In February, SAIC's sales volume came earlier than usual.
According to official data, SAIC Motor's vehicle sales in February reached 322,000 units, up 30.6% from 246,500 units in the same period last year. Among its major subsidiaries, the Volkswagen and passenger car segments achieved substantial growth, while the GM and Wuling segments maintained their status quo ante. In addition, new energy and overseas sales increased by 48.42% and 69.34% respectively, becoming a strong driving force.
However, due to the low year-on-year base, behind the year-on-year increase is only the sales of more than 300,000 vehicles, which is still a long way from its peak in 2018. Therefore, SAIC motor is obviously not happy.
The "Troika" in Struggle
Specifically, in terms of sales performance in major joint venture sectors, SAIC Volkswagen sold 90,600 units in February, an increase of 79.41% year-on-year. This is a year-on-year increase in sales of more than 50% in January, and SAIC Volkswagen's sales have returned to a high growth trend.
The sales volume continued to rise in the first two months of this year, which is related to the continuous development of its ID. series and the return of major models such as Langyi and Passat to the normal state of hot sales. Recent data show that the average monthly sales of SAIC Volkswagen's ID. series products have remained above 6,000 units, while Langyi has returned to the 40,000-vehicle camp, while Passat and Tiguan have stabilized at about 15,000 vehicles.
The stabilization of the main models has ensured that the overall sales of SAIC Volkswagen have shown a warming trend.
Compared with SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM's development momentum at the beginning of this year is relatively sluggish, which is the opposite of previous years. Following a 15.43% year-on-year decline in sales in January this year, SAIC-GM's sales in February were basically the same as the same period last year, so if you count the cumulative sales in the first two months of this year, SAIC-GM still saw a 10% decline.
The main reason for this situation is that there are not many models with monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles under SAIC-GM, and the only few hot-selling models such as Yinglang, GL8, Uncoway, etc. are mostly concentrated in the Buick brand, and although Cadillac does not have particularly outstanding products, most of the products are balanced, which to a certain extent also maintains its fundamentals of not falling sharply.
In addition, brands like Chevrolet are also one of the main reasons for saic-GM's continuous decline.
From 717,000 vehicles in 2014 to 269,000 in 2021, Chevrolet is already at a crossroads of fate. Last year, Chevrolet was also one of the few joint venture car companies that did not get on the new car, but only patched the configuration of several of its main Cruze and Mai Ruibao XL, as if it had been "lying flat". Today, Chevrolet even has only one Model of the Cruze that sells more than 10,000 a month.
As far as the current sales performance is concerned, how to ensure the balance of the three brands and the recovery of Chevrolet in the transformation of SAIC-GM in the field of electric intelligence is an issue that it cannot avoid.
SAIC-GM-Wuling sold 66,000 units in February, up 1% year-on-year. At this stage, the problem facing SAIC-GM-Wuling is how to alleviate the impact of chip and raw material price increases on its micro-electric vehicles.
Recently, affected by chip shortages and rising prices of power battery raw materials, Changan New Energy and Euler have successively announced the suspension of orders for some of their micro-electric vehicles. Although THE HONGGUANG MINIEV OF SAIC-GM-WULING HAS NOT RAISED THE PRICE OR SUSPENDED ORDERS, ITS OTHER MICRO ELECTRIC VEHICLE WULING NANO EV HAS PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED AN INCREASE OF 3,000 YUAN IN THE OFFICIAL GUIDANCE PRICE.
It can be seen from this move that due to the rising cost of electric vehicles, SAIC-GM-Wuling's profit margin in the field of micro-electric vehicles is getting smaller and smaller.
In addition to considering how to improve sales performance and reduce the impact of chip and raw material price increases, how to cut into a higher-level new energy vehicle track through brand and product upgrades in the future, how to improve the profit margin of bicycles, and how to improve the brand image are important ways for SAIC-GM-Wuling to get rid of the current "low-end dilemma" situation.
The "New Troika" has arrived?
In addition, the performance of SAIC's autonomous sector is still worthy of recognition.
In February this year, SAIC Motor sold 64,000 new vehicles, an increase of 114.69% year-on-year. This is the second time that SAIC Passenger Vehicles achieved a year-on-year increase in Sales in February after a 18% year-on-year increase in sales in January. According to the data provided by SAIC Passenger Cars, in the first two months of this year, Roewe and MG had a number of models sold at the forefront of the market segment, such as Roewe RX5, MG ZS, Roewe i5 and the new MG 5, etc., with sales exceeding 20,000 units in the first two months of this year.
In addition, in the new energy and overseas markets, SAIC Passenger Vehicles also performed strongly in February. According to the data, SAIC Motor's sales of new energy vehicles in February were 9,184 units, an increase of 67.5% year-on-year; overseas exports in February were 28,000 units, an increase of 243.4% year-on-year, and its market share in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand was greatly improved.
Driven by SAIC Passenger Vehicles, SAIC's new energy vehicle sales exceeded 45,000 units in February, an increase of 48.4% year-on-year, and continued to occupy a dominant position in the market. Among them, in addition to the support of the passenger car sector, SAIC-GM-Wuling small and micro electric vehicles maintained rapid growth; SAIC Volkswagen new energy vehicle sales also exceeded 6300 units, ranking first in the joint venture brand.
Overseas, SAIC's overall overseas sales exceeded 56,000 units in February, up 69.3% year-on-year. Among them, the sales volume of the MG brand in Europe has successfully achieved "doubling".
SAIC Motor said that this year will be released overseas pure electric vehicle MG EH32 and other representatives of a number of new energy products, in view of the current SAIC passenger car in the European market continues to increase market share, its expected SAIC independent brand in Europe annual sales is expected to reach 120,000 vehicles, Europe will take the lead in promoting to SAIC's first "100,000-car" overseas regional market.
Thanks to the performance of the autonomous sector, SAIC Motor's sales in new energy and overseas markets continued to rise. In the first two months of this year, SAIC Motor's new energy vehicle sales reached 118,000 units, up 33.47% year-on-year, and export and overseas bases sold 122,000 units, up 72.02% year-on-year.
Behind the sales of 322,000 new vehicles in a single month & 30.6% year-on-year, the "new troika" of independent brands, new energy and overseas markets continues to show eye-catching performance. The main joint ventures maintained a stable and good development trend, especially SAIC Volkswagen, with a sharp increase of 79.4% year-on-year sales in a single month, which also allowed SAIC Group not to fall deeper into the cold of the lips and teeth that the joint venture relied on.
"For SAIC Motor, it is better to complete a better bottoming out than to keep the sales volume that cannot be maintained and not embarrassed, and in the case of ensuring normal sales, let the sales volume completely 'fly itself', so as to discover the fundamental problem."
Last year, when SAIC motor sold 649,600 vehicles in the first two months, the author gave this advice. In the past year, SAIC Motor has now opened a new round of competition under the performance of accumulating 777,600 vehicles in the first two months. Although the appearance of struggling to catch up with himself is slightly awkward, under the blessing of the "new troika", the next step is a footprint, and the look of hard work is really beautiful.