At the beginning of 2022, the mainland automobile market still showed a stable development trend under the background of a high base in the same period last year.
According to the latest production and sales data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (hereinafter referred to as "CAAM") on February 18, in January 2022, the production and sales of mainland automobiles reached 2.422 million units and 2.531 million units, down 16.7% and 9.2% respectively, and up 1.4% and 0.9% year-on-year, respectively.
From the perspective of subdivision models, supported by the continued slight improvement in chip supply, superimposed on the introduction of policies to encourage automobile consumption in some places, passenger cars performed better than the overall level, and production and sales continued a stable growth trend year-on-year. Commercial vehicle production and sales continued the downward trend month-on-month and year-on-year, and the year-on-year decline was more significant. The performance of new energy and automobile exports is still outstanding, and both maintain rapid growth year-on-year.
Passenger cars support stable growth, and the contribution of Chinese brands rises to 45.9%
In terms of the passenger car market, in January this year, the production and sales of passenger cars in mainland China reached 2.077 million units and 2.186 million units, down 17.8% and 9.7% respectively from the previous month, and increased by 8.7% and 6.7% respectively year-on-year, which provided strong support for the stable development of the automobile market.
According to the analysis of the China Automobile Association, the market demand continued to pick up before the Spring Festival, coupled with the continued improvement of chip supply, passenger car companies actively greeted the New Year's "opening red", while dealers also significantly increased terminal preferences, but some companies were affected by the local epidemic, sales growth slowed down, so passenger car sales declined month-on-month, but continued a stable growth trend year-on-year.
In terms of models, in the four major categories of passenger cars, compared with the previous month, the production and sales of cars, SUVs, MPVs and forklift passenger cars have declined, of which the decline in MPV and crossover passenger cars is more obvious, and the decline in production and sales in January is in double digits. Compared with the same period last year, MPV production and sales declined slightly, and cars, SUVs, forklift passenger cars showed different degrees of growth, of which SUV production and sales in the month were 100.7 and 105.7, whether the overall production and sales and or year-on-year growth rate were higher than the car, and the economic and practical cross-type passenger car growth rate was the fastest, January production and sales growth rate was 29.3% and 78%, respectively.
By brand, Chinese brand passenger cars sold a total of 1.004 million new cars in January, down 11.7% month-on-month and 15.9% year-on-year, although it decreased month-on-month, it maintained rapid growth year-on-year, and the growth rate was higher than that of the industry as a whole. Among the major foreign brands, compared with the previous month, the sales volume of Ashkenazi brands increased slightly, the decline in Japanese and French was slightly lower, and the decline in the United States and Koreans showed a rapid decline; compared with the same period last year, the growth rate of French sales was still rapid, the German and American sales showed a slight increase, and the Japanese and Korean brands showed a decline, of which the decline in Korean brands was more obvious.
In terms of market share, January sales of Chinese brand passenger cars accounted for 45.9% of total passenger car sales, an increase of 3.7 percentage points over the same period last year. From the development trend of the past two years, it can be seen that the market share of Chinese brand passenger cars has maintained a high growth momentum since April 2021. In 2021, a total of 9.543 million new cars were sold in self-owned brand passenger cars, an increase of 23.1% year-on-year, accounting for 44.4% of total passenger car sales, a new high in the past decade.
Analysts from the Gaz Automotive Research Institute pointed out that the substantial growth of the market share of independent brands in 2021 is mainly due to three aspects, one is that the mainstream independent passenger car brands have achieved good results, of which the brands represented by Great Wall Wei, Geely Lynk & Co have even brought their own brands to a new stage of double development of quantity and quality; the second is the explosive growth of new energy vehicles, and the new car brands represented by "Wei Xiaoli" have contributed to the improvement of the market share of independent brands with continuous high delivery Third, in 2021, under the background of the industry facing a lack of core, independent brands actively respond to the market and flexibly adjust their business strategies, which timely fills the market gap of similar products in Germany and Japan.
The analyst also said that in 2022, Chinese brand passenger cars will continue to maintain the first position in the market, but in the medium and long term, they still need to continue to do a good job in products and enhance the cost performance of the brand, especially in Europe, the United States, Japan and other car companies will concentrate their efforts in the field of electrification in the second half of 2022 and 2023, and their own brands will face threats at that time.
Commercial vehicles started 25% year-on-year and will be in a period of adjustment in the future
In the commercial vehicle market, production and sales of commercial vehicles totaled 345,000 units in January 2022, down 9.3% and 5.5% month-on-month, and 28.0% and 25.0% year-on-year, respectively. It can be seen that the production and sales of commercial vehicles continued the downward trend month-on-month and year-on-year, and the year-on-year decline was more significant.
The association analysis pointed out that with the gradual depletion of policy dividends and the weakening of transportation market demand, the commercial vehicle market has been difficult to show the development trend of the first half of last year in the short term.
