In the last month of 2023, the domestic auto market can be called a collective carnival, and mainstream car companies have basically delivered monthly sales results with a very obvious growth rate. According to the December wholesale sales volume announced by the Passenger Car Association, domestic passenger car manufacturers sold a total of 271 new cars40,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 220%, and there was also 66% increase. Stimulated by the results of the moon eye in December, the domestic passenger car market will also hit a new high in 2023, with cumulative wholesale sales reaching 2,55310,000 units, an increase of 102%。
On the list of the top 10 car companies in December sales, 9 of the 10 car companies on the list have achieved positive growth, and Changan Automobile is the only car company in the top 10 sales list to see a decline in sales, however, Changan Automobile's monthly sales in December still remained above 100,000 units. Chery was the car company with the largest year-on-year growth, doubling its growth in December (up more than 110%)BYD continued to refresh its own sales record, with 61With a growth rate of 8%, the company sold 340,000 units per month.
BYD makes new history
With the release of the sales list in December, BYD has officially reached the annual sales target of more than 3 million units while handing over a new monthly sales record of more than 340,000 units. BYD's previously released sales data showed that a total of 3,024,417 new cars were sold in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 6186%。
BYD has officially announced the cessation of sales of fuel vehicles at the beginning of 2022, in other words, the sales of more than 3 million units in 2023 will all come from new energy products, and this data will also create a number of industry firsts. First of all, the annual sales of 3 million vehicles is the undisputed annual sales champion of domestic car companiesSecondly, BYD has also set the highest annual sales record for Chinese auto companiesIn addition, if nothing else, with more than 3 million new energy vehicle sales, BYD will once again win the global new energy vehicle sales championship (BYD has surpassed Tesla in 2022 to become the global new energy vehicle sales champion).
At present, BYD not only relies on Dynasty Network, Ocean Network and Denza brand in the mainstream market, but also has made some gains in the ultra-luxury market and high-end personalized market, and the U8 and Formula Leopard Leopard 5 have been delivered before. In December last year, the monthly sales of the Formula Leopard Leopard 5 have exceeded 5,000 units, and the U8, which is positioned in the million-level market, also lived up to expectations, selling 1,593 units in December.
For BYD, 2023 is not only a year in which its domestic performance continues to soar, but also in the development of overseas markets. According to the data, BYD's export sales will exceed 240,000 units in 2023, compared with SAIC and Chery, which have begun to deploy overseas markets on a large scale earlier, there must still be a relatively large gap in the absolute volume of BYD's automobile exports, but the speed of BYD's overseas expansion in the past two years is obvious to all.
In 2021, BYD officially determined the "passenger car going overseas" plan, and in the following two years, BYD has successively opened the automobile market in many developed countries such as Western European countries, Japan and Australia, and has gradually formed a scale in overseas markets such as Brazil and the United Arab Emirates. According to official data, BYD has opened up the passenger car market in 59 countries and regions around the world, and has won the sales championship of new energy vehicles in many countries and regions. In addition, it is worth mentioning that in December 2023, BYD officially announced that it will build a new energy vehicle production base in Hungary, which will also be the first vehicle production base built by a Chinese car company in Europe.
Independent car companies continue to explode
According to the sales data released by the passenger association, the share of independent brands in the domestic wholesale market in December has reached 582%, an increase of 08 percentage points. Among them, BYD, the sales champion, is definitely the most important "contributor", and in addition to BYD, there are many mainstream independent car companies that are also sprinting in the battle for market share, and continue to refresh their monthly sales records.
Chery was the largest sales increase among domestic mainstream car companies in December last year, selling more than 200,000 cars in December, winning the runner-up in monthly sales. At present, Chery Automobile's three major brands Chery, Xingtu and Jietu, monthly sales are continuing to increase, the new ICAR brand is also good, its first model iCar 03 opened pre-sale in December last year, as of the end of December, the number of orders for iCar 03 has exceeded 10,000, and it is expected that the follow-up will also be an important market growth level for Chery Automobile.
Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Group, has repeatedly released "cruel words" before, and Chery will no longer be polite in 2024. In addition to the iCar 03, the resurrected Chery Fengyun series, the Xingtu Xingyuan series, the Jietu Shanhai New Energy Series, and the Zhijie brand jointly created by Chery and Huawei will all be important support for Chery Automobile to make efforts in 2024. Coupled with the continuous development in the overseas market (it was previously reported that Chery plans to enter the British market this year and will build two factories in Europe), Chery Automobile's follow-up performance does have a lot of new highlights.
Geely Automobile has also successfully achieved its annual target for 2023. In December 2023, Geely Automobile's monthly sales increased slightly by 3%, handing over monthly sales of 150,000 units. In terms of annual sales, Geely Automobile once again refreshed its history, reaching 168650,000 units (1.6 million units in 2023), up approximately 18% y/y. In addition to the continued success of "star-level" fuel vehicles such as Xingrui and Xingyue L, the breakthrough in the new energy market is an important reason why Geely Automobile will continue to maintain stable growth in 2023.
