Benought to get through the 2019 car market winter will be able to win the spring of the car companies, not expected an epidemic and let it fall into the abyss of the mire. Even if many car companies began to resume work and production in March, but still can not immediately reverse the downward trend of the market, according to the data of the passenger association, the domestic narrow passenger car market sales in March amounted to 1,045,000 units, a year-on-year decline of 40.4%, an increase of 317.3%; January-March cumulative sales of 3,014,000 units, a year-on-year decline of 40.8%. And in the decline of the market tone, people are surprised that in the recent part of the first quarter of the car company sales came out, but there are compared to last year's year-on-year increase, of which the highest even soared 88%! What's going on here? What factors contributed to their success? We are here today to find out!
FAW Red Flag is worthy of the "light of national products"
According to the official data disclosed by FAW Red Flag, from January to March 2020, FAW Red Flag's cumulative sales exceeded 25,000 units, an increase of 88% year-on-year, and realized a red start in the first quarter. It is reported that the red flag January sales of 12,630 units, an increase of 142.7% year-on-year; February sales of 3,752 units, an increase of 32.5% year-on-year; it can be deduced that the red flag March sales of about 8,618 units, compared with the February growth of 129%, the sales are also obviously in the warming up.
And the current Red Flag brand is able to realize significant growth against the trend, and its recent years in new products and marketing and other aspects of the improvement is not unrelated. For example, after the reform of the red flag launched the first model red flag H5, completely subverted the impression of the red flag. Not only in the appearance of the previous old-fashioned design to abandon, added more youthful flavor. And in the current red flag H5 price has been down to 140,000 yuan, looking at the medium-sized car market, can do this price, with the national aura, red flag H5 does have its unique attraction.
What's more, it's worth mentioning that the Red Flag H9, which was officially unveiled at the beginning of this year, has already been opened for booking, and with its excellent exterior design and luxurious interior, it has gained the attention of many consumers since its debut, and I believe that it is expected to become a brand new "growth pole" for the sales of Red Flag in the future.
Additionally, the Red Flag brand previously announced a sales target of 200,000 units in 2020, doubling its 2019 sales. At the same time, in order to provide support for the sales target in 2020, FAW Red Flag has also started the production line capacity enhancement and transformation project since the end of 2019, and in the past few days, the first phase of the transformation project of the H assembly workshop of FAW Red Flag plant has also been formally completed, and the first Red Flag HS7 has been driven off the production line after the resumption of work and production.
Faw Pentium deserves some praise
The always unpopular Pentium achieved counter-trend growth in the first quarter, and according to official data, FAW Pentium's cumulative terminal sales in the first quarter of this year amounted to 22,006 units, an increase of 12 percent year-on-year, while wholesale sales of 21,216 vehicles increased by 0.5 percent year-on-year. Under the impact of the epidemic, not many auto brands were able to realize sales growth in the first three months, but FAW Pentium has gone from obscurity to uptrend against the market today, which is indeed worthy of praise.
And from the point of view of specific models, FAW Pentium T-series troika sales are stable. The flagship model Pentium T99 accumulated sales of 1,959 units in the first three months of this year, wholesale car 2011 units; Pentium T77?accumulated terminal sales of 5,970 units, wholesale car 4,723 units; Pentium T33 accumulated terminal sales of 1,337 units, wholesale car 1,054 units.
Meanwhile, the Pentium brand's traditional models are also performing well, with terminal sales of the Pentium X40 reaching 6,697 units in the first three months, and wholesale sales of 8,654 units. The new energy models B30EV and X40EV combined sales amounted to 2,600 units. In addition, the Pentium brand also harvested 1,670 orders in overseas markets in the first quarter.
In addition, FAW Pentium's ability to maintain good production and sales in the overall market downturn can't be separated from the marketing end's precise grasp of the market. For example, during the new crown epidemic, FAW Pentium quickly carried out a variety of online marketing: from "the whole network dealers online opening" to "the seat of the Bureau of the car", "transparent factory", "live", "cloud talk show", for the first quarter of the sales results laid a solid foundation, but also reflects the entire brand to the young and diversified attempts. Meanwhile, according to the official product planning, three new strategic models, C105, D357 and D365, will be launched this year. Among them, the C105, which was unveiled as early as last year, is the first pure electric model based on the FME platform, while the D356 and D357 are positioned as a small SUV and compact sedan respectively, all of which are expected to boost FAW Pentium's sales to sustained record highs.
