Retail sales of broad-sense passenger cars in January were 2.18 million, up 25.6 per cent from a year earlier and down 6 per cent from December, according to figures released by the federation.
Among them, wholesale sales of new energy passenger cars reached 168000 in January, down 20.5 per cent from December. Notably, Tesla sold 15484 domestic Model 3 vehicles, compared with 23804 in December last year, down 35 per cent from the previous month.
The following is the full text:
Analysis of National passenger car Market in January 2021
January review of the national passenger car market
Retail: retail sales of passenger cars reached 2.16 million in January, down 5.6% from December, up 25.7% from January last year, and getting off to a good start in 2021.
Retail sales fell 5.6 per cent in January from December, which is not strong in a normal year, but it is much better than the decline of about 20 per cent in 2017, 2018 and 2020. Retail sales grew 25.7% in January from a year earlier, second only to 2013 in the past 10 years (January 23, 2012). It is also a good performance.
The recent spread of the epidemic in counties and townships has a great impact on the car market, especially the proposed measures of "local New year" have been deeply implemented in various localities and units, and the strength is very strong, so the number of people returning to their hometown has been greatly reduced. Because part of the car consumption before the Spring Festival is contributed by those who return home to buy cars, these people will slow down the initial growth rate of the car market in 2021.
At the same time, the year-end automobile consumption policies in Beijing, Shanghai and other regions have also promoted the strength of the high-end car market, forming an obvious reversal with the hot county and township markets and the downturn in big cities over the years.
Although dealer inventory has continued to decline in the past two years, the dealer inventory from September to October has been effectively replenished, which is believed to be very beneficial to manufacturers and dealers who keep up with the pace. Otherwise, some dealers will lose sales due to the pre-holiday replenishment logistics and insufficient inventory.
Luxury car retail sales rose 44% in January from a year earlier, up 21% from December, and continued to maintain strong growth characteristics. Demand for high-end swaps for upgraded consumption is still strong, and low wholesale sales in December also contributed to retail growth in January.
In January, self-brand retail increased 38% year-on-year, down 7% from December. Its wholesale market share was 42%, up 5 percentage points over the same period. However, domestic retail share was 38.7%, up 3.3% from the same period last year. Some state-owned independent performance is super strong, Geely Automobile, Changan Automobile jumped to the second and third high positions, Red Flag, Great Wall, Lulai and other brands are all high growth compared with the same period last year.
Retail sales of mainstream joint venture brands rose 13 per cent in January from a year earlier, but fell 10 per cent from December. Among them, the retail share of American brands reached 9.4 per cent, up 0.7 percentage points from a year earlier. Japanese brands 21.6%, down 2 percentage points from the same period last year, 4.1 percentage points lower than German brands.
Exports: 82000 passenger vehicles and CKD were exported in January, an increase of 95% over the same period last year. Among them, the export of independent brands reached 70,000 vehicles, an increase of 109% over the same period last year, and the export of joint venture brands increased by 53%.
Production: 1.848 million passenger cars were produced in January, up 32.7% from January last year and 19.6% lower than in December. In January, luxury car production increased by 35% compared with the same period last year, joint venture brands increased by 7%, and independent brands increased by 71%.
Wholesale: manufacturers sold 2.028 million vehicles wholesale in January, up 26.8% from January last year and down 12.4% from December. Due to the lack of confidence of dealers under the influence of the epidemic this year, coupled with less target pressure, the weekly wholesale progress in January is slow.
Inventory: at the end of January, the manufacturer's inventory decreased by 180000 vehicles, and the channel inventory decreased by 210000 vehicles; from September to December 2020, the channel inventory increased by 110000 vehicles, and from September to December 2019, the channel inventory increased by 100000 vehicles. The winter inventory reserves that should have been established before the beginning of winter in 2020 were not established ahead of time, resulting in a certain loss of sales in January.
