2021 came to an end, with the production and sales data of various car companies released, the report card of China's automobile industry in 2021 was officially announced.
According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's automobile production and sales reached 26.082 million units and 26.275 million units in 2021, up 3.4% and 3.8% year-on-year, respectively.
Among them, automobile exports have performed well, with annual exports exceeding 2 million for the first time, achieving a breakthrough that has been hovering around 1 million for many years; Chinese brand cars have been pulled by new energy and export markets, and the market share has exceeded 44%, close to the best level in history.
In the past year, the entire industry has continued to face challenges such as the spread of the global epidemic, the outbreak of domestic epidemic scatters, and the shortage of chips, but it can achieve growth:
On the one hand, thanks to the low base of the Chinese market in the previous two years; on the other hand, new energy vehicles, China's own brands and automobile exports have become important drivers of industrial development, and the chinese car companies that are striving have played an indispensable role in it.
Looking back at the production and sales of Chinese car companies in 2021, after reviewing, we can get a glimpse of the stormy meeting of Chinese car companies.
The southern car companies swept through the Chinese car market
Yiou Automobile found that SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motor and Changan Group, which ranked in the top three sales of the year, are located in Shanghai, Wuhan and Chongqing respectively, and are all southern car companies.
In terms of sales, SAIC Motor's performance is the most eye-catching, with a total sales volume of 5.464 million units in 2021, ranking first in the car sales list of Chinese car companies for the 16th time, surpassing the combined strength of the second place Dongfeng Motor (2.775 million units) and the third place Changan Automobile (2.301 million units).
SAIC's new energy vehicle sales also reached 733,000 units, ranking first in the new energy sales list.
In the sales ranking of China's top listed car companies, the Great Wall Motor and FAW Jiefang of the northern system have performed well, but it is undeniable that the southern car companies have almost monopolized the Chinese car market.
This is inseparable from the fact that the south is the center of gravity of China's economy. Cities with high-volume car companies are all trillion-level GDP cities, such as Shanghai, Wuhan, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other cities have already entered the trillion-level GDP city club.
Due to the opening up and support of the policy, the southern market has stimulated economic vitality in its unique geographical location, making economic development progress by leaps and bounds.
As one of the heavy industries supporting the national economy, China's automobile industry has gradually migrated to the south, where the transportation system is developed and the economic system is active, and a stable and sound automobile supply chain has been formed in the southern market, and a high-frequency and mutual trust cooperative relationship has been established with overseas markets, which has promoted the vitality of China's automobile industry in the southern market.
The performance of car companies also has a positive linear relationship with the economic development of the city.
The strong automotive industry is also an important proof of economic strength. In the future, the rise of China's national automobile industry will rely on southern car companies with strong economic vitality, and in the context of domestic and foreign double circulation, southern car companies are bound to highlight the siege and promote the automobile industry to go overseas.
A brother and a sister-in-law are in charge, and the dark horse wins the market
SAIC took first place with a total sales volume of 5.464 million units, and although it was down 2.5% from 2020, it still failed to shake its big brother position.
Saic's sales performance is largely due to its own brands. In 2021, SAIC's own brands sold 2.857 million vehicles, accounting for 52.3% of total sales, exceeding half for the first time.
SAIC Motor, which has always relied on Volkswagen and GM, has now supported its own brands to show a rising trend, quite a style of being a concubine.
Yiou Automobile understands that among saic's own brands, roewe and MG brands have combined sales of about 800,000 vehicles. SAIC-GM-Wuling sold 1.66 million vehicles in 2021, up 3.8% year-on-year, becoming the subsidiary with the largest sales contribution of SAIC Group in 2021.
Saic Motor, a major exporter, still performed well this year, and has won the top spot in the overseas market for the sixth year - achieving a total of 697,000 new car sales in the whole year, an increase of 78.9% year-on-year.
Among them, SAIC Motor exported 598,000 new vehicles, while overseas base production and sales reached 99,000 units. As the champion of overseas sales of a single brand in China, the overseas sales of mg brand reached 360,000 units.
It is worth mentioning that in 2021, a number of Chinese car companies will perform well in exports. Chery's annual automobile export volume reached 269,000 units; Great Wall Motor's export volume was 143,000 units, an increase of 103% year-on-year; Geely Automobile exported 115,000 units, an increase of 58% year-on-year, and its Lynk & Co brand was welcomed in Europe; and Changan Automobile's annual cumulative overseas sales exceeded 110,000 units.
In addition, Weilai, BYD, etc. have also brought Chinese electric vehicles to European markets such as Norway.
SAIC motor also actively in the field of intelligent electric vehicles, its high-end intelligent electric brand Zhiji Automobile, the first Zhiji L7 has completed the batch of off-line; its next Feifan automobile has also been formally established, positioning the high-end intelligent electric vehicle market; SAIC also actively layout L4-level Robotaxi and L4-level Yangshan Port intelligent heavy trucks, and continue to increase investment in the field of innovation.
Although there are also shortcomings - the joint venture brands SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM fell by 17.5% and 9.3% respectively year-on-year with annual sales of 1.24 million units and 1.33 million units, respectively.
However, it is not easy for the group as a whole to recover quickly after encountering interference factors such as lack of "core" and rising raw material prices, and the "stable play" of the past year has also benefited from long-term technology and industrial accumulation.
In contrast, BYD showed a fierce catch-up trend in 2021, with a high sales growth rate of 73.3%, becoming the car company with the largest growth and the fastest progress, more like a dark horse with thick accumulation and thin hair, whether in the automobile sales market or the capital market, it has played an extraordinary role.
