Industry survey Japanese sell well helpless single-handedly February car market plunged 19% is unusual

In 2018, China's auto market suffered a rare "winter" in more than two decades, ending with a dismal growth rate of-2.8%. By 2019, the "cold wave" has not gradually subsided, but continues to sweep. Retail sales of narrow passenger cars have slowed in the past two months, falling 19.0 percent in February, the eighth consecutive month of decline, according to the Federation of Passenger Car Manufacturers. And in its statistics of more than 70 auto companies in February sales report, only 32% of the auto companies in February sales growth year-on-year, the rest of the performance is not very optimistic, especially in the United States and the legal system, the downward trend is very obvious. However, as February coincides with the Lunar New Year holiday, many believe the decline is normal, as the actual number of working days for end-of-month sales is nearly a week less than in other months. But some people don't think so. Fifty-nine percent of respondents to a February survey of the auto market said the 19 percent plunge in the previous month was unusual, as February 2018 also coincided with the Lunar New Year holiday, but the drop was not as severe, according to a survey released by Gesellschaft. Retail sales of narrow passenger vehicles in February 2018 were about 1.441 million vehicles, down 0.5% from a year earlier, far less than in February 2018, according to statistics. In this regard, the Federation pointed out that the main reason for this difference is that the 2018 Spring Festival holiday began in mid-February, so there are two weeks before the festival, the peak selling period is relatively long. And this Spring Festival holiday The period starts on February 4 th--if you consider some consumers who take early holidays, In fact, the holiday started earlier, leading to a shorter pre-holiday sales period. In addition, the current auto market is also heavily affected by macroeconomic, seasonal fluctuations and dealer inventory pressures, resulting in a daily average retail sales of only about million vehicles in the first week of February, a sharp drop of 83% compared with the same period last year. And although there are nearly three weeks work time after the holiday, but often after the Spring Festival holiday will have a period of dormancy, the market recovery is slow, eventually led to the beginning of this year's car market showed the lowest growth rate in history. On the other hand, the macro-economy was a positive factor for the auto market in February 2018, coupled with spontaneous promotional impulses from manufacturers, so sales were better than in the same month this year, despite the pressure on demand to overdraw ahead of schedule as a result of the cancellation of purchase tax incentives. This year, however, the negative impact of the macro economy on the auto market has actually been relatively large--according to the findings of recent interviews with senior officials of several well-known auto parts companies conducted by Gesellschaft Automobile, Many of them believe that the main reason for the current downturn in China's auto market is the global macroeconomic slowdown, coupled with the complexity of the international trade situation, has caused an impact on the Chinese market, and then affected people's consumption behavior. Given the current inventory pressure, many people are not optimistic about the downturn in February or the subsequent performance of the car market. According to the survey, 52% of participants believe that the Chinese car market will continue to show a large decline. It is not clear how long this decline will last On. As the domestic market has entered a stage of self-correction since the second half of 2018, the GAI forecasts, the "unreasonably high" base will eventually pull the imaginary high sales back to a normal value, resulting in a 5%-10% drop in car sales in the first half of this year, resulting in a "low opening" situation. In the second half of the year, after nearly a year of adjustment, the regular monthly changes in the market are expected to be adjusted to a normal level similar to that before the preferential policy of small-displacement purchase tax was implemented, eventually forming an annual pattern of "opening low and moving high", and the annual sales volume is expected to drop slightly by 0.6%. Forty-two percent of those surveyed said they expected a gradual narrowing of the decline or even a slight increase in the future. Earlier, the China Center for Automotive Technology actually made a similar forecast, analysing the volume of domestic terminal retail sales in 2019 at about 26.55 million vehicles, up 0.7 percent from a year earlier--a slight increase that will be driven more by the low base in 2018. The remaining 5% are entirely bullish on the upcoming developments, which they believe will be conducive to better growth this year because of the low overall sales base in 2018. From this point of view, the proportion of participants who are optimistic about the development of China's auto market this year is actually relatively small. But if you look a little longer, it's a different story. According to a number of industry experts interviewed by Gesellschaft recently, they all believe that the current negative growth and slowdown of the Chinese auto market is a normal phenomenon. In the medium to long term, there is still considerable room for improvement in the Chinese market--both from the Chinese people. The gap between the average car ownership and other mature countries, or from the domestic regional economic development, the Chinese market is still full of vitality. Specific to the three major segments, 49% of participants are most optimistic about the next performance of the car, 35% of participants are more optimistic about the next development of the SUV, the remaining 15% of participants believe that MPV