Passenger car sales data released by the Ride Federation in April and May show that the car market sales and growth performance began to lead the SUV market again. Perhaps, some people think that this is only a special market phenomenon in the past two months, but the author thinks that this is a noteworthy market signal, symbolic significance is not small.

 

SUV market deserves to continue to bullish, but should not hold too high market growth expectations.

 

In recent years, the rapid growth of the SUV market has not only fed a group of new entrants, but also increased the investment of almost all automobile companies in the SUV market, including FAW-Volkswagen (Volkswagen Standard), which has no SUV products, will launch its first SUV model this year. Even some automobile companies believe that SUV market will still provide a better incremental segment market in the future.

 

It should be noted that from the previous annual growth rate of more than 50% to last year's 10%+and to the monthly growth rate of less than 10% since this year, the domestic SUV market has shown a significant downward trend in overall year-on-year growth. If we look at the data trend alone, there will be room for growth in the domestic SUV market in the short term, but there will be no high growth performance.

 

At the same time, from last year and this year's monthly sales data, the domestic SUV market sales have gradually approached the car market sales. After several years of explosive growth in SUV market, some people may forget the previous controversy about consumers'intention to buy cars and SUV models, but I think it is necessary to raise this issue again, because it will affect the sales structure of domestic car and SUV market in the future.

 

In fact, both cars and SUVs have their own limitations. As a result, consumers with different consumption concepts and lifestyles will always have different opinions on whether they like cars or SUVs. For example, although I prefer cars, I do not deny the good of SUV. Therefore, at present, when the sales of SUV market are close to the car market and the growth rate is obviously declining, I believe that the capacity of the two markets may be about to reach a balance. If someone is willing to organize a large sample of car purchase intention survey, perhaps there is more evidence to support this controversy.

 

Why did car sales rebound when SUV market growth declined?

 

Previously, we have found many reasons for the decline of the car market, such as consumer preference for SUV, car companies invest more resources in the SUV market, but in the face of sales data in these two months, the car market performance appears "abnormal", and those reasons seem to be ineffective. Is it a sudden change in consumer demand preferences, or a change in investment by car companies?

 

As mentioned earlier, consumer demand should not change abruptly. Looking back at the new models that have been on the market in the past six months, although there are some new car products, the number of new car products is obviously less than that of SUV, which can be seen from the auto show. So what is the reason? In this regard, the author has the following guesses (specific product data is not yet available).

 

Firstly, the growth of new energy vehicles for cars is too fast, which promotes the rebound of car market sales growth. In April this year, the domestic double-score policy was formally implemented, and the domestic new energy vehicle market witnessed an explosive growth of 174% year-on-year. The policy's driving role continued until May. According to the data of the Joint Economic Association, the sales of new energy vehicles in May were 92,000, up 140% year-on-year, and the total sales of new energy vehicles in January-May were 280,000. It is noteworthy that 84% of the pure electric sales in January-May contributed to cars, and 51% of the plug-in hybrid sales contributed to cars (which is related to the technology of electric vehicles).

 

Secondly, luxury car market sales are growing rapidly, which plays a certain role in promoting. The off-season is not weak, which is the overall performance of the luxury car market this year; among them, the performance of luxury cars is more prominent. For example, Mercedes-Benz Class C grew 22.65% year-on-year from January to April, Mercedes-Benz Class E grew 39.28% year-on-year, and BMW Series 3 also sold more than 10,000 yuan a month. In fact, car sales account for a significant proportion of the total sales of BMW in Huachen and Mercedes-Benz in Beijing.

 

Of course, the above is only the reason for the sudden rebound of car market growth speculation based on some data; the reasons behind the phenomenon are still worthy of further confirmation.

 

However, no matter what the reason is, the domestic passenger car market has shown signs of structural change. This is worthy of attention for automobile companies, especially for new automobile companies that grow up in the SUV market and have no other advantages. (Source: Commercial Vehicle Information)