China's auto market enters a period of gentle growth

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Xu Changming, director of the development department of the State Information Center, summarized the characteristics of the development of the automobile market in the first half of this year as "three quicks and three slows", that is, high-end cars, imported cars, and luxury cars have grown rapidly, and low-end cars, domestic cars, and ordinary cars have grown slowly.

At the "2011 China Automotive Market Development Trend Forum" recently held, a number of experts from the North Asian Auto Market, China Automobile Association and the China Automotive Circulation Association analyzed and predicted the market situation this year: the automotive market in the first half of the year. The characteristics of flat growth from rapid growth to production and sales decline are exhibited. In the automotive market in the second half of this year, the overall development environment in the short term is unlikely to change significantly.

In the first half of this year, China's automobile sales reached 9,325,200, an increase of 3.35% year-on-year, and Beijing accounted for 1.65% of the country's half-year auto sales, which was a decrease of 3 percentage points from the same period of last year. From a nationwide perspective, the growth in passenger cars of 1.6 liters or less supports the growth of the entire automobile industry. It is reported that in the first half of the year, passenger car sales of 1.6 liters and below were 4,930,900, an increase of 6.66% year-on-year, and 3.31 percentage points higher than the industry-wide growth rate. Sales volume of cars up to and including 1.6 liters reached 3.5273 million, an increase of 12.01% over the same period of last year, higher than the industry-wide growth rate of 8.66 percentage points, accounting for 71.18% of the passenger car market share, supporting the growth of the entire industry. In addition, the data show that due to the impact of the earthquake on Japanese car production and sales share decline, German car sales increased significantly. From the brand point of view, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru accounted for the top three sales.

Xu Changming, director of the development department of the State Information Center, summarized the characteristics of the development of the automobile market in the first half of this year as "three quicks and three slows", that is, high-end cars, imported cars, and luxury cars have grown rapidly, and low-end cars, domestic cars, and ordinary cars have grown slowly. He analyzed that causing low-end vehicles and ordinary type of decline is mainly the impact of stimulus policies, because the country stimulated automobile consumption in the past two years mainly for the following 1.6-liter models, the price of these models is low-end, mainly based on their own brands The role of low-end ordinary vehicles is relatively large. Therefore, after the country's macro-control policy is withdrawn, these models will certainly be affected.

In the period of economic regulation, why are self-owned brands always hurt? Xu Changming thinks that there are three main reasons. First, the overall competitiveness of self-owned brands is weaker than that of joint venture brands, so the ability to fight against them is weak. Second, the joint venture brand plan is very rigid, and even if the market declines, it will easily not reduce production. When the market is good, independent brands will often fail to keep pace with market growth. In this way, it seems that when the economy grows, it will lose its market and it will be taken by its own brand. However, if the economy is reduced, the market will shrink. It will be necessary to reduce the space for independent brands. The joint venture brand market is very stable. The third is a special policy. The special stimulus policies of 2009-2010 have led to a relatively rapid growth of self-owned brands, and the next step will be to have a deeper impact on the development of self-owned brands.

This year, especially the self-owned brand cars in the Beijing market is even more difficult, worse. Yan Jinghui, deputy general manager of the Beijing Yancheng Yayuncun Automotive Trading Market, stated that after the implementation of the Beijing New Deal, the limited resources have made it difficult for independent brand dealers to continue to use the former method of quantitative impact. In addition, he specifically mentioned that although the bus reform includes its own brand, the issue of self-owned brand product's displacement structure and product line defects make it difficult for mainstream brands to meet the policy targets. According to statistics, at present, independent brand dealers have fallen by 60%-70% before the New Deal was issued, and after-sales stocks are weak, and there is a relatively large potential for subsequent development.

For the automotive market in the second half of this year, experts generally predict that the overall development environment in the short term will not be significantly improved. China Automobile Association expects that the annual automobile production and sales growth rate will be around 5%. "After two consecutive years of rapid growth, I would consider this rate of increase to be within the normal range." Analyst Zhu Yiping, secretary-general of the China Automobile Group, said that because commercial vehicles are more affected by the macroeconomic environment, the market pressure is greater than the market pressure. Cars and commercial vehicles are likely to show negative growth throughout the year. Due to the continued recovery of overseas markets, exports of single-vehicle vehicles have exceeded historical best levels.

Cheng Yuan, a senior media expert in the automotive industry, said that the development of the auto market should be viewed rationally and there should be no ever-growing market. "Now, purchasing power is not a constraint factor in the development of China's auto market. The bottleneck that restricts the development of China's auto market is resources; it is the ability of roads, energy, and cities to withstand atmospheric pollution, and is the ability of these non-replicable resources to support automobiles." A number of experts also suggested that auto companies should return to rationality when proposing their own brands. According to Xia Baoshan, secretary-general of the Beijing Automotive Industry Association, the self-owned brand should develop new energy vehicles. It should also focus on the international market, participate in international competition, and respond to the current relatively low market environment with innovative thinking.