February 13, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (hereinafter referred to as: China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM)) released the January 2020 auto production and sales data. The data pointed out that the domestic auto production and sales in January fell very significantly, production and sales of 1.783 million units and 1.941 million units, down 33.5% and 27%, respectively, year-on-year decline of 24.6% and 18%, respectively.
And in terms of new energy vehicles, although some car companies have not yet announced specific data, but according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) is expected to January new energy vehicle production and sales are expected to be completed 40,000 and 44,000 units, respectively, a year-on-year decline of 55.4% and 54.4%. Among them, passenger car production and sales are expected to complete 35,000 units and 39,000 units, down 56.3 percent and 54.5 percent year-on-year, respectively.
Specifically, some of the car companies that have released sales data, including BYD's new energy vehicles in January only sold 7,133 units (including a small number of commercial vehicles), a year-on-year plunge of 75.12 percent; has been seven consecutive years in the domestic pure electric vehicle sales champion of the new energy of the BAIC in January, also sold only 2006 new cars, a year-on-year decline of 55.54 percent; the representative of the new forces of the car-making enterprises, the Azalea is The representative of the new car-making forces, Azalea, was relatively less "miserable", delivering 1,589 new cars in January, but there was still a year-on-year decline of 11.47 percent.
This year's Spring Festival was 11 days earlier than last year, and many companies had already taken their vacations early in mid-January, so fewer effective working days were the main reason for the decline in production and sales in January this year, and the outbreak of the new Crown Pneumonia epidemic after January 20 had a limited impact on the January data, and only had a noticeable impact on the auto market in February. The next March and April will also have a greater impact.
●? Some new energy vehicle enterprises have begun to resume work
After the longest Spring Festival holiday in recent years, many new energy vehicle enterprises and factories have begun to resume work on February 10th, or partially resumed work.
According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), of the 183 vehicle production bases nationwide, only 59, or 32.2 percent, had resumed work by Feb. 12, according to CAAM. The car companies that have already resumed work include Nissan, Ford, Volkswagen, General Motors, Tesla, Chery, Geely, JAC, Red Flag, Azure, Xiaopeng and Sky, etc. All of them have combined local policy requirements with their own situations, and have taken a variety of ways to let their enterprises gradually return to normal operation, such as arriving for work, working at a staggered time, working at home, and working at a partitioned office.
Automotive as a labor-intensive industry, how to protect the safety of employees after the resumption of work has become the first priority of car companies. For example, BAIC Group has done a lot of preliminary work before resumption of work, including combing and controlling personnel files, setting up epidemic prevention and control in the factory and dormitories, strictly reinforcing the time-delayed management of the cafeteria, and preparing as many as 20 days of masks and other protection materials, etc., so that the employees who have not left the capital and are in good health can return to work in a timely manner. On the day of resumption of work, BAIC also took the initiative to allow employees to drive their own carpool to and from work, and completed the list checking, temperature testing and protection checking of all employees before entering the plant, and refused to enter the plant without meeting any of the conditions.
In addition, a number of initiatives have been carried out within the company to ensure the safety of employees, such as communication mainly using online mode, so that the physical contact of employees to minimize, dining queue spacing of more than 1 meter, a table only allows a person to eat, the conversation as far away as possible, etc..
Weimar, whose two production bases happen to be located in the epidemic-prone cities of Huanggang and Wenzhou, is following the government's decree to continue delaying the resumption of work at its factories until February 17th. But fortunately, Weimar has built an online office platform in time for the Spring Festival holiday, and most of Weimar's non-factory manufacturing employees have already begun working online in an organized manner.
●? Some car companies resumed work at the same time began to switch to the production of protective materials
On February 6, SAIC-GM-Wuling, in addition to supporting suppliers to successfully switch to the production of masks, in order to further expand mask production capacity, but also began to build their own mask production line, to achieve the localization of the entire industrial chain of medical masks, and became the first automotive company to obtain a medical device business license and pass the professional inspection.