In the past year, BYD's total annual automobile sales reached 740,000 units, and the total sales of new energy vehicles alone reached 604,000 units, accounting for 81.6% of all sales, and new energy sales increased by 218.3% year-on-year. Byd's sales growth of new energy vehicles has led to overall business growth, and its market value has once exceeded the mark of 900 billion yuan, reaching 929.9 billion yuan.
Focusing on the field of new energy passenger vehicles, BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling and Tesla China are the top three new energy sales in the whole year, and BYD has taken the first seat of China's new energy with sales of 594,000 vehicles. SAIC-GM-Wuling and Tesla ranked second and third with 431,000 units and 321,000 units, respectively.
BYD, which started with car batteries and began to "die" new energy vehicles in 2008, has finally laughed out loud.
After all, riding on the "double carbon" goal and the east wind of energy conservation and emission reduction, not everyone can quickly achieve large-scale sales and gain market recognition.
This gap is even more pronounced among China's own brand cars. Although ATD, Geely Automobile and Great Wall Motors were on a par with each other at the beginning of 2021, when BYD's monthly sales exceeded 90,000 units in the later period, the other two had monthly sales of less than 20,000.
Differentiated price ranges and competitive new energy models have enabled BYD to get consumers' votes for real money and silver. In addition, BYD actively expanded the market of developed European countries such as Norway and took advantage of the carbon reduction trend to bring Chinese electric vehicles overseas.
New energy breaks the circle, and a hundred schools of thought contend to make a big cake
Under the influence of national policy promotion and market factors, China's new energy vehicles will show an overall "outbreak" in 2021.
According to data from the China Automobile Association, the annual sales of new energy vehicles in 2021 exceeded 3.5 million units, and the market share increased to 13.4%. This is also due to the fact that after the monthly penetration of new energy passenger vehicles exceeded 5% in June 2020, it has achieved a gradual increase for 19 consecutive months.
In 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, and the growth rate reached the highest level since 2016. In the past December, the monthly retail penetration rate of new energy passenger cars hit a record high of 22.6%.
The top three sales rankings of new energy passenger car manufacturers in the whole year are BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling and Tesla, and they have opened up a large gap with their followers.
BYD's pure electric and plug-and-mix two routes simultaneously sold 594,000 new energy passenger cars, an increase of 231.6% year-on-year; SAIC-GM-Wuling MINI EV, which focuses on small and low-end markets, achieved cumulative sales of 550,000 units; tesla's Shanghai plant reached 483,000 units per year, and the brand's delivery volume in China was 319,000 units.
Other OEMs with annual sales of new energy passenger vehicles exceeding 100,000 include Great Wall Motor, GAC Aeg and SAIC Motor. Among the new car-making forces, the sales of Xiaopeng Automobile, Weilai and Ideal Automobile were 98,000, 91,000 and 90,000 units respectively, ranking 7th, 9th and 10th respectively.
From the perspective of the annual model ranking, among the more than 200 new energy models listed, the total proportion of the TOP20 reached 65%, indicating that the sales of the best-selling models contributed significantly to the overall situation, and the first place Wuling Hongguang MINIEV and the second place Tesla Model Y jointly accounted for nearly 20% of the new energy market share.
From the perspective of price range, the models in the range of 150,000-200,000 are the most competitive, and the sales in the 200,000-300,000 range as a whole lag behind the range of less than 100,000, 100,000-200,000 and more than 300,000.
Among the six new car-making forces, as the main models of Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile begin to accelerate their volume, monthly sales are gradually widening the gap with the last four.
With the monthly sales of more than 10,000 units as the boundary, the six new car-making forces can obviously be divided into two camps, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Weilai, and Hezhong's monthly sales have exceeded 10,000 units, while the monthly sales of Zero Run and Weima are in the order of 5,000-7,000 units.
In addition to the instability of Weilai due to the large fluctuation of monthly sales data, the first echelon of new car-making forces is relatively stable.
The new energy sales of the six state-owned car companies failed to exceed 60,000 units in December, a large gap compared with BYD's 90,000 vehicles. Among them, GAC Aeon, the new energy brand of GAC Group, performed the best, with the best-selling model AION S retail sales reaching 7800 units in a single month, and the AION Y sales reaching 6700 units. Changan Automobile has sold more than 10,000 vehicles a month by relying on only one Ben E-Star, but the follow-up new energy models are insufficient.
FAW Group's Besturn NAT was the biggest dark horse in December, rising from 100 units in November to more than 5,800 units in December, helping FAW surpass SAIC and BAIC in new energy sales in December.
However, with the new energy subsidy policy opening the "countdown" of completely withdrawing from subsidies, the price advantage of new energy vehicles may be weakened.
On the one hand, despite the reduction of subsidies, the state still actively promotes the popularization of new energy vehicles by promoting the construction of charging facilities and formulating carbon quota management; on the other hand, car companies have made preparations for the decline of subsidies.
In the future, new energy vehicles will gradually shift from policy promotion to market-driven, forcing the accelerated iteration of China's new energy automobile industry technology, forcing car companies to provide better mass production products and enhance terminal competitiveness.
In fact, in addition to electrification, intelligence has also become the mainstream direction of the development of car companies, after all, every car manufacturer has an "Apple dream" in mind.
epilogue
Under the influence of many factors such as the epidemic, carbon neutrality, and lack of core, 2021 is not "calm" to withdraw.
Exports and new energy have driven china's auto market in 2021, but with it in 2022, Chinese car companies will soon face more complex challenges and uncertainties.
The addition of various immortals has broken the pattern of the existing automobile travel market, and also indicates the core competition point in the future, which will surely revolve around the intelligent automobile business form.
Yiou Automobile believes that under the trend of global carbon reduction, the impact of subsidy decline will be very limited, and the momentum of new energy will continue. And the strong one after another into the game, the car travel market will certainly continue to be beautiful.