Recently, the Passenger Car Association announced the sales volume of the passenger car market in April 2024, according to the data, a total of 1.532 million passenger cars were sold in April this year, a year-on-year decrease of 5.7%. As for the specific sales volume of each car company, it is somewhat interesting.
BYD is still the first on the list, selling 250,000 units in April, and from January to April this year, BYD sold a total of 840137 new cars, a year-on-year increase of 19.6%. Many people predict that 2023 will be the peak of BYD, and BYD's sales will decline in 2024, and it has been proven that BYD's growth will continue in 2024.
After BYD, FAW-Volkswagen ranked behind, selling 119,000 units in April, although it can still rank second, but compared with last year's decline of about 15%, FAW-Volkswagen can be said to be the fig leaf of the current joint venture brand, but it is difficult to avoid the decline in sales.
Geely, Changan, and Chery followed closely behind, ranking third, fourth, and fifth, respectively, selling 115,000, 82,000, and 79,000 units in April. Please note that this is the domestic retail sales volume counted by the Passenger Car Association, not wholesale sales, and does not include export sales, and if exports are counted, Chery Automobile's sales may be ranked second.
And after looking around, it seems that the Great Wall Motors were not found, which also means that the sales of Great Wall Motors in April were less than 50,000 units, of course, it is still that sentence, it is normal for domestic retail sales to have a gap in the sales data announced by car companies, because car companies generally calculate wholesale sales, and the sales volume that will be pressed to dealers is also counted, and there are also export sales.
This also means that Great Wall Motors, one of the top three independent before, has a certain gap from BYD, Geely, Changan, and Chery Automobile, and Great Wall Motors seems to have reached the time when it must make changes.
According to the data released by Great Wall Motors, its overall sales in April reached 94,796 units, a slight increase of 1.8% year-on-year, and the cumulative sales of this year reached 370129 units. Among them, in terms of overseas sales, Great Wall Motors achieved 36,141 units in April, plus the inventory of some dealers, so it is not surprising that the data gap with the passenger association is not surprising.
In April, the sales volume of the Haval brand was 47,054 units, compared with 54,055 units sold in March this year, a month-on-month decrease of 12.9%.
The sales volume of the Ora brand in April was 4,686 units, compared with the sales of 8,901 units in the same period last year, almost half, a year-on-year decrease of 47.35%, the sales volume of the Great Wall pickup truck in April was 18,069 units, a year-on-year decrease of 3.12%, the sales volume of the high-end brand Wei brand in April this year was 4,458 units, a year-on-year increase of 87.71%, and the sales of 14,066 units from January to April, a year-on-year increase of 143.44%.
Although the sales growth momentum is gratifying, due to the previous low sales, the sales of Wei brand cars in the first four months still did not reach 15,000 units.
In fact, it can be seen that the current problem of Great Wall Motors is that Haval as the main sales brand, the dominance of its models is declining, before Great Wall Motors was invincible in the field of SUVs, an H6 was invincible all over the country, but with more and more new energy competitors, the dominance of H6 has declined significantly, and there is no new model to fill the vacancy of H6 decline for the time being.
In terms of other sub-brands, the high-end brand Wei brand, sales have not been outstanding, and it is difficult to take on the task of starting the volume, and the sales of the Ora brand are also declining, and there is no such volume model as BYD Seagull and Wuling Binguo for the time being, although the sales of pickup trucks are good, but after all, it is a niche market.
As one of the traditional domestic manufacturers, Great Wall Motor's technical strength is indeed undoubted, but the decline in sales in recent years is also very obvious. Product design, model planning, or marketing? I think it's time for Great Wall Motors to think about it.