Chery's exports grow
The group exported 9,127 cars in March, up 8.4 percent from a year earlier; among them, Chery Automobile branded products ****exported 8,860 cars last month, up 11.2 percent from a year earlier, and a total of 26,503 cars have been exported from January to March this year, the company was told by the official Chery Group.
Currently, Chery Group has been ranked No. 1 in the export of Chinese brand passenger cars for 17 consecutive years, and its export business covers more than 80 countries and regions overseas. Not only that, Chery Group has also established 10 production plants around the world, and overseas users have exceeded 1.6 million in total. It is because of the huge production capacity base, Chery can be in the market so cold environment quickly rebound. At the same time, in terms of products, in the SUV camp Rui Hu 8, Rui Hu 7 and Rui Hu 5X in the powertrain advantages are very obvious. In particular, the self-developed 1.6T turbocharged engine performance is excellent, can burst 145KW of maximum power and 290N-m peak torque, can be called the strongest 1.6T engine in its class.
Additionally, while production has resumed on a large scale at home, Chery Group has also made every effort to provide various guarantees for overseas exports and operations in the face of the gradually spreading overseas epidemic. So far, Chery Group has donated more than 700,000 pieces of medical materials, including N95-grade masks, disposable medical masks, medical gloves, protective clothing, etc., to its overseas partners in more than 20 countries, such as Italy, Uruguay, Argentina, Russia, etc., where materials are in short supply. At the same time, for regions lacking experience in diagnosis and treatment of related conditions, Chery Group has provided perfect protection services by ***sharing anti-epidemic experience, compiling and organizing the company's preventive and control initiatives, and providing mutual assistance in remote medical consultation. It can be seen that the good reputation of Chery's users at home and abroad has been established, both for export and domestic sales have played a role in promoting.
Shanghai Automobile General Motors (SAIC-GM) Wuling's March sales reached 130,000 units
After meeting its Waterloo in February, SGMW's March sales suddenly soared to 130,000 units, an increase of nearly 50 percent year-on-year compared to the 89,062 units sold in the same period last year, and an increase of more than 1,000 percent compared to the 10,855 units sold in February. Meanwhile, officials said its single-day sales reached more than 5,000 units on seven days in March, including more than 6,000 units on three days.
In fact, in addition to SAIC-GM-Wuling's models catering to consumer demand for cars, the excellent results are also attributed to the high efficiency of dealers' resumption of work. Up to now, the opening rate of SAIC-GM-Wuling's terminal dealerships across the country has already reached 98 percent, which has directly contributed to the increase in sales.
It is worth mentioning that SAIC-GM-Wuling's overseas business is still growing against the trend. In the first quarter, SAIC-GM-Wuling's total exports of vehicles and KD parts exceeded 20,752 units/sets, an increase of 254% year-on-year, and the overseas market achieved a "good start". The original global car Baojun 530 is now expanding to the Middle East market, the first batch of orders for 1,660 units were shipped to the Middle East on February 25, and additional orders for 2,554 units were received in March.
In addition, this year SAIC-GM-Wuling will also launch a new 1.5T engine, as well as will cooperate with Huawei to launch a new Internet car system. In addition to actively stabilize the operation, SAIC-GM-Wuling in the anti-epidemic also continued to move. Not only joint suppliers to switch to the production of masks, and on March 16, also officially opened the Wuling brand masks national free application channel, and now has a total of free distribution of more than 6 million masks. Comprehensive evolution of the Wuling in addition to the development of the times, but also fully proved that "what the people need, Wuling what to build".
Tesla sees 'best ever'
Tesla has officially released production and delivery figures for the first quarter of 2020. It also claimed that it was the company's best first-quarter performance ever. Among other things, the figures show that Tesla produced nearly 102,672 units in the first three months of the year***, up 33.2% year-on-year (2019: 77,100 units), and delivered about 88,400 units, up 40.3% year-on-year (2019: 63,000 units).
From a model-specific perspective, combined sales of the Model?3 and Model?Y were 76,200, while combined sales of the Model?S and Model?X were 12,200, a slight increase of 0.83% year-on-year.The Model?3 is still undoubtedly the mainstay of sales, but early deliveries of the Model?Y also added to Tesla's sales in the quarter.
