some chip manufacturers have begun to plan to invest in their own fabs, but it is difficult to say whether the supply will keep up in a time and a half, such as SMIC's Shenzhen factory will not start production until at least next year, and TSMC's Phoenix plant is even farther away, and the time is expected to be set for 2024.
Domestic car companies are about to be tortured crazy by chips, and domestic chips are frequently speculated by the outside world that this will not be the next breakthrough of the new race point.
Objectively speaking, the scale of China's self-produced automotive chips is less than 15 billion yuan, accounting for only 4.5% of the global production capacity, especially the import proportion of key components such as MCUs exceeds 80%-90%, but in recent years, the domestic car companies that have announced the production of self-produced chips are not in the minority, and it is not a little hopeless to be self-sufficient in a short period of time.
However, the chip has stumped the hero of the world's car companies, and how to quickly break the game seems to be more and more urgent, otherwise, the next year may still be the stage of second-hand cars.
Koi Finance, deep fun good luck, public number: jinlifin. This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.