The automobile market struggled to "survive" in March: new energy vehicles bucked the trend and the retail penetration rate of independent brands reached 41%.

The spread of the epidemic across the country in late March made it difficult for China's auto market to move forward.

According to the April 11 data of the Federation of passenger cars, retail sales in the domestic passenger car market in March were 1.579 million, down 10.5% from the same period last year, and the month-on-month increase was 25.6%. The cumulative retail sales from January to March decreased by 4.5% and 230000, respectively, and the overall trend was lower than expected.

"as the supply of chips has recovered somewhat compared with February, so there is a better basis for the recovery of production and sales in March, and the car market should show a steady upward trend. However, the COVID-19 epidemic in March spread all over the country, affecting the entry of many dealers into stores and transactions. " Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the bus Association, analyzed that the change in epidemic closure measures had a certain impact on logistics efficiency, resulting in greater retail losses.

Obvious increment of independent brand new energy market

Compared with the automobile industry affected by a variety of uncertain factors, the new energy vehicle market has still achieved a counterattack. In March, wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 455000, an increase of 122.4% over the same period last year and 43.6% month-on-month, which was close to that of previous years. From January to March, 1.19 million new energy passenger vehicles were wholesale, an increase of 145.4 percent over the same period last year.

It is worth mentioning that the wholesale penetration rate of new energy vehicle manufacturers in March was 25.1%, up 14 percentage points from 11.1% in March 2021, while the penetration rate of independent brand new energy vehicles was as high as 41%.

Bus Association data show that manufacturers wholesale sales of more than 10,000 vehicles of a total of 13 enterprises, only Tesla is a foreign brand, the rest are independent brands. Among them, BYD wholesale 104338 new energy models in March, Tesla China 65814, SAIC GM Wuling 51157, Chery 21817, GAC Eian 20317, Changan 15624, Xiaopeng 15414, Great Wall 15057, Geely 14166, Nezha 12026, ideal 11,034, SAIC passenger cars 10,880, and 1,059 zero-running cars for the first time.

"Independence has achieved a significant increase in the new energy market, the performance of head enterprises is different, and the brands of traditional car companies such as Changan Automobile and BYD are showing high growth compared with the same period last year." Cui Dongshu said.

Judging from the overall performance of Changan Automobile and BYD in the auto market, the two companies ranked second and third respectively in the narrow passenger car retail sales rankings in March, the first time that the two companies have won such a high ranking.

Relying on the growth of new energy vehicles, head independent brands sold more than 100000 vehicles in March. Among them, Changan autonomous passenger car sales reached 134000, and there is no big gap between BYD, Geely and Great Wall Motor.

According to the data released by the Ministry of Public Security on April 7, by the end of March, the number of new energy vehicles in China had reached 8.915 million, of which 7.245 million were pure electric vehicles, accounting for 81.27% of the total. In the first quarter, 1.11 million new energy vehicles were newly registered, accounting for 16.91 percent of the total number of newly registered vehicles, an increase of 644000 over the same period last year, an increase of 138.20 percent, showing a trend of rapid growth.

"in the context of such a large base and subsidy decline, new energy vehicles still maintained rapid growth in March, indicating that the purchase of existing policies have driven a shift to consumer demand." Some industry analysts believe that.

Production and sales are still facing uncertainty in April

Although the new energy vehicle market is still growing by leaps and bounds, on the whole, production and sales in April are still facing an uncertain state.

"according to the provincial production data of the National Bureau of Statistics, Shanghai and Jilin each account for about 11 percent of the country's automobile production, and some enterprises in Shanghai are operating at full capacity, so the production and marketing of passenger cars in the core areas will be greatly affected in April." Cui Dongshu believes that, "due to the long chain of the automobile industry, high requirements for coordination, and a wider range of radiation from the shutdown of the core production and logistics base, the production and marketing pressure of the automobile market in April may be very great."

Weilai, which has just announced the suspension of production, is a typical car company under the epidemic crisis. Since March, its supply chain partners in Jilin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places have stopped production and have not yet recovered, the company said on its official APP on April 9. Affected by this, vehicle production has been suspended. Xilai said that due to the above reasons, the delivery of many users' vehicles will be delayed in the near future.

"there is still a large-scale shutdown in Shanghai and Kunshan. At present, Geely has not stopped production, but production has been greatly affected." Geely insiders told reporters, "the development of the epidemic this week is more critical, if the supply chain can improve, production still has a chance to catch up."

In addition to Weilai, Geely and other mainframe factories, the domestic battery giant Ningde era is also affected by the escalation of epidemic prevention and control. According to market news, there has been an individual epidemic in Ningde recently, and the local government has temporarily upgraded epidemic prevention and control measures, and the company has strictly adopted gridding management measures to ensure orderly production in Ningde base.

But there is also good news. On April 11, Sun Jian, director of the Jilin Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, said that China FAW had fully started to resume work on the same day, while the first batch of 47 parts and components enterprises were resuming work in an orderly manner. Prior to this, on March 13, China's FAW decided that all five major vehicle factories in Changchun, including FAW Toyota, FAW-Volkswagen, etc., planned to stop production.

"what is unavoidable is that the consumption power has weakened under the influence of the epidemic, and the service industry has not yet fully recovered before the current epidemic, and retail sales in March are much lower than domestic wholesale; new confirmed cases in Hong Kong are on the rise at the beginning of April. Employees of small and medium-sized enterprises are facing tremendous survival pressure, and retail sales in the car market in April are expected to be much lower than in March." Cui Dongshu predicted.