22/03/08
Lead
BYD's soaring has accelerated the change in the pattern of independent top three.
Author 丨 KangQin
Responsible editor 丨 Du Yuxin
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
Although the volume of automobiles in early February was small due to factors such as the Spring Festival holiday and the sporadic epidemic in many places, the market gradually picked up in the second half of the year with the rapid recovery of post-holiday production and consumption, as well as the conversion of some backlog orders in January.
According to the association's weekly retail sales data, the year-on-year increase in the third week of February was as high as 67%, and the fourth week of growth narrowed to 31%, but the average daily sales soared to 80,000 units. Coupled with the fact that the same period last year was at a low level in recent years, the domestic auto retail market finally ushered in positive growth again in February this year.
According to the overall data released by the Association of Passenger Vehicles on March 8, the sales of generalized passenger cars in January 2022 were 1.272 million units, an increase of 4.7% year-on-year, of which the sales of narrow passenger cars were 1.246 million units, an increase of 4.2% year-on-year, which is the first time since June last year that the retail market has been positive year-on-year.
In terms of sales, 1.246 million units is lower than the level of 1.45 million units in 2017 and 2018, but it is roughly equivalent to about 1.3 million units in 2015 and February 2016, and much higher than the 1.17 million units in 2019. It can be seen that the Chinese auto market in February can be regarded as at least 80% of the blood return, and it can also be regarded as a late opening.
Wholesale is also similar, thanks to the rapid recovery of production and sales status of car companies after the holiday, dealers increased inventory, 1.455 million units of narrow passenger car sales hit a new high since the same period since 2017, even slightly higher than 1.453 million units in 2018, the 26.9% increase is the best year-on-year performance after March last year.
Cumulatively, total retail sales in the first two months decreased 1.8% y/y to 3.324 million units, while wholesale sales decreased 15.4% y/y to 3.612 million units. The year-on-year data of the two is not a small difference, but sales have basically returned to the level of the epidemic.
1
BYD won the first place in autonomy
Generally speaking, as the most seasonal month and lowest point of the year, the situation in February does not truly reflect the pattern of the entire automobile market, and it will not have much impact on the trend and ranking of the whole year, but the huge changes in the top ten lists of car companies cannot be ignored.
As we all know, with the blade battery and super hybrid system gradually widely used in various models, coupled with the super high cost performance, and catching up with the rapid outbreak of the domestic new energy market, BYD's sales have continued to rise since 2021, and have successively refreshed their highest records.
With such excellent performance, IND has become the "familiar face" of the top ten list of car companies in retail and wholesale since August 2021, and sometimes even breaks the independent "iron triangle" formed by Geely, Changan and the Great Wall for many years. Unfortunately, due to the limited production capacity of blade batteries in the first half of the year, the sales of related models are still in a climbing period, and BYD has not been able to rank among the top ten in the final year of 2021.
However, this "tragedy" into 2022 will not be repeated, after all, BYD officially said that the sales target for 2022 is 1.2 million vehicles. According to the data of 2021, the annual sales of more than one million vehicles into the top ten list is ten to nine stable.
Judging from the performance of the first two months, especially February, this figure may be BYD's most conservative target. While the sales of most car companies fell sharply in February due to factors such as the epidemic, the Spring Festival holiday and supply chain shortages, BYD's retail and wholesale sales remained at the level of 90,000 units, a decrease of less than 10,000 units month-on-month, which cannot help but make people doubt the authenticity of the target of 1.2 million vehicles.
Back to the February list, the retail performance of 89,000 units made BYD not only directly become the first independent, but also the runner-up of the month, and the wholesale performance of 90,000 units also made it second only to FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen. In the future, with the continuous increase of products equipped with dm-i system and the continuous listing of marine series products, as well as the continuous expansion of production capacity, it will be a piece of cake for ATD to exceed 100,000 vehicles in a single month, which also means that there will be a new independent top three pattern this year.
Putting aside the too eye-catching BYD, in the retail list of the north and south Volkswagen plus Auto-GM leadership of the situation basically unchanged, relying on the geometry and krypton and other brand sales improvement, Geely Automobile with 69,000 vehicles in the 5th, Dongfeng Nissan slipped to 6th, FAW Toyota with 60,000 vehicles followed by Nissan, SAIC-GM-Wuling also on the list again.
Compared with retail, the wholesale list is slightly stable, FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen still occupy the top two, Dongfeng Nissan, Geely Automobile and SAIC-GM are ranked 4th, 5th and 6th respectively, faw Toyota is in 7th place, followed by SAIC passenger cars. From this point of view, FAW Toyota, which was blocked by the production and sales of the epidemic in Tianjin in January, has basically returned to normal.
After reading the two lists, a question arose, as an independent head car company, what about Great Wall Motors? This is the first time since July 2020 that it has failed to rank among the top ten car companies, what happened? On the eve of the article push, the Great Wall released the February sales data, although the full monthly sales reached 70,000 units, but the narrow passenger car sales of pickup trucks only won 59,000 units, missing the top ten.
2
New energy sedans surpass SUVs again
From the perspective of the three major market segments, cars and SUVs are eternal topics. In the Market in February, there was also a noticeable change in both of them compared to before.
In the retail market, for example, the 6.1% year-on-year increase in sedans in February was much higher than the 2.6% increase in SUVs, which is the first time in nearly half a year that cars are in the lead. At the same time, the growth rate of cars in the wholesale market was also slightly higher than that of SUVs at 27.9%.
In this regard, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, explained that this is mainly due to the pull of the new energy market on cars. In the mainland's new energy market, at this stage, the car still occupies a large part of the share, thus forming a structural pull effect of new energy vehicles on the car market.
In fact, not only for cars, new energy has a certain role in promoting the entire passenger car market. In February, the overall auto market retail and wholesale fell by 40.0% and 32.6% respectively, but the corresponding new energy only fell by 22.6% and 24.1% respectively, maintaining a year-on-year growth of nearly 200%. It is also worth mentioning that the penetration rate of new energy in retail and wholesale reached 21.8% in February, an increase of more than 10 percentage points over the same period last year.
Previously, there was a view that due to the emergence of unfavorable factors such as rising raw material prices and supply chain shortages, as well as the resulting increase in the prices of new energy models of more than 20 car companies such as Tesla, Volkswagen, BYD, Eian, and Zero Run, coupled with the 30% decline in domestic new energy subsidies from January 1, 2022, it may affect the development of the mainland new energy market. However, this concern seems a bit redundant, judging by the fact that sales in the first two months of this year remain at a record high in the same period of history.
The reason for this situation is mainly because the current domestic market demand for new energy vehicles is still strong. Tens of thousands of new energy vehicles can not only meet the needs of consumers, but also have relatively low car purchase and car costs, and in some cities, they do not have to be restricted by license plates and lottery numbers, so they can naturally get the favor of consumers.
Especially in the recent impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, international crude oil prices continue to rise, domestic oil prices are also rising, so that the use of traditional fuel vehicles continue to increase the cost, so that the advantages of new energy vehicles are more prominent, sales can continue to maintain rapid growth.
Conchen
Just want to cross the mountains and the sea