January 2024 is coming to an end, and the long-awaited Spring Festival car buying boom has not come.
At present, there is only about a week left before the Spring Festival. According to usual, the month before the Spring Festival, that is, in January this year, should belong to the "Spring Festival car buying tide", year-end bonus car purchase, buy a new car and go home for the New Year, etc. will become the focus of car dealers. Even brands that usually sell average can often take advantage of this wave of car buying to increase sales.
Because of this, at the beginning of 2024, more than 20 auto brands, including Tesla and Weilai, which have always been "strong", have played a "price reduction card" in the name of Spring Festival specials. Some car companies directly descended, some were opened in the name of the Spring Festival for a limited time, and some brands and models were superimposed on the original market discounts and New Year benefits, all in the hope of maximizing the market before the Spring Festival.
The wishes are good, but this year's market does not seem to be developing according to the plot of previous years.
In the first three weeks of January, the top three on the sales list of the new forces were Wenjie, Ideal and Deep Blue. And the only thing that can really maintain month-on-month growth is the question boundary.
Last year's ideal of winning the sales championship of new forces in one fell swoop has reached the level of monthly sales of 50,000 units in December last year. But in the first two weeks of January this year, weekly sales were surpassed by the question. In the third week, the ideal sales rebounded, but the ideal cumulative sales in the first three weeks were only 1870,000 units. Month-on-month is significant**, and it is still some** compared to the same period last year, but don't forget that the Spring Festival holiday in 2023 is in January, and there are less than three weeks to sell cars in the entire January before the Spring Festival. So this year's market is indeed not as hot as expected.
Tesla, which fired the first shot of the New Year's official drop at the beginning of the month, has not significantly improved its orders. According to a survey, the number of customer visits and orders in Tesla stores fell by 60%-70% in January.
Looking at the sales of other new forces, it is even more revealing, new brands such as Deep Blue, Leap, and Zeekrypton have almost halved their sales month-on-month, and the sales performance of head brands such as Weilai and Xiaopeng from the first three weeks, unless the sales volume in the fourth week increases significantly, the final monthly sales are not as good as in December 2023 and January 2023.
Looking at BYD, the global new energy sales champion in 2023, its sales in January have been surpassed by Volkswagen for three consecutive weeks. BYD's cumulative sales in the first three weeks were 12At 510,000 units, even if sales rise sharply in the fourth week, it is unlikely to return to the level of 300,000 units sold in December last year. Wuling and Aion also declined month-on-month, Hongguang MINIEV, Binguo and other popular models fell by more than 30% month-on-month, and Aion's two main sales models, AION Y and AION S, although they have launched Spring Festival discounts, also fell by more than 30% month-on-month.
Compared with the "bleak" of new energy vehicles compared with the year-on-year double **, the traditional brands dominated by fuel vehicles also fell sharply month-on-month, but the year-on-year performance was better.
Volkswagen's weekly sales have surpassed BYD's for three consecutive weeks, with weekly sales of more than 50,000 units, and cumulative sales of more than 150,000 units, which has exceeded 140,000 units in January last year, and Volkswagen's monthly sales in January will exceed 200,000 units. However, compared with 240,000 units in December last year, the month-on-month increase is still significant.
Toyota sold 1860,000 units, with cumulative sales of 8 in the first three weeks of January60,000 units, barring any accidents, Toyota's final monthly sales will be about the same as the 110,000 units sold in January last year. Against the backdrop of the continuous decline of Japanese brands, Toyota's performance is at least stable. Other joint venture brands such as Honda and Nissan, and luxury brands such as BBA, have generally performed the same way.
Most of the traditional brands still insist on taking out real gold ** price reductions to stimulate consumption, while the new forces only have more attractive ** policies such as ideal, Wenjie, and BYD. This may be a factor that makes the performance of traditional brands seem to be more stable than that of new forces. But overall, the cold market in January has become a foregone conclusion, and the Spring Festival car buying wave that car companies are looking forward to has not arrived as scheduled.
According to the data of the Passenger Car Association, the PFI of the passenger car satisfaction index in December last year was 92%, while the PFI in January this year was 79%, which also indicates that market confidence has dropped significantly from December.
The author believes that there are several reasons for this situation:
The first is the early overdraft of some consumption. Last year's ** war lasted throughout the year, and the fight was in full swing. Especially in December, many car companies have used means such as substantial discounts and inventory reduction in order to sprint their sales targets. On the other hand, the adjustment of the purchase tax policy of some new energy vehicles and the decline of license plate policies in some cities have led to the concentrated release of some new energy vehicle consumption in December last year.
The second is the lack of demand and purchasing power. Since the beginning of the year, we have seen a lot of topics such as "cancellation of the annual meeting", "shrinkage of year-end bonuses", "reunion and dinner", etc., all of which reflect that the current consumer income growth is not optimistic, and in this context, consumer demand for buying bulk commodities will inevitably be suppressed. In particular, most of the people who buy cars before the Spring Festival are first-time buyers, and the purchasing power of first-time buyers is more likely to be affected by the economic environment.
Thirdly, after a full year of 2023, consumers have become accustomed to the stimulus of large discounts. The lukewarm ** policy in January is difficult to stimulate the desire to buy. In particular, the non-rigid people who increase the purchase have long been familiar with the routines of the merchants, and most of them will hold the currency to buy before the new round of car purchase subsidy policies are in place.
2024 is off to a bad start, which will only indicate that 2024 will be another year of cutthroat competition between car companies.
Text: Youshi Automobile, Old Cannon).
Note: The picture comes from the Internet, the rights belong to the original author, thank you too! This article only represents the author's personal views and does not represent the position of Youshi Auto.