The 2024 year of the car market, waiting for the "spring" of the party?

Text/Tao Li

Where will the auto market go in 2024? The answer to this question was actually known to many people last year.

In 2023, which belongs to the Chinese auto market, the word "involution" has been fought from beginning to end, and the price war has been fought round after round, and a number of old players have been eliminated, but the new entrants still want to catch up. At least for major car companies, it is absolutely impossible to stop and "talk about peace", so the auto market in 2024 will only become more volatile, especially the new energy vehicle market.

In fact, we can also perceive this from the speeches of some car company executives, such as He Zhiqi, senior vice president of BYD Group and COO of passenger cars, said in a recent interview that in 2022, including BYD, it will be a market in short supply and a seller's market;

As the leader of the domestic new energy vehicle market, the words of BYD executives are actually very convincing. 2022 is basically the highlight moment of BYD, when any news of a new car will receive widespread attention from consumers, and due to the large number of orders, it is even more normal to queue for months to pick up the car. Even if it is affected by external reasons, the price of the car has risen again and again, but it still can't resist the enthusiasm of consumers.

However, with the efforts of more and more domestic new energy vehicle brands last year, BYD is also feeling the pressure of competition. Although BYD's sales of new energy vehicles in December 2023 reached 341,000 units, a new high, and the cumulative sales volume last year reached 3,024,400 units, exceeding the sales target, this is inseparable from the promotion of "price reduction".

At the end of 2022, BYD announced that due to factors such as raw materials, its models would have no choice but to increase prices. However, at the beginning of last year, BYD backhanded out the Qin PLUS Champion Edition of this heavyweight product, "increase and price reduction" once again attracted the attention of many consumers, and the follow-up BYD continued to paint the scoop according to the gourd, launched more champion models, in short, the price is lower than before.

At the end of last year, in order to achieve the annual sales target of 3 million, BYD also offered limited-time discounts on a number of its popular models. The head car companies are still like this, and other brands want to sell well and naturally go even more crazy, especially SAIC Group, such as SAIC Roewe D7 directly hit the price of medium-sized plug-in hybrid models to about 100,000 yuan, and Feifan R7 is squeezed into the 180,000-level market as a medium and large pure electric SUV.

It is worth noting that, according to the data released by the China Passenger Car Association, the domestic new energy penetration rate will be 27.6% in 2022 and 35.8% in 2023, an increase of 8 percentage points over the previous year. According to the latest forecast, the wholesale of new energy passenger vehicles is expected to reach 11 million this year, with a net increase of 2.3 million and a penetration rate of 40%.

Although the growth momentum is still strong, it is clear that the growth rate of new energy vehicles is slowing down, which means that a new market supply and demand relationship is forming, that is, the new energy vehicle market mentioned by BYD executives will change from a "seller's market" to a "buyer's market", which also indicates that there is still some room for the price of new energy vehicles this year.

In economics, a buyer's market means "supply exceeds demand", and sellers who want to sell goods must lower the terms of sale, and the best way to do this is to reduce the price. Although some consumers have recently reported that 4S stores have begun to sell cars flat, but major manufacturers are still launching new promotional policies, last year, the price war of major car companies has been fought for a year, and it is obviously impossible to shake hands and make peace in the new year.

At the same time, from the perspective of the external environment, the price of raw materials for power batteries is gradually falling, and the supply chain is becoming more and more perfect, which will be under the pressure of "selling cars at a loss" to a certain extent, but returning to the reality level, today's competition has reached a white-hot stage, and if you want to live without blood, or even laugh to the end, how easy is it?

Write at the end:

Spending less money to buy better products, this is the biggest desire of all consumers, for the waiting party, in 2024, under the big melee, will it be a good time to buy a car, maybe it is worth looking forward to.