New energy: wholesale sales of new energy passenger cars reached 168000 in January, up 290.6% from a year earlier and down 20.5% from December. Of this total, plug-in hybrid sales were 27000, an increase of 173.0% over the same period last year. Wholesale sales of pure electric vehicles were 141000, up 325.8 per cent from a year earlier. The high and low ends of electric vehicles grew strongly in January, of which 60000 were sold in the A00 class, down 12% from the previous month, and the share reached 42% of pure electric A-class electric vehicles, accounting for 23% of pure electric vehicles. The growth was not strong before the Spring Festival; the number of B-class electric vehicles reached 33000, and wholesale sales fell 19% month-on-month compared with December, and the share of pure electric vehicles was 23%, which was the same as that of A-class electric vehicles. The top five cars in the new energy passenger car market accounted for 58% in January, up 10% from January last year. The enterprises that have exceeded 10,000 vehicle sales are: SAIC GM Wuling 38496, BYD 20330, Tesla China 15484, SAIC passenger vehicles 14398, Great Wall 10260, all with growth rates of more than three digits, and SAIC GM Wuling increased 26 times. In January, the sales of new forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal, Hezhong, Weima, Zero run and so on were excellent compared with the same period last year.
Large groups of new energy performance differentiation intensified, SAIC, Guangzhou Automobile performance is relatively strong. BBA luxury car companies began full production of pure electric cars, the growth rate is much higher than the growth rate of traditional luxury cars.
46000 ordinary hybrid passenger vehicles were wholesale in January, up 72 per cent from January last year and 2 per cent from December. Retail sales of new energy passenger cars reached 158000 in January, up 281.4 percent from a year earlier and down 23.9 percent from December.
The prospect of national passenger car market in February
Due to the late Spring Festival, there are 10 natural days before the Spring Festival in February 2021, and the contribution of pre-festival retail sales is higher than that of post-festival sales. In addition, the whole month of February last year was in a state of large area closure, so the growth rate of retail sales in February with a low base is expected to be about 5 times higher than the same period last year. The cumulative sales growth from January to February should reach about 70% compared with the same period last year, which has laid the foundation for high growth this year.
As the Spring Festival falls on February 5 in 2019, this year's Spring Festival factors contribute more, but the recurrent epidemic and the reduction in the number of people returning home have also caused a lot of pre-holiday sales losses, most of which belong to annual losses. As a result, cumulative retail sales from January to February this year are expected to exceed the same period in 2019, returning to the upward trend.
The phenomenon of market nap after the festival will be improved if you don't return to your hometown before the festival. Due to the impact of the epidemic, some enterprises consider the local New year situation, and most car companies resume production and operation after the Spring Festival according to the legal time, so the Spring Festival holiday in February is not long. It is expected that the post-holiday market in the eastern developed regions and big cities will return to normal faster than in previous years, which will also promote the relatively high scale of production and sales in February.
Taking into account the fact that the one-off corporate income tax policy for enterprise car purchases expires at the end of 2020, the demand of some business owners to buy cars before the Spring Festival has been transferred ahead of schedule, and there is a wait-and-see policy on parallel imported models in the second quarter, there may be a short-term decline in sales in the high-end car market.
The new energy target in Beijing will be allocated in May this year, the new energy license plate policy in Shanghai is not clear, and the urban restrictions on the purchase of new energy have entered a bottleneck period. However, non-restricted areas and rental ride-hailing began to enter the power period, forming the new characteristics of structural growth of new energy vehicles.
3. The sales of new energy vehicles gradually return to the normal pace of the market.
China's new energy vehicle market is gradually growing rapidly from the weak, and the monthly trend of new energy vehicles is quite different from that of traditional vehicles. Especially at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the fluctuation law of sales volume at the end of the year and the beginning of the year decreased greatly not only by consumption, but also by policies and enterprises' own factors.
The trend of the new energy vehicle market in 2017 and 2018 is very different from that of the traditional car market, and the new energy vehicle market in 2017 and 2018 shows a sustained, unilateral and rapid upward trend within the year. In 2019, the market of new energy vehicles shows the characteristics of high before and low after. By 2020, the new energy vehicle market has shown a huge "V-shaped" reversal trend after the epidemic, forming a super trend since the second half of the year. The sales statistics of new energy passenger cars reached a super peak of 200000 at the end of 2020. With the implementation of the new subsidy policy in early 2021, according to the law of subsidy changes over the years, there should be a huge month-on-month decline in sales in January. But the actual month-on-month decline is only 20%. This shows that the effect of the transformation of new energy passenger vehicles from policy-driven to market-driven is good.