will be a better performance next. This means that although the SUV in the domestic market is still "high fever", or may not be able to shake the car's "hegemony" position. In-depth analysis, this may have a lot to do with last year's cold sales of SUVs. Since 2007, the SUV market has been growing faster than the sedan market, the proportion continues to rise, the volume increases sharply, the sales gap between the SUV and the sedan is also narrowing. At one point in 2018, SUVs were even thought to be on track to overtake cars. However, this vision was finally shattered last year by a sudden "winter" in the car market. Around April of last year, SUV sales suddenly began to lag behind sedan sales, and in June, monthly sales of SUVs, which had been on an upward trend, showed negative growth. For the next few months, the SUV's performance has been disappointing. Eventually, SUV sales totaled just 9.513 million units in 2018, leaving 1.66 million cars behind. Not only that, but SUV sales fell more than cars last year, by-5.5%. At the same time, the gap between SUV and sedan widened again, which also increased the competition pattern between SUV and sedan. A lot of uncertainty. But on the other hand, even though SUVs have fallen behind again in the race for cars, their advocates are not alone. According to the survey, 45% of the participants believe that SUVs are likely to catch up with cars in the future, after all, the next phase of the current major car companies product planning focus on the SUV sector. According to the previous preliminary statistics of the GAI, the number of new or updated SUVs (including new energy sources) will reach 200 or so in 2019-2020, far more than the 140 or so models of sedans, which will undoubtedly drive up the sales of SUVs and help their share in the overall sales of passenger vehicles in the future. Eventually, around 2023--GAI expects the SUV to overtake the sedan as the highest proportion of passenger cars in the country. Source: CAAA, if divided into different factions, the next phase of the development of the most favoured faction participants are Japanese cars, supporters accounted for 38%; Germany took second place, accounting for 29%; Thirdly, independent brands and American cars accounted for 26% and 3% of the total, respectively. The remaining 1% of the participants were Korean car enthusiasts. In fact, Japanese cars have been doing well in China over the past few years, with cumulative sales rising steadily since 2013, reaching 4.4463 million vehicles in 2018, accounting for 18.75% of the market, according to GE Auto. Among them, Toyota, Nissan and Honda have achieved remarkable sales results in China in the past two years, especially Toyota in the mainland market in 2018 It rose 14.3 percent year-on-year to 1.47 million vehicles, leading not only to higher sales in China last year but also to faster growth across the entire Chinese car market. Japanese cars have strengthened further in China in 2019, with their market share up 3.3 per cent year-on-year at the end of February, the fastest growth rate of any faction. German cars have also seen a marked increase in China in recent years. In 2018, for example, German brands sold 5.0805 million passenger cars in China last year, up about 4.5% from a year earlier, making it the second-largest market share for passenger cars, after its own brands, despite the worst winter in more than two decades in the country. Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler sold more than a third of their cars in 2018, and their dependence on the Chinese market is understandable. Because of this, despite the current slowdown in the domestic car market, several major German brands continue to increase the layout of the Chinese market. According to relevant statistics, so far in 2019, the German brand plans to launch 54 new cars in China, of which BMW brand alone has 21 new products, and Mercedes-Benz is also known to plan to launch 15 new products in China … According to this trend, this year's German brand launched in China is expected to far exceed the preliminary statistics. Although the independent brand has also won the support of many participants, but in fact, the current situation is not optimistic about it. According to the latest statistics of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAMM), the sales volume of passenger cars of Chinese brands was only 523,000 in February, accounting for the total number of passenger cars sold in China. Vehicle sales were 42.9% of the total, down 4.4 percentage points from the same period in 2018. In 2018, the market share of autonomous passenger vehicles also declined significantly, from 43.88% in 2017 to 42.09% at the end of 2018. Therefore, as the current car market continues to slump, especially the SUV dividend decline, some industry insiders believe that this year's independent brand passenger car is likely to lose 40% of the market share of the red line, back to 2015 levels. As for U. S. car, few supporters in that survey were largely drag down by last year's performance in China. The cumulative sales of 2.4779 million passenger vehicles by major U.S. Brands in China in 2018 dropped 18.5 percent from the same period in 2017, ending years of positive growth, according to relevant statistics. As a result, the share of U.S. Brands in passenger vehicle sales fell to 10.45 percent last year from 12.3 percent in 2017. Far from improving this year, U.S. Car sales in China have worsened, especially for Chang'an Ford, which struggled last year, with sales of just 6,799 new cars reported in February, down 81.4% from a year earlier. GMAC-SAIC, meanwhile, fell a stunning 20.8% in February, with its main products, such as Corvette, Willow, Onkowitz, Buick GL8 and Sail-Euro III, showing little optimism, except for the Yinglang, which rose sharply. So many of the participants took an attitude toward what the American cars would do in China. Actually very conservative...