The darkest hour of automotive chip supply in the third quarter has passed

On November 8, the association released data showing that retail sales in the passenger car market reached 1.717 million units in October 2021, down 13.9% year-on-year and down 7% from October 2019. From January to October, retail sales reached 16.227 million units, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year, down 3 percentage points from january to September.

The Association said that the improvement of the automobile market in October is a good environmental foundation, due to good epidemic prevention measures, the epidemic situation is stable from the end of September to the middle of October, and the unsealing is conducive to the recovery of consumption in the automobile market. At the end of September, the supply of chips gradually improved, which promoted the increase in production and sales in October. At the same time as the national energy consumption double control, affected by the shortage of coal supply and the inversion of coal power prices, the implementation of orderly electricity consumption on a large scale throughout the country has not affected the production of auto parts enterprises. Due to the low inventory level of models on sale at the dealer level, the delivery cycle is prolonged. Terminal dealers take the opportunity to recover the preferential price of the terminal or increase the price of derivatives in order to obtain higher revenue, thus affecting the sales volume of the terminal.

According to the data, the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 368,000 units in October, an increase of 6.3% month-on-month and an increase of 148.1% year-on-year. From January to October, the wholesale number of new energy passenger cars was 2.381 million units, an increase of 204.3% year-on-year. Retail sales of new energy passenger cars reached 321,000 units in October, up 141.1% y/y and down 3.9% month-on-month. From January to October, the retail sales of new energy vehicles were 2.139 million units, an increase of 191.9% year-on-year.

The federation said that the darkest moment of automotive chip supply in the third quarter has passed, and the original October is expected to have a 20% improvement expectation of supply chips compared with the previous month, but the actual month-on-month growth is only about 10%, so the bottleneck factor of opaque supply is still there.

The multiplication association said that the low cardinality effect of chip interference factors faded. Compared with the optimistic judgment at the beginning of 2021, the domestic consumption of Chinese passenger cars in 2021 is superimposed by factors such as epidemic, flooding, lack of core, and power rationing, resulting in a relatively low base. According to the difference between the forecast sales at the beginning of the year and the current forecast, it is judged that the lack of core factors in 2021 is expected to lose about 1.5 million vehicles. The phenomenon of demand giving way to supply in the auto market will continue until the end of this year. The lack of core next year will also slightly affect the market, and the consumption trough period in February next year will become a buffer stage, and then gradually turn to demand-oriented to determine the market pattern.