The sales of new energy vehicles showed a high start in 2021, and the month-on-month trend was better than expected, mainly due to the pull of new products and new power. In fact, the high growth of new energy vehicles in 2020 is mainly driven by new products for private consumption. In particular, many new products with precise positioning, such as Wuling Hongguang MINI, BYD Han, Tesla Model 3 and new power enterprises, have played an important role. These new products at both ends of the price band are very low dependent on subsidies, mainly driven by market demand. The recent popular new products all start with the second family car and the substitute car, which reflects the high and steady growth characteristics of the car market.
4. There are some bright spots of independent brand new energy technology.
The core of the development of new energy vehicles is technology upgrading. Recently, some independent brands are working hard to promote fast charging technology and long-lasting products, which are good technological improvements and bring a good boost to consumers' confidence in the use of electric vehicles.
Although we promote the popularity of electric vehicles mainly to promote slow charging technology, to achieve real-time energy interconnection between Electroweb and electric vehicles, and to improve the load of Electroweb through electric vehicle charge and discharge. However, the rapid charging technology still has great potential for improvement. Compared with the power exchange mode, fast charging technology is also the technological breakthrough direction of consumer electronic products such as mobile phones.
At present, the core bright spot of the development of new energy vehicles is the rapid development of fast charging technology. recently, the power of electric vehicle charging piles is constantly increasing, and the charging speed of 440 kilowatts has been realized. for some electric vehicle products from low electricity to 80% charging speed should be about 8 minutes is possible.
Long-lasting products are also the direction of our product breakthrough, through long-term technology research and development, to further achieve the multi-purpose development of electric vehicles. In particular, our new energy vehicles also need high-end to improve the grade of vehicles, and 1000 km long range products increasingly have the opportunity of industrialization. In addition to Tesla in the world, the comprehensive technical level of China's new energy vehicles is still very high, and the research and development of China's independent car companies are accelerating. At present, the maximum range of the approved models in the domestic announcement catalogue has reached 700km, the weight of the battery is 532kg, the weight of the whole vehicle is 2068 kg, and the battery accounts for 26% of the weight of the whole vehicle. The electric SUV currently weighs 2500 kilograms. If the electric car is equipped with a high specific energy battery with silicon negative electrode, the weight of the battery is only 715kg, and the weight gain of the battery is only 180kg, which can last 1000km within the load-bearing range of SUV. However, with the development of fast charging technology, from the perspective of performance-to-price ratio, most consumers do not have such a strong demand for mileage, so long-lasting products may be flagship products in the short term.
5. Judging the trend of passenger cars in 2021 by quarter.
Although there is a high growth of the automobile market in 2021, the auto market is expected to show a trend of high before and low after 2021, and the pressure of consumption growth can not be ignored.
Judging from the development trend of the automobile industry, with the steady recovery of the national economy, the automobile consumer demand will accelerate the recovery in 2021, and the overall potential of China's automobile market is still huge. therefore, it is judged that 2020 may be the recent low point of China's automobile market, and will achieve restorative positive growth in 2021.
Judging the trend of traditional cars in 2021 can not refer to the characteristics of 2020, especially in the first half of the year, more consideration should be given to the characteristics of the market trend in 2019. The impact of the epidemic this year is expected to be far less serious than that of last year, and the current local tightening is also a precaution, and the large-scale application of the vaccine will promote the situation to be more manageable, thus predicting that the quarterly trend in 2021 will basically return to the normal annual trend.
The growth pressure of the car market in the second half of the year is still great. The third quarter began to face the higher base of suppressed consumption release and consumption promotion policy in the first half of last year. In the fourth quarter, the peak consumption season was also earlier because the Spring Festival in 2022 was earlier than this year, which slightly promoted the year-end consumption of traditional cars.
The trend of new energy vehicles in 2021 will increase to a certain extent. Sales of new energy vehicles have a strong start in 2021, accounting for 7% of the total in that month, compared with 7% in the fourth quarter of last year, so new energy vehicles also brought some sales growth in the first to third quarters of this year. The new products in the fourth quarter of last year led to the high growth of new energy vehicles, and the growth rate of new energy vehicles raised from the base may slow down.
It is expected that in 2021, the policy of circulation to promote consumption in the country will be further deepened, the reform of consumption tax and other measures will be promoted gently, the policies of restricting consumption purchase in various places will be further improved, the consumption environment will be further optimized, and the steady and rapid growth of the car market will be promoted.