According to data compiled by Gasgoo, the annual sales of the Geely Geometry series will exceed 190,000 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of more than 28%. Geely Automobile's high-end new energy brand, Zeekr, sold a total of 11 cars870,000 units, up 65% year-on-year. At the beginning of the new year, the new car ZEEKR 007 under the ZEEKR brand has been delivered, which also indicates that the ZEEKR brand has officially completed the full coverage of the three major market segments of new energy sedans, SUVs and MPVs.
ZEEKR car.
In addition, the cumulative sales of the Geely Galaxy series have exceeded 80,000 units in the seven months since its launch, becoming an important part of Geely's new energy marketThe new energy of the Lynk & Co brand is also advancing in an orderly manner, and the monthly sales of Lynk & Co 08, which was launched in September last year, have exceeded 10,000 many times, making a good start for the new energy transformation of the Lynk & Co brand.
SAIC Motor and Changan Automobile also sold more than 100,000 units in December.
As a large automobile group in the first camp in China, SAIC and Changan have previously been in a state of being backed by joint venture business, especially SAIC, whose independent business has always been a tepid market. However, in the past two years, as its joint venture business continues to come under pressure and its market share has been compressed, large automobile groups have also increased their attention to their independent business, and with the help of the current trend of new energy consumption in the industry, the independent business of many automobile group enterprises has gradually embarked on the fast lane of development. Not only has the market scale increased significantly, but the high-end road that has plagued them for many years has also ushered in major breakthroughs, such as SAIC's Zhiji, Changan's AVATAR, and Dongfeng's VOYANT, among which are representatives. It has to be said that in the general trend of new energy, Chinese brands have finally become the "trendsetters" who lead the development of the industry.
At the end of the year, the joint venture car companies collectively sprinted
In order to sprint the annual target, it is a common practice in the automotive industry to raise prices on a large scale at the end of the year. In 2023, the domestic automobile consumption environment is one-sided towards independent new energy vehicles, and the trend of mainstream joint venture brands at the end of the year will be more violent, in exchange for the market performance of domestic mainstream joint venture brands in December, and the wholesale sales of mainstream joint venture car companies in December will reach 7960,000 units, up 17% y/y and 8% m/m.
GAC Toyota returned to the top 10 in monthly sales at the end of last year, and is currently the best performing Japanese car company. Volkswagen continues to be the leader of mainstream joint venture brands. In December, FAW-Volkswagen delivered monthly sales of nearly 200,000 units, with a year-on-year growth rate of nearly 30%, making it the sales champion among joint venture car companies. SAIC Volkswagen fared a little worse, but it also delivered monthly sales of 150,000 units, an increase of 17 percent year-on-year4%。
In the new energy market, Volkswagen is also a leader among the mainstream joint venture brands, with a total of 30,585 new energy vehicles sold in December, accounting for 50% of the mainstream joint venture pure electric vehicle market2% share. Among them, SAIC Volkswagen relies on ID3. The low-price strategy has continued to shine in the new energy market recently, and the sales of SAIC Volkswagen's new energy vehicles exceeded 20,000 units in December. FAW-Volkswagen also has good news in the new energy market, the new car ID7 has been officially launched, becoming a significant member of the current domestic B-class pure electric car market chaos. However, in the current domestic pure electric vehicle market, where the "volume king" is dominant, ID7 How much splash it can make remains to be seen.
Volkswagen.
SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-GM also showed a strong impulse at the end of the year, among which SAIC-GM-Wuling delivered monthly sales of more than 150,000 vehicles in December, which is a rare market high for this company in recent times.
The strong momentum of new energy is the key reason why the two GM joint ventures have been able to maintain the current market situation. In December, SAIC-GM-Wuling's NEV sales exceeded 100,000 units (117,533 units), of which Wuling Binguo's monthly sales soared to nearly 50,000 units. 2023 is also the year when SAIC-GM's new energy business began to scale, and SAIC-GM's new energy vehicle sales reached 18,911 units in December, a year-on-year increase of 3124%, in 2023, SAIC-GM's new energy vehicle sales exceeded the 100,000 mark for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 104%.
In addition to the new energy business, in the export market, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-GM also made good gains in 2023, exporting 210,718 and 100,006 units, respectively. In fact, not only GM joint ventures, but also many joint ventures that are not able to "roll" their own car companies in the domestic market have now set their strategic sights on the export market, and domestic sales to export are becoming a new way out. Yueda Kia has previously officially announced that it will build the Yancheng plant into a global export base, and is currently working hard to develop the export business of finished vehicles and CKD, data shows that Yueda Kia's export sales in 2023 have also reached 86,899 units, and export sales have doubled. In addition, Guangqi Honda also reverse-exported its domestically produced models to the Japanese market last year.