The "Golden Nine Silver Ten" of the Automobile Market Transformed into the "Silver Nine Golden Ten" Multiplier Association: Chip Supply in the Third Quarter Came Out of the "Darkest Hour"

Financial Associated Press (Beijing, reporter Xu Hao) news, the traditional "golden nine silver ten" in the automobile market is changing into "silver nine gold ten" under the comprehensive action of internal and external factors, and the alleviation of chip shortage has become an important driving force for this change.

According to the national passenger car market analysis data released by the Association of Passenger Vehicles on November 8, retail sales in the narrow passenger car market reached 1.717 million units in October, down 13.9% year-on-year and down 7% from October 2019. The Association believes that retail sales in October were not generally strong, but compared with September, the narrow passenger car market in October still showed an 8.6% month-on-month growth.

"The traditional 'Golden Nine Silver Ten' characteristics are in line with the operation rules of car companies and the rhythm of market demand. At the same time, September was at the end of the third quarter, and there was a phenomenon of sprint sales. However, due to the impact of chip shortages in September this year, the wholesale and retail sales data was relatively low. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, said that this year's automobile market has shown a relatively sluggish and stable trend under the interference of chip shortages.

The fading of the "Golden Nine" color is manifested in the "one car is difficult to find" and the sharp contraction of terminal promotion efforts. According to the data of the Association, the promotion efforts of dealers in September narrowed by more than three or four percentage points compared with June. In Cui Dongshu's view, due to the low inventory level of the models on sale at the dealer level and the long delivery cycle, dealers take the opportunity to recover the preferential price of the terminal or increase the price of derivatives in order to seek higher revenue, thus affecting the terminal sales.

However, what the market expects is that the darkest moment of automotive chip supply in the third quarter has passed, and the chip supply in October increased by about 10% month-on-month.

The performance of "Golden Ten" in the new energy vehicle market is more prominent, so that it has stepped out of the curve of "independent self-improvement" in Cui Dongshu's words. According to the association, the retail sales of new energy passenger cars reached 321,000 units in October, an increase of 141.1% year-on-year.

"The trend of new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles forms a strong differentiation, realizing the substitution effect on the fuel vehicle market and driving the car market to accelerate the pace of transformation to new energy." Cui Dongshu said.

From the perspective of specific manufacturer performance, companies with wholesale sales exceeding 10,000 units in October include BYD's 80,373 units, Tesla China's 54,391 vehicles, SAIC-GM-Wuling's 42,133 vehicles, SAIC-GM-Wuling's 24,085 passenger cars, GAC E'an's 12,064 vehicles and Xiaopeng Automobile's 10,138 vehicles. Among them, in October, BYD's plug-in hybrid model sales continued to rise to 38,641 units, which also achieved a 17% increase from the previous month.

In addition, the retail sales of new energy vehicles of the mainstream joint venture brand Zhongnanbei Volkswagen reached 16,318 units, accounting for 72% of the mainstream joint venture; the sales of new energy vehicles under the BMW brand in the bba luxury car company also reached 4283 units.

In addition to completing the supply of the domestic market, new energy vehicles have also shown explosive growth in exports. In October, Tesla Exported 40,666 units from China, SAIC Motor Exported 6,659 New Energy Vehicles, BYD 1,026 Units, FAW Hongqi 424 Vehicles, and other car companies' exports of new energy vehicles are also poised to develop.

It is worth mentioning that the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles in October was 18.8%, and the penetration rate of 13% in January-October was significantly higher than the penetration rate of 5.8% in 2020. For the goal of "20% penetration rate of new energy vehicles in 2025" mentioned in the national "new energy vehicle industry development plan", Cui Dongshu predicted that this goal "can be completed in advance to 2022 or 2023" at the same time, the current growth of new energy vehicles mainly relies on a00-class vehicles and b-class vehicles, and the contribution of a-class vehicles is small and is still in an unbalanced state of development.

For the domestic passenger car market in November, the Federation of Automobile Manufacturers expects that the supply capacity of the inventory reserves of car companies in October this year is far from meeting expectations, and the overall inventory is still at a low level, which cannot be continuously replenished, resulting in difficulties in the momentum at the end of the year, and some demand is expected to be transferred to 2022. At the same time, the Guangzhou Auto Show in November, as the traditional publicity season of the automotive industry, has brought obvious impetus to the demand for car purchases and promoted the heat of the car market. "Overall, the loss of insufficient supply is huge." Cui Dongshu said.