Only one car entered the top 20 in February sales, with 2,743 Corollas
For a long time, in the domestic sedan market, Japanese cars occupy a very important position, especially Sylphy, Corolla and Civic, as the top three compact car products in Japan, these three models in the domestic sedan market, but also evergreen, although there are many challengers, but in the end there are not many models that can achieve a counterattack. However, with the rise of domestic new energy vehicles, especially 10-200,000 level compact new energy cars, this pattern is continuing to change, and by February 2024, the best-selling list in the domestic market has undergone profound changes.
Through the chart below, we can see that the presence of Japanese cars in the top 20 sedan sales is very low, and when it comes to the data, we see that only one car of Sylphy has entered the top 20 in sales, with monthly sales of 19,878 units, ranking second in the sedan sales list! In addition to this sales list, the second-best-selling Japanese sedan is the Civic, with monthly sales of 7,420 units, and the third-best model is Lei Ling, with monthly sales of 7,041 units, while the Corolla, which has long occupied the top ten sales positions in the domestic sedan market, has a monthly sales volume of only 2,743 units, which can be said to be no longer in its former glory.
Of course, due to the traditional Spring Festival holiday in February, it may have an impact on the sales of many brands' models, but we can also see through the chart, including BYD Qin PLUS, BYD Seagull, Volkswagen Lavida/Sutar and other models, and even Volkswagen Magotan Joint venture medium-sized cars such as the Passat and luxury brand models such as Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Audi A6L are selling very well, so the impact of the Spring Festival is for all brands and models, not only for Japanese brand sedan products, Japanese brand sedans are showing a big defeat.
Coincidentally, a few days ago, it was reported that Nissan and Honda plan to reduce their production capacity in China, Nissan is expected to reduce production capacity by about 30%, and Honda is expected to reduce production capacity by 20%, the reason is that due to the impact of new energy vehicles, the sales of these two brands have declined seriously, in fact, in 2023, Nissan's domestic sales will be 793,000 units, compared with 2022, a year-on-year decrease of 24%, and Honda's annual sales in 2023 will be 1.2342 million, a year-on-year decrease of 10.1%. Therefore, all kinds of signs show that not only Japanese sedans are showing a big defeat, but Japanese brands themselves are also facing many challenges.
In fact, the main reason is that the advantages are not obvious enough, as we all know, a core advantage of Japanese brand sedan products lies in fuel consumption and reliability, that is, fuel consumption is low, and it is not easy to break, so the overall cost of use is relatively low, which is an obvious advantage in the era of fuel vehicles, especially compared with German and American cars.
But now, with the rise of new energy vehicles, this situation has completely changed, whether it is a pure electric car or a plug-in hybrid, extended range electric vehicle, in the area of saving money, it is more brutal than these Japanese fuel vehicles! The reason is very simple, that is, in the short-distance commuting that occupies a large proportion of driving, new energy models can be pure electric driving, and the maintenance cost is also very low, and the overall cost is very low, so the advantages of Japanese fuel cars are not obvious. So since many friends are ready to buy low-end sedans of Japanese brands in order to save money, domestic new energy models are even more cost-effective!
The key problem is that now the involution of new energy vehicles is serious, and the price of new energy vehicle products is lower than that of fuel vehicles, such as BYD Qin PLUS DM-i, which ranks first in sales, and the starting price is only 79,800 yuan, which is already a very low price.
So in this case, the disadvantages of Japanese sedans come out, one is that the brand influence is not strong, driving Japanese cars, especially low-end models, most consumers are not running for face and style, so when encountering more economical models, many potential users will switch to other places, plus the configuration level of domestic new energy vehicles is higher, so the sales of these Japanese brands have naturally been significantly affected. Of course, we see the top 20 sales list, in fact, there are not many new energy vehicles, but the impact is obvious, that is to say, people see the strength of domestic new energy vehicles, only to see the weakness of Japanese cars.
Therefore, in fact, in February, only one Japanese car product sales entered the top 20 of the car sales list, which is a very representative data and ranking, which means that the market position of Japanese brand car products is not very solid. Maybe in the next month, some of these Japanese brand sedan products, sales will come back, but the previous kind of "nail household" general sales ranking and data may no longer exist, that is to say, Japanese sedan products will enter a period of shock in the future, until they are replaced by domestic new energy car products and domestic fuel vehicles.