AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)07/12 Report--

According to the latest figures from the Federation of passengers, the cumulative retail sales of the passenger car market from January to June in 2023 was 9.524 million, an increase of 2.7 per cent over the same period last year. The Federation said that from January to June this year, due to a low sales base last year, a number of policies and promotions and other comprehensive factors, achieved a good performance of 2.7% positive year-on-year growth.

Specifically, according to the retail sales data of major manufacturers, the top 10 car companies in the first half of this year are BYD Automobile, FAW-Volkswagen, Changan Automobile, Geely Motor, SAIC-Volkswagen, Guangzhou Automobile Toyota, SAIC General Motors, FAW Toyota, Dongfeng Nissan, and Great Wall Automobile.

Among the top 10 car companies in the list, there are four own-brand car companies. Among them, BYD continues to be at the top of the list with sales of 1.1546 million vehicles, becoming the top seller of passenger cars in China. Changan Automobile and Geely Motor are ahead of other joint venture brands except FAW-Volkswagen. Great Wall Motor ranked 10th in the list with retail sales of 315000 vehicles, but down 17.3% from the same period last year, making it the only independent brand in the top 10.

In terms of segmentation, BYD is still a big winner for domestic automakers, ranking first in terms of year-on-year growth and market share, and BYD is the only company on the list that sells more than one million vehicles.

According to BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu's previous forecast, BYD's sales target for this year will start at 3 million vehicles and strive to double to 3.6 million vehicles. Calculated according to the 3 million sales target, it means that BYD has achieved 38.48% of its annual sales target in the first half of this year. According to BYD's current development trend, it will not be very difficult to achieve the 3 million-year sales target this year.

The cumulative sales of Changan Automobile and Geely Motor in the first half of this year were 631300 and 57.29% respectively, up 13% and 8.9% respectively from the same period last year. At the 2023 Changan Automobile Global Partnership Conference, Wang Jun, president of Changan Automobile, pointed out that the sales target of Changan Automobile Group this year is 2.8 million vehicles, of which Changan Automobile is 1 million, which means that the annual sales completion rate of Changan Automobile has reached 63.13%. There is a high chance of meeting the annual sales target on schedule.

As for Great Wall Motor, although it also made it into the top 10, it is the only independent brand on the list that has declined year-on-year. In the first half of the year, Great Wall made a series of changes and updated its products, but in terms of data, the effect was not significant, and when it comes to monthly sales, the decline in sales in the first half of the year is to be expected. According to Great Wall's annual sales target of 1.6 million vehicles, Great Wall achieved only 19.68% of its target in the first half of the year, making it almost impossible to achieve sales of 1.6 million vehicles this year.

In contrast to independent brands, sales of a number of joint venture brands declined year-on-year in the first half of the year. Among the six joint venture brands on the list, only FAW Toyota achieved a slight price increase of 4.8 per cent, while the rest fell, with Dongfeng Nissan having the biggest decline, with sales falling 24.9 per cent in the first half, down 24.9 per cent from a year earlier.

At present, Dongfeng Nissan passenger cars are mainly composed of three major brands: Nissan, Infiniti and Qichen. The models on sale include Xuanyi, Teana, Qijun, Xiaoke, Bluebird, Tuda, Jinke, Loulan and so on. However, the main selling models are only Xuanyi, Teana and Xiaoke, but with the intensification of market competition, these traditional fuel vehicles have lost their advantages in the Chinese market. In May, for example, Dongfeng Nissan's top-selling model was Xuanyi, with 35400, followed by Xiaoke and Teana, with 8126 and 5435, respectively. At the end of April this year, Dongfeng Nissan passenger car Company of Dongfeng Automobile Co., Ltd. announced a heavy personnel appointment. Liu Xinyu will become General Manager of Dongfeng Nissan Automobile sales Co., Ltd. Senior General Minoru Fujimi became the chief minister of Infiniti Infiniti, Dongfeng Nissan passenger car company, and "how to recover the declining sales of Dongfeng Nissan passenger cars" has become an important task for the new leader after taking office.

As for GAC Toyota and FAW Toyota, which are both Japanese brands, their sales in the first half were 429700 and 368300 respectively, of which GAC Toyota fell 5.2 per cent year-on-year. Compared with Toyota, Honda's two joint ventures in China have both fallen out of the top 10.

Finally, let's take a look at the German car companies FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen. In 2022, BYD ranked first among domestic passenger car companies with sales of 1.805 million vehicles, ending the 40-year dominance of joint ventures such as North and South Volkswagen. Judging from the sales in the first half of this year, the sales of Volkswagen in the north and south are still not very satisfactory. Data show that FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen sold 838700 and 532500 vehicles respectively in the first half of the year, down 2.8 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively from a year earlier.

FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen, as two joint ventures invested by Volkswagen in China, are particularly valued by Volkswagen, and Obom, chairman of the management board of Volkswagen Group, has repeatedly stressed that China is its most important market. After entering 2023, Volkswagen also accelerated its presence in the Chinese market. In April this year, Volkswagen announced that it would invest about 1 billion euros to set up a wholly-owned new company in China; then, in May, Volkswagen invested another 23.1 billion yuan in Hefei, Anhui province. among them, the total investment in fixed assets in the production base (phase I) and the R & D center is 14.1 billion yuan, and the total investment in pre-market research is about 9.05 billion yuan. As for whether Volkswagen's sales will improve in the second half of the year after heavy investment in the Chinese market, we might as well wait and see.

According to the ranking of retail sales of domestic manufacturers, it is still independent brands that have performed well in the first half of this year. "Automotive Industry concern" believes that the reason why independent brands can outperform joint venture brands such as Germany and Japan is largely due to the rapid growth of the new energy vehicle market. Today, China has become the largest single automobile consumer market in the world, and it is also one of the most competitive automobile markets. The importance of the Chinese market to joint venture car companies is self-evident, and joint venture brands want to maintain market share. Obviously, the launch of new energy vehicle products needs to be arranged at a faster speed.

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