6. New energy points need to establish collection and storage system
In recent years, China's new energy vehicle market has developed relatively rapidly. after rapid growth in 2017 and 2018, although the growth rate was only 4% in 2019, it returned to a relatively rapid growth rate of 1.17 million vehicles in 2020.
The high growth of production and sales of new energy vehicles has brought a strong supply of new energy points. At present, it is preliminarily estimated that the supply of new energy points in 2019 and 2020 exceeds 10 million points, while according to the double points policy, car enterprises need a total of 4.06 million points for new energy vehicles from 2019 to 2020, so the supply of new energy points exceeds demand by about 6 million points from 2019 to 2020. According to estimates, the main suppliers are independent brand car enterprises, new power enterprises and Tesla, while the demand side is mainly some joint venture car enterprises. From the perspective of Chinese groups, the new energy points of most joint venture car companies can be digested internally.
As the double points policy of new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles has just been implemented, the risk of imbalance between supply and demand in the future transaction process is greater. In order to ensure the effective and stable trading environment of new energy points and achieve a better pull of the double points policy on the industry, it is suggested that the collection and storage pool system of new energy points should be established. It is best for the country to establish certain reserve points to prevent the mismatch between new energy points and fuel points in the future transaction process. The actual industry collection and savings does not necessarily have to give the enterprise money in the current period, as long as it gives the concept of integral deposit. When the new energy points are not enough in the future, or there is a gap in fuel points, the integral pool can alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand, such as selling collection and storage points to stabilize the business environment of fuel vehicle enterprises. The integral pool system is beneficial to the enterprise and to the smooth promotion of the double points policy.
7. The chip problem should be alleviated gradually.
The lack of chips in cars is not an isolated incident, but the core is the impact of the epidemic on the global distributed supply chain, resulting in insufficient supply and increased demand. Although world mobile phone sales fell by 10 per cent to 1.33 billion in 2020, PCs grew by 13 per cent to 300 million and PAD by 28 per cent to 160 million. And the epidemic in Europe in the fourth quarter led to the demand for online communication, with the demand for PCs and PAD soaring by 26% and 54% compared with the same period last year. As a result, there is a shortage of production capacity in the world's major integrated circuit manufacturing production lines. From the perspective of brand structure, the strong growth of PAD and PC in the fourth quarter is Apple, Amazon, Dell and other American companies, while China's chip imports also skyrocketed.
The shortage of automotive chips is a basic supply problem in the world. the demand for superimposed consumer electronic products is growing rapidly, which affects the demand for automotive chips to a certain extent, and many international automobile companies are also affected by the chip and increase the pressure of supply and demand. From the seasonal law, the rhythm of consumer electronic products of mobile phones is different from that of household cars. The peak season of mobile phone sales is from May to November, and the period from February to April is the off-season of mobile phones. With the end of Christmas in Europe and the United States, chip production resumed. However, with the arrival of the Chinese Spring Festival and the resumption of online classes for most students in Europe and the United States, the peak period of demand for consumer electronics has passed, and the chip gap should be greatly alleviated.
According to the monitoring data of the Federation of passengers, recently, with the gradual increase in the scale of vaccination and the rise in temperature in the Northern Hemisphere, the number of confirmed cases worldwide has gradually declined. The daily average number of confirmed cases in the world has dropped from 646000 in December to 636000 in January. At present, the daily average number of confirmed cases in early February has dropped to about 400000. From the perspective of regional structure, the recent epidemic situation in Asia has been well controlled, the epidemic situation in Europe and North America is also improving, and there is great pressure in the southern hemisphere. Therefore, from the perspective of the supply area of chip production, with the gradual improvement of the epidemic situation, the recovery of production capacity should be better.
Although the upstream monopoly of the chip is strong, it aggravates the supply contradiction. With the approach of the Chinese Spring Festival and the end of the peak season of consumer electronics production, the demand for chips will gradually decrease, so the supply contradiction of chips will be significantly reduced in the future.
Under the current environment of chip shortage, domestic new energy vehicles with high chip demand surged 280% year on year in January, and independent brand production increased by 69% year on year, which also shows that there are problems in the international traditional automobile industry chain and need to be reformed. The high foresight of the domestic six guarantees and six stability work makes the independent brands perform very well. Since the fourth quarter, the export of independent brands to Europe has grown super-strongly, which also reflects the good effect of domestic measures to ensure the stability of the supply chain and realize the counterattack of automobile exports.
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