"In March of the calendar year, it should have been an incremental period for the auto market in the first half of the year, but in March this year, the mainland automobile industry affected by the epidemic declined year-on-year, and the gap with normal production and sales was hundreds of thousands of vehicles." On April 11, at the monthly production and marketing meeting of the China Automobile Association, Chen Shihua, deputy secretary general of the association, said with great emotion when introducing the march automobile production and sales data.
Economic operation of the automobile industry in March; Image source: China Automobile Association
Judging from the economic operation of the automobile industry in March according to the Statistics of the China Automobile Association, it is as large as the overall automobile market, as small as passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and pickup trucks. In March, production and sales all showed a year-on-year decline, and the only thing worth relieving was that new energy vehicles and automobile exports still maintained a year-on-year rapid growth trend.
In the first quarter, the year-on-year growth rate of the automobile market fell significantly, and the epidemic continued to be the highest or caused a 20% reduction in production.
Statistics show that in March 2022, mainland automobile production and sales reached 2.241 million units and 2.234 million units, respectively, an increase of 23.4% and 28.4% month-on-month, and a year-on-year decrease of 9.1% and 11.7%; from January to March, the cumulative production and sales of 6.484 million units and 6.509 million units, an increase of 2.0% and 0.2% year-on-year, the growth rate fell by 6.8 percentage points and 7.3 percentage points compared with January and February.
The analysis of the China Automobile Association pointed out that the year-on-year growth rate of the automobile market in the first quarter fell significantly, mainly due to the recent outbreak of epidemics in China, the obvious increase in the difficulties of market players, the smooth flow of the economic cycle encountered some constraints, and the new downward pressure was further increased. In addition, the shortage of chips has not been significantly alleviated, the price of raw materials for power batteries has risen rapidly, further pushing up the manufacturing costs of enterprise products, and the production and operation activities of automobile companies have been affected to a certain extent, and the overall situation is less than expected.
Taking Jilin and Shanghai, where the epidemic is more serious, as the headquarters of FAW Group and SAIC Motor Group, respectively, they occupy about 11% of the national automobile production. Among them, Shanghai is a gathering of many domestic and foreign parts and components enterprises, large-scale suppliers have thousands, small and micro enterprises reached more than 20,000, before the epidemic, some enterprises were in full production operation, and with the outbreak of the epidemic in March, related parts production and logistics stagnated. Affected by this, NIO has officially announced the suspension of production on April 9.
Some analysts pointed out that the production and logistics of parts suppliers in Shanghai have stagnated basically from March 31, considering the spare parts of the main engine factory, if Shanghai continues to be static for a week, it is expected to affect and affect the output of other main engine factories.
Judging from the latest developments of the epidemic situation in various places, although Jilin has undergone positive changes, the situation in Shanghai is still not optimistic. According to the shanghai municipal health commission on April 11, 2022, at 0-24:00 on April 10, 2022, there were 914 new confirmed cases of local new crown pneumonia in Shanghai, and 25,173 cases of asymptomatic infection. The high number of infections has made the unsealing of Shanghai more uncertain.
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, said: "At present, the epidemic in Shanghai has only affected individual enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and if it continues, it may bring more uncertain impacts on the whole country, and we believe that it may bring 15%-20% of the production loss." ”
In addition, from the perspective of automobile consumption, the consumption momentum is obviously insufficient, and compared with the same period, it shows a certain decline. Since March, the new crown epidemic has spread throughout the country, and all localities have continued to resolutely adopt the strategy of zeroing out the social face, especially in Jilin, Shanghai, Shandong, Guangdong, Hebei and other places, dealers have been affected by stores and transactions, and changes in local management measures have had a certain impact on logistics efficiency, and retail losses have been large.
According to the statistics of the Association, in March 2022, the retail sales of the mainland passenger car market reached 1.579 million units, down 10.5% year-on-year and 25.6% month-on-month; the cumulative retail sales from January to March were 4.915 million units, down 4.5% year-on-year, down 230,000 units year-on-year, and the overall trend was lower than expected.
In April this year, under the influence of various factors such as the new confirmed cases in the local area are still in the rising stage, the production and sales of the automobile market will still face more pressure and uncertainty, and it is expected that the retail sales volume of the automobile market this month will be significantly lower than that of March.
