Passenger car market sales fell 12.5% year-on-year in November: December market can still look forward to

On December 8th, the federation released data showing that the broad passenger car market sold 1.845 million units in November, down 12.5% from a year earlier and up 6.2% from a month earlier.

"the darkest moment of automotive chip supply in the third quarter is over. It was expected that the improvement in chip supply would lead to a return to the November level of last year, with a real month-on-month increase of about 14 per cent, but it has not yet returned to last year's level, and the bottleneck of supply opacity is still there." Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the bus Association, analyzed that the shortage of resources in December will be further alleviated; at the same time, the Spring Festival in 2022 will take place on February 1, 11 days earlier than last year's festival, which is conducive to the accelerated recovery of retail sales in December, and the market can still be expected in December.

The "sequela" of the shortage of joint venture brand chips is difficult to cure.

According to data from the car Federation, domestic passenger car production in November was 2.229 million, an increase of 13.9% over the previous month; wholesale sales were 2.15 million, and manufacturer inventory increased by 80, 000 at the end of November, and channel inventory increased by 190000 compared with the previous month.

"the improvement in chip supply has led to a gradual recovery of production and a return to production-driven sales. At the same time, dealers also began to increase inventory in preparation for a year-end sales sprint. " Cui Dongshu said.

However, joint venture brands are still affected by the "sequelae" of chip shortages. According to the data, the domestic retail share of independent brands reached 46.3% in November, an increase of 6.9 percentage points over the same period last year. In November, the retail sales of the mainstream joint venture brands were 780000, down 23% from the same period last year, up 1% from the previous month, and down 21% from November 2019.

In terms of specific brands, SAIC-Volkswagen sold 135000 vehicles in November, down 17.99 per cent from a year earlier, while SAIC GM sold 137000 vehicles, down 8.06 per cent from a year earlier. The two brands have been a drag on SAIC since the beginning of this year, causing its cumulative sales to show negative growth since October and expanded to-1.06 per cent in November. GAC GROUP, who relies on Japanese brands to support sales, faces the same embarrassment.

Not only the "two fields" owned by GAC GROUP, but also the entire Japanese brands performed poorly in China in November. Of these, Toyota sold 172200 vehicles in November, down 3.1% from the same month last year; Honda 136685, down 20.2% from the same period last year; Nissan 114073, down 27% from the same period last year; and Mazda sold 14700 vehicles, down 21.2% from the same period last year.

In a narrow sense, the number of seats in the top 10 wholesale sales of passenger car manufacturers also shows the overall weak performance of Japanese brands. Geely, SAIC passenger cars, Great Wall Motor, Chery Automobile and BYD are among the top 10 passenger car manufacturers in the narrow sense of the list, with Geely surpassing SAIC-Volkswagen to rank behind FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC General Motors. Dongfeng Nissan is the only Japanese brand in the top 10.

"at present, the total shortage of supply and structural imbalance brought about by chips have not been completely eliminated, the resources of best-selling models are still tight, and the constraints on terminals still need time to adjust." Cui Dongshu said.

The penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles is expected to exceed 20% next year.

New energy vehicles are still an important bright spot in the automobile market in November. Retail sales of new energy passenger cars reached 378000 in November, up 122.3% from a year earlier and 19.4% from a month earlier, according to the Federation.

"the trend of new energy vehicles is strongly different from that of traditional fuel vehicles." Cui Dongshu believes that new energy vehicles are gradually realizing the replacement of the fuel vehicle market, and pulling the car market to accelerate the pace of transformation to new energy.

A number of A-share listed car companies that separately announced the sales of new energy vehicles all ushered in more than double-digit year-on-year growth in November. According to the car Federation, 14 manufacturers sold more than 10,000 vehicles at wholesale in November, an increase of eight over the previous month. Among them, BYD, SAIC GM Wuling, Xiaopeng Motor and Guangzhou Auto Aian have all achieved double-digit growth compared to the previous month.

With the expansion of the monthly wholesale "10,000 clubs" camp, the overall market of new energy vehicles has also maintained sustained and rapid growth. Retail sales of new energy passenger cars reached 2.514 million units in the first 11 months, an increase of 178.3% over the same period last year, according to the Federation. The domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles in November is 20.8%. The penetration rate from January to November is 13.9%, which is significantly higher than that of 5.8% in 2020.

It is worth noting that although the Xineng automobile market is improving as a whole, polarization is still serious. Take pure electric models, which account for 80% of the wholesale sales of new energy vehicles, as an example. The wholesale sales of A00 class pure electric models were 108000 in November, with a share of 31% of pure electric vehicles, 53000 of pure electric A0 wholesale sales, and 15% of pure electric A-class electric vehicles. 25%, the three together, accounting for 71% of pure electric share.

In terms of brand distribution, in November, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in independent brands was 33.2%, that in luxury cars was 24.6%, and that of mainstream joint venture brands was only 3.9%.

The Federation predicts that the penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles is expected to exceed 20% next year. In addition, Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, estimates that domestic sales of new energy vehicles will be about 3.3 million in 2021.