22/04/12
Lead
Perhaps, this year's champion in the SUV market will really no longer belong to the Haval H6.
Author 丨 Kang Qin
Responsible editor 丨 Du Yuxin
Edit 丨 Chic
Originally, with the gradual recovery of production and consumption after the Spring Festival, and a number of new cars were listed, the domestic auto market should continue to recover steadily in March.
However, what was not expected was that since March this year, the epidemic has spread in many parts of the country, the number of local confirmed cases and asymptomatic infections has been rising, and the stricter epidemic prevention and control measures in various places have disrupted the normal rhythm of production, transportation and sales in the automotive industry. At the same time, due to the rise in the price of raw materials such as chips and batteries, the prices of most new energy models and some fuel vehicles have also been raised, coupled with high oil prices, resulting in consumers' car purchase confidence and market demand being affected to a certain extent.
According to the China Automobile Dealers Association, less than 10 percent of dealers completed the month's task targets in March, and nearly 50 percent of dealers only completed 70 percent of the task targets.
The latest data from the Association also shows that after a brief increase in February, domestic narrow passenger car retail sales in March returned to negative growth year-on-year, down 10.5% year-on-year, with sales of 1.579 million units, the second lowest point in the same period after 2014, only better than the 1.045 million units in March 2020.
Overall, in the first quarter, the cumulative year-on-year decline has widened to 4.5% due to the new increase of only 78,000 units in February, compared with the loss of 257,000 units in January and March, with sales of 4.915 million units.
In such a sluggish market, the new energy segment continued to soar, with sales in March up 137.6% y/y to 445,000 units, while total sales in the first quarter reached 1.070 million units, an increase of 146.6% year-on-year.
In addition to the most typical BYD and Tesla, Changan Automobile and Geely Automobile can grow against the market in March also benefited from the promotion of this market segment, and the new energy vehicles of the two in March provided a new increase of 11,000 and 10,000 units respectively.
Affected by the more serious epidemics in Jilin and Shanghai, FAW-Volkswagen, FAW Toyota, SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM, which have factories in these two provinces and cities in March, have all fallen sharply, which directly led to a "reshuffle" in the ranking of head car companies in March, such as SAIC-GM, which set its worst ranking in recent years.
1
Volkswagen Langyi fell out of the top three
In fact, not only the ranking of car companies, but also the best-selling list of sedan and SUV segments has also undergone great changes, such as volkswagen new Langyi, Toyota Corolla, Volkswagen Sagittarius, Buick new Yinglang and Volkswagen new Bora in the March car list have suffered a lot of losses, of which Volkswagen new Bora even fell by 67.8%.
Take the new Langyi, which has the largest sales volume, as an example. As we all know, although SAIC Volkswagen's new Langyi has been negative year-on-year since 2020, its monthly sales can basically stabilize by 30,000 vehicles and above (excluding February), and it is still one of the best-selling models in the car market, ranking in the top three in a single month, and sometimes even taking the lead.
However, in the past March, new Langyi's retail sales were only 21,331 units, losing to the 26,707 units in the previous February, the lowest monthly value since February 2020, and the ranking also slipped to 6th, which may be its worst ranking in recent years. This also allowed the cumulative sales of the new Langyi in the first quarter to only close at 93,778 units, and the overall ranking was squeezed to third due to the narrow gap of 1,452 units being overtaken by the Wuling Hongguang MINI.
As the sales force of the new Langyi is still like this, the performance of the rest of saic-Volkswagen's models can also be imagined. And what makes people more worried is that as of now, the epidemic situation is still relatively severe, Shanghai's sealing and control is still continuing, when SAIC Volkswagen will resume production is still unknown, and the sales volume and ranking of New Langyi in April will continue to decline.
From the perspective of other models in the list, it is obvious that just as the new energy in the overall auto market is leading, the outstanding performance is mostly pure new energy models such as Wuling Hongguang MINI, Tesla Model 3 and BYD Qin.
Thanks to the launch of the 2022 model, after two consecutive months of sales of less than 30,000 units, the Hongguang MINI finally regained its vigor again in March, becoming the top of the domestic sedan market with 41,980 units.
With the arrival of the peak delivery period at the end of the quarter, the Model 3 was once again able to appear in the list of popular cars and rank third. While rejoicing for it, it is also a little worried, because from the recent performance, the maximum monthly delivery sales of Model 3 are basically stable at about 30,000 vehicles, and the BYD Qin that follows may continue to rise, and may soon achieve a counterattack.
Indeed, with the improvement of BYD's production capacity and the continuous improvement of consumer recognition, Qinhui will gradually squeeze into the top three of the car market in a single month, becoming the only independent mid-level car that can compete with Nissan Xuanyi and Volkswagen Xinlangyi.
2
Model Y becomes the "double champion" for the first time
From the perspective of the SUV market, like the car market, there have also been no small changes due to the epidemic and new energy.
Affected by the epidemic in Shanghai, the two hottest SUVs of SAIC Volkswagen in March, Tiguan and Tuyue, did not appear in the single-month and cumulative lists.
Based on the cumulative sales of Tiguan and Tuyue in the first two months of 26,083 units and 26,247 units, respectively, while the Honda XR-V, the last place in the first quarter of the list, sold a total of 35,278 vehicles, and the sales of the two before March were no more than 9,200 units, which can refresh the new monthly low of Tiguan in recent years, with a decline of at least 45.5%.
Although FAW Toyota's RAV4 also showed a negative growth of 12.3%, it is acceptable compared with the 30% and 40% declines of other models.
As for the Haval H6, which has been the champion of the SUV market for many years, sales fell sharply by 43.7% in March, which made it miss the first place for the first two consecutive months.
In addition to the diversion of sales by other models of Great Wall Motors, the epidemic may also be one of the important reasons for the decline in haval H6 sales. Previously, for march, the company's sales fell by 12.3% year-on-year, and Great Wall Motors had said that it was mainly because the epidemic in Shanghai and other places caused a number of parts suppliers to be affected, which limited the production capacity of the factory. In this way, it is reasonable that the Haval H6 has a large loss.
Back to the entire SUV list, new energy has also caused a lot of changes.
The most obvious thing is that tesla Model Y once again won the single-month championship title of this segment, not only that, it also surpassed BYD Song to become the champion of the first quarter with a slight advantage of 977 vehicles, which is the first time it has become a "double champion" in the SUV market. And the 39,730 Model Y in March is close to the 40,500 units set in December last year, which means that the car is still in the climbing period of sales and can be expected in the future.
For Song, there is no need to be disappointed that it did not win the top spot in March, after all, at the end of the quarter, Tesla will use the vast majority of models produced by the Shanghai Gigafactory for domestic market delivery, so the Model Y championship is already expected. What Song needs to do is to rely on bydder's production capacity to increase and let the delivery volume continue to maintain a strong growth trend.
Although compared to the Haval H6, the current lead of Model Y and Song is not obvious, and may be overtaken again at any time, but considering that the sales of the latter two will continue to climb, and the Haval H6 has begun to decline for months, the title of champion in the SUV market this year may really change hands.
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