On April 11, the Association released the domestic automobile sales data for March. Retail sales in the passenger car market reached 1.579 million units in March, down 10.5% y/y and up 25.6% month-on-month. From January to March, the cumulative retail sales were 4.915 million units, down 4.5% year-on-year and 230,000 units year-on-year, and the overall trend was lower than expected.
The big market is down, and the new energy vehicles are up
Wholesale sales of new energy vehicles and passenger cars reached 455,000 units in March, up 122.4% year-on-year and 43.6% month-on-month, close to the previous year. From January to March, the wholesale number of new energy passenger cars was 1.19 million units, an increase of 145.4% year-on-year. Retail sales of new energy vehicles and passenger cars reached 445,000 units in March, up 137.6% year-on-year and 63.1% month-on-month, both better than the march trend of the calendar year. From January to March, the domestic retail sales of new energy passenger cars were 1.07 million units, an increase of 146.6% year-on-year.
In March, the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles was 28.2%, an increase of 17.6 percentage points compared with the penetration rate of 10.5% in March 2021, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in independent brands was 46%, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in luxury vehicles was 32%, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in mainstream joint venture brands was 4.3%.
In March, the overall car market sales declined, and new energy vehicles in the subsidy decline and raw material prices rose under the influence of several rounds of price increases, sales performance still maintained the same as in previous years, retail penetration rate also increased to nearly 30%, speeding up very quickly, it can be seen that the demand side of the recognition of new energy vehicles has been greatly improved. According to the analysis of the sales performance of new energy vehicles in the first three months, the price increase did not affect the sales growth of new energy vehicles, and the sales forecast of 5.5 million units for the whole year remained unchanged. Another is that the price increase of several rounds of new energy vehicles has prompted some interested car buyers to place orders in front, and we continue to observe the follow-up performance this year.
In addition, observing the penetration rate of new energy vehicles of various series, it can be seen that the penetration rate of new energy vehicles of independent brands is far ahead of that of joint venture brands, and the overtaking theory of curves in that year may become a reality with the replacement of fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles. This possibility has now emerged in the data, the domestic retail share of independent brands in March was 48.2%, an increase of 11.5% year-on-year, the cumulative share of 48% in January-March, and traditional car brands such as Changan Automobile and BYD showed high growth year-on-year. According to the analysis of the Association, "In the case of global lack of cores, China's independent brand car companies have tapped more chip resources than car companies in other countries, so independent brands have obtained higher growth opportunities." ”
In the ranking of manufacturers in March, the top 10 independently occupied 4 seats
In March, the top ten retail sales of car companies, players are still those players, but the ranking has changed, FAW-Volkswagen retained the first place, but fell by 40.2% year-on-year, Changan Automobile occupied the second place with 120,000 vehicles, BYD sold more than 100,000 for the first time, an increase of 161% year-on-year, ranking among the top three. In addition, Geely and Great Wall have stabilized the top ten rankings, and SAIC Volkswagen, GM and Nissan have all declined in the rankings.
Affected by the epidemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, luxury car production capacity was limited in March, and the retail sales of luxury cars in March were 230,000 units, down 14% year-on-year, of which Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi all experienced serious supply reductions at the end of March, and the production volume of luxury brands fell by 31% year-on-year and 8% month-on-month.