It's worth mentioning that production at Tesla's Shanghai-based Superfactory continues to hit record highs despite the tough global auto market. The Shanghai factory produced 2,625 Model?3s in January, and resumed work on Feb. 10 after a brief shutdown, according to the data. By mid-to-late March, its weekly production had reached a planned 3,000 units.
Of course, in addition to rising production, its core product strength is also an important support for Tesla's sales. First, in the hardware dimension, Tesla has already solidified its chip barriers; and second, in the software dimension, compared with competitors such as traditional car makers, Tesla's Auto?Pilot autopilot system and OTA system have always stayed ahead of the game.
In addition, Tesla, positioned as a luxury car brand, has also realized a significant price drop. Its China-made Model?3 standard range upgrade version has become the choice of a large number of Chinese consumers with its excellent cost performance. It is reported that the price of Tesla Model?3 in China has been lowered to 290,000 yuan after subsidy, approaching the price of traditional low-end luxury car products. With the deepening of Tesla's localization, not only does the price still have room for further downward exploration, but it is also expected that in the second quarter, Tesla's performance in China will reach a new high.
Azalea exceeds earnings expectations
Azalea officially released March 2020 delivery data. Azalea's overall March deliveries reached 1,533 units, up 11.7 percent year-on-year and 116.8 percent sequentially. Azalea Auto's Q1 2020 deliveries totaled 3,838 units, exceeding its Q4 2019 financial report's projected target of 3,400 to 3,600 units.
First of all, a major reason why Azalea's order book could grow against the trend during the epidemic is that Azalea has been expanding its online sales channels since its creation, so when the epidemic affected the business of its offline stores, Azalea was able to sell its cars through the proven online sales system. Between February and mid-March this year, Azalea's new orders have recovered to the December 2019 level of 70%, according to Azalea.
Moreover, how good is the service of Azalea Auto? It can be said that it has almost all the links that come to mind when using a car, and it has a lot of privileges, with a variety of super-premium packages to choose from. For example, if you want to maintain the car, someone will come to pick up the car; if it can't be repaired within 24 hours, then the car will be given a substitute car for temporary use; there is also cooperation with the car wash, sending you 15 free car washes per year; cooperation with the chauffeur-driven company, going out to socialize, sending you 15 free chauffeur-driven; violation of the rules and regulations processing also don't need to look for a substitute, Azalea will help you to get it all done; there is also a free parking service at the airport. Meanwhile, for new energy products, the battery is a point of concern for consumers, and Azera's NIO?Power?system includes the user's home charging, NIO?official supercharging station/exchange station, and mobile charging vehicles and other complementary services, which is based on the huge Internet data and cloud service system to complete. The power exchange is also one of the special services of Azera, which means that if the owner's battery is dying and he doesn't want to spend a long time waiting for charging, then he can use the power exchange service.
What's more, in addition to the above car-related services, there's also the NIO?House that Azera has built across the country, which serves as a space for car owners to rest and play. It can be said that the whole service concept is really original, at present, no matter Mercedes-Benz BMW Audi or Tesla, compared with the service of Azera is far inferior, and these are the unique advantages of Azera.
In addition, in April this year, Azalea will launch the new 2020 Azalea ES8, perhaps after the upgrade of the Azalea ES8 sales will be improved. Li Bin has also expressed confidence in the gross margin of the new mid-sized SUV Azalea EC6, which will be launched around July this year, which means that this car is expected to improve the gross margin of Azalea Automobile, and realize the turnaround.
ConclusionIn addition to the above car companies, there are Honda, Mazda, Geely, Changan and other car companies, compared with February, sales also have a substantial rebound, which show that the automotive industry, which hit rock bottom at the beginning of this year, finally showed signs of warming up. However, the current epidemic, after all, is not completely over, and want to return to last year's level of the line, but also need to continue to work hard. At the same time, the relevant departments are also actively studying policies and regulations to stabilize the development of automobile to stimulate automobile consumption, perhaps in the second quarter of this year, there will be more car companies to deliver a satisfactory report card.
This article comes from the authors of the AutoZone, and does not represent the views of the AutoZone position.