Shanghai Automotive General Motors (SAIC) Wuling*** has established 14 mask production lines, including 4 N95 masks and 10 general medical masks, with a daily output of 1.7 million, and the first batch of masks produced by SAIC Wuling has already been rolled off the production line.
February 8, BYD has been carried out outside the main business resumption of work, and announced the deployment of resources to start the design and manufacture of protective materials production equipment, aid production of masks and disinfectant. Samples are now available, and it is expected that around February 17, the first batch of supplies such as masks and disinfectant solution can be mass-produced and shipped. Among them, the production capacity of masks can reach 5 million/day by the end of this month, and the production capacity of disinfectant liquid is 50,000 bottles/day.
In order to protect the safety of employees, the company also issued a detailed "Employee Guide to Returning to Work" for employees returning to work, which makes a specific guidance and care for employees from pre-work isolation to post-work work, and also specifies isolation zones in the factory and specific penalties for non-compliance with anti-epidemic measures.
GAC's headquarters and most of its subsidiaries also resumed work on Feb. 10, but that week a flexible office was implemented, with some employees required to return to work and some working from home on the line, while automobile production lines would not resume work until after Feb. 17 in succession.
In order to protect the safety of employees and to support the epidemic, GAC Components Technology Center has also started to build a new production line for masks. on February 11, the first mask production equipment of GAC Group has started to be installed and debugged, and GAC Group plans to produce 30 to 50 mask production equipments of its own to provide masks to GAC itself and other state-owned enterprises for the production of masks.
●? How do new car-making forces build cars to support the war epidemic?
Compared to the larger volume of traditional car companies, the epidemic has a more obvious impact on the new car-making power companies, they not only have to solve the problem of stretched cash flow, but also need to bear because of the introduction of policies to protect the labor force around the payroll. But in the face of the epidemic, originally their own financial constraints on the new car-making forces have still been generous.
Among the new car makers, Azera Motors took the lead and rushed to Wuhan at the first opportunity, donating 300,000 yuan worth of medical supplies, including masks, medical caps and protective clothing. The company then upped the ante by raising 5 million RMB through the Azera User Trust to fight the epidemic.
Next, on Jan. 28, Guangzhou-based Xiaopeng Auto also launched an aid campaign, deciding to donate medical supplies, vehicles and services worth 3 million yuan to medical institutions in Wuhan and other places to support frontline epidemic prevention work.
On the same day, Ne Zha Auto announced its decision to urgently donate 1 million yuan to the Hubei Provincial Charity Federation and a total of 111 emergency vehicles.
On January 29, Nezha Motor officially announced that it would donate 4 million yuan to Huanggang City in Hubei Province, including medical supplies such as masks, emergency vehicles, and cash payments to support the local anti-epidemic work. 100 units of Weimar EX5 were provided as "anti-epidemic emergency vehicles" by Nezha Motor on February 6 for the Hainan Provincial Government's unified dispatching. On February 13th, we continued to donate more than 2 million yuan of materials to the Wenzhou Municipal People's Government's Epidemic Prevention and Control Leading Group and the Wenzhou Oujiangkou New Crown Epidemic Prevention and Control Group.
On January 30, Ideal Automobile also announced that it had donated RMB 2 million through the Hubei Provincial Charity Federation to support the prevention and control of the new coronavirus-infected pneumonia epidemic in Wuhan and other areas.
Ideal Auto, on the other hand, donated 1 million yuan worth of medical supplies and other forms of support to the Shangrao City Economic Development Zone. Xinte Auto, which suffered a factory "shutdown" in July last year, also donated 10,000 sets of protective materials and provided support vehicles on standby during the outbreak. In addition to the new domestic car-making enterprises, Tesla also joined the army of assistance. 30 January afternoon, Tesla announced through the official microblogging, will donate 5 million yuan of special funds to assist the Chinese government to support the CDC as well as other institutions to cope with the epidemic.
