Recently, the Association released the list of sales data for the whole year of 2021. According to its statistics, in December 2021, the annual sales volume of the domestic car market was 1.049 million units, down 1.7% year-on-year. From January to December 2021, the domestic car market sold a total of 9.846 million units, an increase of 6.4% year-on-year, outperforming the overall market and also ahead of SUVs and MPVs.
Compared with the annual sales structure in 2020, the changes in the car market in 2021 are mainly as follows:
For the first time, hongguang MINI EV broke the pattern of "Xuan Lang Card", ranked among the top three, and became the largest increase in the entire TOP15 list.
Although in 2021 ushered in the upgrading of the Civic, the eleventh generation of Civic officially launched, but in the car sales list, Civic slipped out of the TOP10, ranking fifteenth.
Camry not only surpassed the Accord, but also ushered in a double-digit increase of 17.5% year-on-year.
Compared with 2021, new energy has become the main growth engine of Chinese cars, in addition to the Hongguang MINI EV, BYD Qin also entered the list, and the increase is second only to the Hongguang MINI. The two models won the first and second place in the 2021 new energy car list.
In the high-end sedan segment, the BMW 5 Series and BMW 3 Series surpassed the 2020 annual high-end sedan champions and runners-up Audi A6 and Audi A4 respectively, and won the first place.
Overall, from the performance of the whole year, the joint venture still occupies a large proportion, but including the German, Japanese and American systems, it is almost the same as the year-on-year decline trend, while among chinese brands, in addition to Emgrand, which relies on a strong "market foundation", still adheres to the TOP10 team, Hongguang MINI and BYD Qin, as new energy, have shown a strong growth function.
So, behind these data, what trends reflect the domestic car market?
First of all, from the perspective of Chinese brands. As we all know, unlike the SUV segment, in the sedan market, the voice of Chinese brands has always been weaker than that of joint venture brands. This is mainly due to the price position of the joint venture brand, which in fact overlaps with a large part of the Chinese brand after the terminal discount. For example, the home car segment represented by Xuanyi, Langyi and Corolla's "Three Musketeers", the terminal bottom line has almost touched the 80,000 level.
Although Chinese brands have always harvested users with a high configuration, the brand premium and product reputation of the joint venture can actually impress the consumer groups with demand for family cars. However, if the needs of users are subdivided again, compared with brand awareness, the cost and economic advantages in the process of the car cycle will have more advantages, so this is why the BYD Qin series and Hongguang MINI can harvest three-digit high-speed growth under the overall market weakness.
The hot sales of Hongguang MINI EV are very simple, mainly driven by its practicality of the transportation function, the economic cost of purchasing and using the car, and the tide play that is different from the old man. Especially with the rise of female consumer groups, such mini cars are easier to seize key users and have a high turnover rate. Moreover, although there have been many micro-electric vehicles in the past two years, in fact, it is precisely because the demand for this segment is relatively single, and under the budget of the cost, it is difficult to form an "inner volume", so even if the latecomers gradually increase, the impact on the Hongguang MINI EV is not large.
The Qin PLUS, the model in the BYD Qin series, which has pure electric and plug-in hybrids, also grasps this key demand point of economy and practicality. Driven by the average model price and the economic cost of the car, bydir's Qin series, including Qin PLUS, is also pressing the Emgrand family under the autonomous car boss Geely Automobile.
Therefore, from the product portraits of the two models, the reason why Chinese brands can grow significantly against the trend is not only the benefits of the new energy outlet, but also that the products have also occupied the opportunity of this track. In fact, this trend can also be traced from the hot sales of BYD Han EV and new car-making power models, including the Xiaopeng P7.
Based on this, it is not difficult to see that BYD has done a full-line layout in small cars, mainstream car cars, and high-end cars, and snipes the mainstream family car market with new energy, or the biggest winner in the domestic car segment in 2021.
So, what about the joint venture brand camp? From the current sales structure, the top 15 joint venture brands occupy 12 seats, while only the Camry, BMW 5 series and BMW 3 series of these three models to maintain growth, to some extent, behind the growth of these three models, the benefits brought by the upgrading of the consumption structure can not be ignored. Of course, combined with the industrial pain points of the shortage of chips throughout the year, in the context of the year-on-year decline of Corolla, Civic, Langyi and other models, this does not rule out the helplessness of terminal lack of cars.
After all, looking at the calendar months list since 2021, it can be found that since entering the second half of the year, due to multiple environmental impacts such as the rebound of the epidemic, extreme weather and the intensification of the chip crisis, the car market has officially entered negative growth since June 2021, and the mainstream hot-selling Models such as Langyi, Corolla, Yinglang, Xuanyi and other models have also entered a negative growth stage, and the Audi A6 in the high-end car market is rumored to have been shut down for a month due to chip shortage.
Moreover, this year, due to the shortage of chips, the terminal discounts of some models have also been recycled. Therefore, from the perspective of the uncertainty of the overall environment, under the influence of the lack of cores, the joint venture brand will suffer greater setbacks in 2021. But this is not the key reason for the polarization of joint venture brands and Chinese brands.
In fact, although the scale of Chinese brands in the car market in 2021 is limited, it is undeniable that Chinese brands have made initial substantial progress in "lane change" overtaking, and the advantage window period of joint venture brands in the fuel vehicle market is shrinking, and new energy products such as Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda and other new energy products are basically concentrated in the field of SUVs, and the new energy of cars is relatively conservative, so the playing style of the two camps is different.
With the new energy track of Chinese brands expanding wider and wider, even if the joint venture brand gradually comes out of the chip influence, it is difficult to have such a large growth potential.