In 2021, the number of insured units at the terminal of the domestic passenger car market was 21,079,817 units, an increase of 6.25% year-on-year.
A return to the 20 million unit mark in passenger car sales is welcome, but the 6 percent increase is also nearly the lower limit of the general forecast for industry analysts in early 2021. Since August 2021, passenger car sales have been in a year-on-year decline, and the decline has remained above 13% since September. The shortage of supply chains, the accelerated penetration of new energy models, the iteration of brand consumption concepts and the intertwined impact of high year-on-year base have made the entire auto market pattern both turbulent and unpredictable.
In the confusing 2021 car market, we also found several potential trends worth tracking and mining from the data:
1. Will Tesla surpass either of the BBA in 2022?
In December, Tesla sold more than 70,000 vehicles on record terms, topping the luxury brand sales charts for the first time. Although Tesla is not outstanding among luxury brands in terms of average selling price, Tesla has firmly occupied the minds of potential BBA consumers in the next few years in the key markets of two luxury brands, mid-size sedans and mid-size SUVs. In other words, even if Tesla has not yet had an impact on BBA in the current sales figures, Tesla has intercepted the future growth of BBA in advance.
This trend is already evident in the luxury mid-size car market. In december's luxury car sales list, none of the BBA mid-size cars were on the list, and the first model to be squeezed out of the top ten luxury brand sales by Tesla in the whole year was the Audi A4. According to this trend, the interception effect of Model Y on the luxury mid-size SUV market will also occur in the next two years or so.
Tesla has proved that the Shanghai factory has the ability to produce more than 700,000 vehicles per year, and Tesla's sales in new first- and second-tier cities have accounted for more than 65%, and the trend of sales decline is obvious. Under the combined effect of capacity release and order replenishment, Tesla will become the top three luxury brand sales in 2022 or 2023, which is not a fantasy.
2. Will the market share of joint venture brands fall below 40% in 2022?
In 2022, the sales volume of new cars of mainstream joint venture brands fell by 7.51% year-on-year, and the market share fell from 50.2% in 2020 to 43.7%, with the lowest market share in a single month being 40.8%. The lost market share is almost all eaten by independent brands. Since July, the market share of independent brands has exceeded 40% continuously, and the annual sales volume has increased by 27.87%.
The decline of joint venture brands is particularly severe below the waist. The sales volume of Korean brands in 2021 fell by 24.33% year-on-year, while The German and Japanese brands remained relatively stable, with sales falling by 4.86% and 4.99% respectively. Among the top five joint venture brands, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Buick, the cumulative market share fell by 4.37 percentage points compared with 2020, but the concentration among mainstream joint venture brands increased by 1.75 percentage points.
The conservatism of the joint venture brand in terms of products has accelerated the loss of the new generation of consumers, but it has also allowed the remaining users to further gather with the head brand and the brand with a stable reputation. Toyota has recently accelerated the pace of new car launches, and although the bicycle efficiency is not as good as that of Volkswagen five years ago, Toyota is also doing its best to compete for share among the conservative users that have precipitated.
The joint venture brands with waist and below have no chance to do a large and full brand. The opportunity left behind can only be to explore the long-tail market under the premise of reducing operating costs and reducing burdens, and gather seemingly niche people, so as to occupy a place in a more segmented market and ensure the survival of the brand itself.
However, in the long run, the market share of independent brands will further increase is a major trend, and it is only a matter of time before the market share of non-luxury mainstream joint venture brands falls below 40%.
3. Autonomous car companies from three-legged to the hegemony?
In the past few years, Geely, Changan and Great Wall are the only independent car companies that can enter the top ten sales in the encirclement and suppression of joint venture car companies. However, starting from 2021, not only these three independent car companies still maintain a good momentum of development, but also perform well in terms of the degree of single product explosion, the balance of the sales structure and the upward development of the brand, and more independent car companies have begun to play their unique advantages to participate in the positive competition with joint venture car companies.
In the last few months of 2021, BYD has continuously entered the top ten sales of car companies and brands with the rapid development of new energy models. Among them, pure electric occupies the high and low ends of the market, and plug-in hybrid models with high fuel-saving characteristics occupy the middle mainstream household market, that is, to cut through the consumption pain points, and it is also a phased release of its accumulation of new energy technology for many years.
SAIC Passenger Vehicles gives full play to its global advantages, in addition to maintaining its scale and volume in China, the proportion of export sales has increased year by year, accounting for 36% of export sales in 2021, not only the overseas sales champion of a single brand in China, but also among the top ten of a single brand in 17 countries around the world. Driven by the internal and external double cycle, SAIC's annual sales of passenger cars exceeded 800,000 units for the first time.
Saic-GM-Wuling gave full play to the characteristics of its consumption sinking, with a combination of small and micro electric vehicles + deep capillary channels + digitalization + trend marketing, created a new automobile category, and also guided the broadest masses of people in China to the most simple cognition of electric vehicles. Therefore, despite the large number of later imitators, SAIC-GM-Wuling has always been able to rely on its fundamental system advantages to firmly grasp the discourse power of the new category of scooters and maintain its vigorous vitality.
Give full play to the advantages of the bottom layer, and constantly break the ice of the joint venture and reshape the pattern of the automobile market by building new capabilities, which is the best opportunity for independent car companies to catch up with the joint venture brands in a series of fields such as sales volume, share, price, and consumer cognition this year and next year.