●? New Energy Vehicle Sales Strategies
The sudden new coronavirus outbreak has not only affected the production end of the program, but also greatly discouraged ordinary consumers from buying cars. In order to meet the needs of consumers to buy cars during the epidemic, many new energy vehicle companies have launched a variety of new sales strategies. In addition to the use of their own APP to see the car purchase, but also joint automotive network media to create a VR to see the car, the opening of Tmall, Jingdong, Suning and other platforms to provide online car purchase services, but also to support dealers to use Jitterbug, fast hand and other software to live talk about the car, to help consumers without leaving home to understand all the information about the vehicle.
The marketing and service conveniences promoted by various car companies during the epidemic, though all named differently, are basically much the same. The main thing is that consumers do not have to go out to complete the purchase of a car, loans, maintenance, charging and other acts, if you have to go out, but also minimize personnel contact, to maximize the protection of consumer safety. In addition, some car companies such as Azure and Xiaopeng have also launched exclusive car purchase benefits for medical personnel.
●? Car companies to its dealer partners "burden"
According to the China Association of Automobile Dealers on the dealers to return to work in the survey, as of February 12, 17:00, the research of 3997 4S stores, the staff return to work rate of 20.2%, sales efficiency of 4.7%, after-sales efficiency of 6.2%, which calculates the comprehensive return to work efficiency is only 8.2%. the comprehensive resumption of work efficiency was only 8.4%.? Among the reasons why 4S stores did not start work, 71.9% were due to the resumption time set by the local government, and other major reasons included the application for resumption of work was not approved, shortage of epidemic prevention materials did not support the resumption of work, difficulties in the process of returning employees to work, and the volume of business after resumption of work did not support the operating expenses. Among the enterprises that have already started work, they still face real problems such as the shortage of related materials and a sharp drop in customer traffic.
Many car companies in addition to protecting the interests of consumers, but also for dealers have also launched numerous measures to reduce the pressure of the line, mainly including: reducing or canceling the February or first-quarter sales assessment, subsidies to dealers or inventory discounts, financial services support, and the cancellation of the dealer car task, etc..
As one of the representatives of the new car companies, Nezha Auto has set an example by giving dealers a number of marketing and financial policy supports, including online placement and offline sales, such as building digital showrooms and online promotion platforms to help and empower dealers to collect customers online; alleviating the pressure on investors' funds and extending the repayment limit for due accounts; and giving the key quarantine zone city partners' sales team personnel working subsidies etc. In addition, Nezha Motors is also contributing to the further stabilization and revitalization of the automotive economy by improving the systematic operational efficiency of its dealers, and strengthening the management and synergy of its dealers.
After the emergence of the epidemic, GAC New Energy actively negotiated with cooperative financial institutions, and has now set up a special window to dock with dealers and customers jointly with the financial machine to give special guidance to dealers and customers on the problems they face in the financial aspect, and to give dealers inventory financing as well as customer repayment deferment and other caring support, and for dealers with special difficulties to discuss one matter at a time, to provide special support to help The dealers ****k hard times.
The relevant person in charge of BYD also said that dealers in February can plan their own pace of vehicle delivery according to the sales situation. At the same time will be canceled in the first quarter of January-February part of the project assessment, and give a certain transportation logistics resources subsidies.
●? Write in the end
In the face of this sudden epidemic, different car companies have their own way of coping. Up to now, the cumulative donations of domestic automobile enterprises, the total value of donations has exceeded 1 billion yuan, the national tragedy, we have seen these car companies to pay and bear. The virus is still spreading, this no smoke "battle" will have to fight on, I also firmly believe that we will eventually win, but with the resumption of the progress of accelerating, for the car companies, the challenge of 2020 has just begun.
This article comes from the author of the automobile home car, does not represent the views of the automobile home position.