The monthly sales of 13 car companies exceeded 10,000, and new energy vehicles became the biggest winners in the car market
Judging from the specific performance of each market segment, the production and sales of passenger cars in March reached 1.881 million units and 1.864 million units, up 22.4% and 25.1% respectively month-on-month, and down 0.1% and 0.6% year-on-year, respectively, from increase to decrease compared with the previous month; the cumulative production and sales from January to March were 5.499 million units and 5.545 million units, up 11.0% and 9.0% year-on-year, respectively.
Production of commercial vehicles in March totaled 360,000 units, up 29.2% and 47.7% month-on-month, and down 38.0% and 43.5% year-on-year, respectively. From January to March, production and sales of commercial vehicles totaled 985,000 units, down 29.7% y/y, and sales totaled 965,000 units, down 29.7% y/y.
Obviously, compared with the slight decline in passenger cars, the decline in commercial vehicles was even greater, of which heavy goods trucks fell by 66.6% year-on-year, and only 77,000 units were sold in the month. Seeing this data, a dealer who operates truck aftermarket spare parts said: "The cliff type of heavy trucks is really terrifying, and it also makes us a little worried about the future. ”
Fortunately, new energy vehicles continued the rapid growth momentum, with production and sales of 465,000 units and 484,000 units in March, respectively, an increase of 1.1 times year-on-year. In the first quarter, the production and sales of new energy vehicles exceeded one million units, with 1.293 million units and 1.257 million units respectively, an increase of 1.4 times year-on-year, and the market share reached 19.3%.
Judging from the above data, the price increase in the new energy vehicle market in March did not affect the market performance too much, and the sales performance of many new energy vehicle companies in March was still outstanding. According to the wholesale sales of the association manufacturers, there were 13 enterprises with new energy vehicles exceeding 10,000 in March (an increase of 2 over the same period last year), including: BYD 104,338, Tesla China 65,814, SAIC-GM-Wuling 51,157, Chery Automobile 21,817, GAC Aian 20,317, Changan Automobile 15,624, Xiaopeng Automobile 15,414, Great Wall Motor 15,057, Geely Automobile 14,166 and Nezha Automobile 12,026 vehicles 11,034 ideal cars, 10,880 SAIC passenger cars and 10,059 zero-run cars.
The industry generally believes that in the context of repeated epidemics, it may stimulate the rise in demand for some private cars, but combined with the impact of the current high oil prices, more people will choose to buy new energy vehicles, so new energy vehicles will still maintain strong growth.
It is worth mentioning that in the sales performance of specific models of new energy vehicles, the growth rate of plug-in hybrid vehicles is quite eye-catching, with production and sales of 89,000 units and 88,000 units in March, respectively, an increase of 1.6 times and 1.4 times year-on-year, higher than the entire new energy vehicle market. Production and sales of pure electric vehicles in March were 376,000 units and 396,000 units, respectively, up 1.1 times year-on-year.
Chen Shihua, deputy secretary-general of the China Automobile Association, said that with the continuous rise in the price of raw materials for power batteries, or to a certain extent, the adjustment of the power structure of new energy vehicles will be more inclined to the direction of plug-in hybrid vehicles, which will further promote the development of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Automobile exports in March also maintained a year-on-year increase of 28.8%, with exports of 170,000 units in the month, of which passenger car exports were 121,000 units, down 17.1% month-on-month and 21.8% year-on-year; and commercial vehicle exports were 49,000 units, up 43.3% month-on-month and 49.8% year-on-year. From January to March, auto companies exported 582,000 units, up 58.3% year-on-year.
Summary: Previously, based on confidence in the growth of the automobile market, caucus predicted that mainland automobile sales in 2022 will increase by 5.4% year-on-year, and it is expected to reach 27.5 million units. Today, the market performance of 6.509 million units in the first quarter has fallen short of expectations.
Looking forward to the situation throughout the year, the association said that due to macroeconomic impact, the development of the automotive industry is facing the triple pressure of demand contraction, supply shock and weak expectations, and the task of stabilizing growth is very arduous. To this end, it is suggested that local governments should refine the national policies and measures on stable growth as soon as possible, and enterprises should continue to actively take effective countermeasures, and the association will also recommend that government departments introduce policies and measures to promote automobile consumption, including the previous effective purchase tax halving policy.