On May 10, the Association of Passenger Vehicles released the April passenger car market data, the epidemic caused a certain impact on the car market, the month of car retail sales of 1.042 million units, down 35.5% year-on-year, down 34% month-on-month, the lowest since the epidemic in 2020. Wholesale sales of new energy passenger cars were 280,000 units, down 38.5% month-on-month, and retail sales were 282,000 units, down 36.5% month-on-month.
Only 1,512 vehicles were delivered in April.
The new energy passenger car market has not yet been affected by the price increase, and the orders are sufficient, but the increase in the supply of production capacity has led to a serious delay in undelivered orders. The wholesale penetration rate of new energy vehicle manufacturers in April was 29.6%, an increase of 18 percentage points from 11.2% in April 2021. The retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles in April was 27.1%, an increase of 17.3 percentage points from 9.8% in April 2021.
There are four companies with wholesale sales of new energy manufacturers exceeding 10,000 vehicles: BYD 105,475 units, SAIC-GM-Wuling 30,020 units, Chery 15,568 units, and GAC E-An 10,212 units. BYD has become the champion of new energy sales and overall car sales.
Tesla China produced 10,757 units in April, but only sold 1,512 units, mainly due to Tesla's direct-operated model, and the new cars could not be shipped out of the factory due to the epidemic. Logistics outages have also affected port shipping, with exports rarely zero in April.
BYD has consolidated the leading position of its own brand new energy with pure electric and plug-and-mix dual drives, and the layout of factories in many places and the layout of the whole industry chain with high vertical integration have helped it show a stronger supply chain guarantee ability during the epidemic.
Traditional car companies represented by Chery and GAC are relatively prominent in the new energy sector. At the same time, the sales volume of new forces such as Xiaopeng, Ideal, Nezha, Zero Run, Weilai, Weima and other new forces has a difficult year-on-year and month-on-month performance, especially the first camp of Xiaopeng, Ideal, and Weilai have a large month-on-month decline, and Nezha, Zero Run, etc. are stronger. Among the mainstream joint venture brands, North and South Volkswagen fully felt the impact of the suspension of production in Changchun and Shanghai due to the epidemic, and the wholesale of new energy vehicles was 6,307 units, accounting for 47% of the mainstream joint venture.
In April, 07,600 new energy vehicles were exported, and due to the epidemic factor, SAIC Motor exported 1,300 new energy vehicles, Dongfeng EasyJet exported 3,433 vehicles, Dongfeng Dongfeng EasyJet exported 805 vehicles, BYD exported 705 vehicles, and AIWAYS Automobile exported 168 vehicles.
According to the Association, with the gradual resumption of work and production and the acceleration of support policies, the automotive industry chain enterprises have gradually changed from "fire-fighting" emergency response to normalized high-resilience supply chain management. But this year is facing a complex marketing environment, compared with the epidemic in 28 provinces and cities in April, the state of May will improve, 3-4 months of delayed consumer demand should have a certain release, is conducive to the gradual recovery of retail in May, "May Day" first week orders and delivery have significant improvements compared with April, but compared with last year's "May Day" there is more than 30% decline, market recovery pressure is still very large.