The decline in production and sales of commercial vehicles is more obvious in all types of vehicles. Specifically, the production and sales of buses and trucks in January showed a year-on-year decline. Among them, the production and sales of trucks fell by 29.0% and 25.8% year-on-year, respectively; the production and sales of buses fell by 14.9% and 15.8% respectively year-on-year.
Judging from the situation of passenger and cargo segments, among the trucks, the sales of heavy-duty and medium-sized trucks still fell significantly year-on-year, and although light trucks also showed a decline, they were significantly better than heavy-duty and medium-sized trucks, and the sales of mini-trucks increased significantly year-on-year this month. Among the buses, only large bus sales increased year-on-year, and the other two types of models showed a decline.
It is worth noting that the overall downturn in commercial vehicles, the market performance of related companies is difficult to say optimistic. Statistics show that among the top 15 enterprise groups for commercial vehicles, only Changan, which ranks first, SAIC, which ranks third, and Chery, which ranks thirteenth, have achieved positive sales growth, and the sales of other 12 corporate groups have declined to varying degrees in January, and some companies have even fallen by more than 60%.
At the 2022 annual business conference of mainstream commercial vehicle companies, the head companies have predicted the market situation this year, and from the current market performance in January, the situation of "low before and high after" in this year's commercial vehicle market can be predicted.
The growth of new energy vehicles has not decreased, and the scale of production and sales in January far exceeded the same period
Compared with the dismal performance of commercial vehicles, the new energy vehicle market is still a rare bright color. According to the data, in January this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 452,000 units and 431,000 units, respectively, an increase of 1.3 times and 1.4 times year-on-year. By model, the production and sales of pure electric vehicles reached 367,000 units and 346,000 units, up 1.2 times year-on-year, respectively; the production and sales of plug-in hybrid vehicles were 85,000 units, an increase of 2.0 times year-on-year; and the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles were 142 units and 192 units, respectively, an increase of 3.9 times and 2.0 times year-on-year.
In November and December last year, the new energy vehicle market showed a super growth momentum, so that the monthly production and sales continued to refresh the historical record, from the previous 200,000 to 300,000 straight up to more than 40 or even 50 vehicles. In view of this, the sales of new energy vehicles this month failed to refresh the record, but they still continued the rapid growth trend of last year, and the scale of production and sales was much higher than that of the same period last year.
From the perspective of enterprises, in January, the sales volume and concentration of new car manufacturers continued to show a growing momentum. In January, sales of new car manufacturers reached 121,000 units, up 171.9% year-on-year, and concentration reached 4.8%, an increase of 3 percentage points year-on-year. It can be seen that new car manufacturers are growing into the backbone of the mainland new energy vehicle market.
In addition, from the perspective of market penetration, the market share of new energy vehicles reached 17% in January, and the market share of new energy passenger vehicles reached 19.2%, which continued to be higher than the level of last year. Combined with the goal of "20% penetration rate of new energy vehicle sales by 2025" mentioned in the mainland's "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan", and with reference to the trend of new energy vehicle penetration rate in 2021, the industry believes that the 20% penetration rate target is expected to be achieved as soon as this year.
Also maintaining rapid growth are automobile exports. Following the export volume of more than 2 million units for the first time in 2021, in January this year, the mainland's automobile exports continued to continue to develop well, exporting 231,000 new vehicles in the same month, an increase of 3.8% month-on-month and an increase of 87.7% year-on-year, which was at a record sub-high level in the number of monthly exports. By model, passenger car exports were 185,000 units this month, down 1.1% month-on-month, up 94.5% year-on-year, and commercial vehicle exports were 46,000 units, up 29.5% month-on-month and 64.8% year-on-year. The export growth contribution of new energy vehicles this month was 43.7%.
In fact, since 2017, China's auto export market has performed relatively strongly, with positive growth of 6% in 2018 and 2019, and exports affected by the epidemic in 2020, although it fell by 13%, but in 2021, it showed explosive growth with a year-on-year growth rate of 101%. Some analysts pointed out that under the influence of the global epidemic, the supply advantage brought by the complete industrial chain of China's automobile has been further amplified, especially the chip shortage is obviously good for China's automobile exports.
Summary: Looking forward to the first quarter, the association pointed out that it is necessary to look at the future development of the market cautiously and optimistically, because the development of the automobile market will be affected by both positive and negative aspects. Among the positive factors are: First, local governments will actively introduce policies related to stable growth to support relatively stable market demand; second, the problem of insufficient supply of chips in the automotive industry is expected to continue to ease; third, some passenger car companies have better market expectations for 2022 and have set higher annual production targets, which will also play a certain role in supporting production and sales in the first quarter.
The unfavorable factors are: First, the problem of chip shortage in the first quarter still exists, and the industry in the first quarter of 2021 is not greatly affected by chips, and the base is high; second, the domestic scattered epidemic has also increased the risk of the industrial chain and supply chain; third, the current policy dividend of commercial vehicles has been basically exhausted, the demand for the superimposed transportation market is insufficient, and the freight rate is low, so commercial vehicles will be in an adjustment period in the future.