Sales collapsed!The Chinese market does not need second-tier luxury cars?

Zhiyi Auto / Chen Yi

Second-tier luxury brands are becoming more and more difficult to mix in China.

Taking Lexus as an example, as the former "price increase king", Lexus has maintained annual sales of more than 200,000 units from 2019 to 2021, with remarkable results, but in 2022, it suddenly plummeted to 176,000 units, and the state will rebound slightly in 2023, with 181,400 new cars delivered, but compared with previous years, the situation is not optimistic.

Cadillac, which is next door, sold 183,600 new cars in the Chinese market in 2023, a decline from 2022, and throughout the past three years, Cadillac's overall sales have not been ideal.

It is worth mentioning that Cadillac recently adjusted the price of the 2024 XT5, with a reduction of 100,000 yuan.

and Lincoln, the highlight of the American brand was fixed in 2021, when the annual sales reached 91,621 units, of which the Adventurer's sales exceeded the 50,000 mark for the first time. However, Lincoln sold more than 80,000 units in both 2022 and 2023, and the performance was not as expected.

However, there is one thing to say, whether it is Lexus, Cadillac or Lincoln, it is not bad, after all, it is not a problem to make ends meet, and some brands are not so lucky: for example, Acura has withdrawn from the Chinese market because of no bright sales; for example, Infiniti, due to the market performance is not as expected, a large number of dealers have closed, and there are only 58 offline stores left; and Genesis, for example, sales in recent years are almost negligible.

There is no doubt that Chinese consumers are collectively abandoning second-tier luxury cars, and as for the reason, it is nothing more than four words - not enough to play.

In the past, when the independent brand had not yet risen, the second-tier luxury car could use the ultimate cost performance to meet the "face" and "lining" of Chinese car owners, but the times have changed, and now the second-tier luxury car has something that domestic cars have, and domestic cars have things, but second-tier luxury cars may not have.

In addition, with the intensification of electrification transformation, domestic new energy vehicles have made rapid progress, but the second-tier luxury brands have made few achievements in the field of new energy.

At present, the terminal discount rates of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are 12.60%, 17.66%, and 20.84% respectively, as a comparison, the average terminal discount rate of China's auto market in 2023 is 12.66%, in other words, the "sincerity" of the price decline of first-line luxury brands is obvious enough. This, in turn, is a backstab to the second-tier luxury brands to a certain extent.

Today's second-tier luxury brands can be said to be in a dilemma, and more importantly, there are not many cards that second-tier luxury brands can play: there was no network in the village before, and the "track gene", "hand-built", "zero hundred acceleration" and the like can also be used as selling points, but after entering the new energy era, is there any new story to tell about the second-tier luxury brands?

Li Xiang, founder and CEO of Li Auto, once said that the order of the new car-making forces in the future is "second-tier luxury brands→ first-line joint venture brands→ first-line luxury brands".

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