The information disclosed by the Passenger Car Association on May 5 shows that due to the impact of last year's low base, coupled with the recent promotion of China's new energy passenger car exports continue to be strong, in April this year, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and other core areas of the industry chain of new energy vehicles, car sales rose significantly year-on-year.

After the end-of-quarter sprint in passenger car sales in March this year, the national new energy passenger car market returned to stability in April. The price war faded in April, consumers returned to rational consumption, the wait-and-see mood was relieved, and the previous suppressed demand was released, and the overall car market continued the trend at the end of March, stabilizing and repairing.

　　According to the data of the Association, the wholesale sales of 11 manufacturers with more than 10,000 new energy units in the national passenger car market in March accounted for 80.7% of the total monthly sales of new energy passenger cars, and the estimated sales of these companies in April was 482,000 units. Considering the short working days in April, it is good to see that April sales are basically the same as March's 617,000 units. The CPSC describes April's doubling of new energy passenger car sales as encouraging.

　　In 2023, the national new energy passenger car development advantage continues to consolidate and expand. The CPSC's comprehensive estimate of April's wholesale sales by new energy passenger car manufacturers is 600,000 units, essentially flat year-over-year and up 114%. It is expected that from January to April, the national passenger car manufacturers will sell 2.1 million units of new energy wholesale, an increase of 43% year-on-year.

　　The Passenger Association predicts that in 2023, domestic narrow passenger car sales will be 23.5 million units, new energy passenger car sales will be 8.5 million units, and annual new energy vehicle penetration is expected to reach 36%. The current running state is basically in line with the forecast.

　　BYDSales remain at an overwhelming number one

Recently, BYD released its April 2023 production and sales flash report, the company sold 210,295 vehicles in April, up 98.3% year-on-year and 1.6% sequentially. Among them, Dynasty and Ocean.com models accounted for more than 198,900 units, Tenshi accounted for more than 10,000 units, and another 14,800 units were exported. The cumulative sales this year were 762,371 units, up 91.8% year-on-year; the total installed power battery and energy storage battery in April was 9.954 GWh, up 59.5% year-on-year and 0.6% YoY; the cumulative total installed power battery this year was 36.945 GWh, up 76.1% year-on-year.

　　As for Tesla, it sold 75,842 units in April, still maintaining the second position of new energy vehicle sales.

　　In April, GWEA also sold 41,012 new vehicles, up 302% year-on-year and 2.5% YoY; from January to April 2023, GWEA sold a total of 121,320 new vehicles, up 120% YoY. This trend has been significantly better than previous years, showing that the market expects its corporate development to be positive.

　　Geely Automobile sold 113,642 passenger cars in April, up 3% sequentially and about 58% year-on-year. Among them, new energy (including Geely, Link, Extreme Krypton and Rui Lan) sales of 29,874 units, an increase of about 112% year-on-year and over 6% YoY, with the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continuing to climb. The new Extreme Krypton delivered 8,101 units in April, an increase of over 279% year-on-year, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 100,000 units, including an average order amount of 336,000 yuan for Extreme Krypton 001 and 527,000 yuan for Extreme Krypton 009. From the 1st to the 100,000th unit, it took 548 days for Extreme Krypton.

　　As for Ideal, there was a sales explosion, with monthly sales reaching more than 25,000 units, surpassing Azure's 6,658 units, Askworld's 6,917 units and Xiaopeng's 7,079 units.

　　From the current situation, only BYD and Tesla are in a relatively stable position. BYD can be in the first place, from its long-term technology accumulation, perfect industrial chain and balanced development of products. Product line is not the most abundant, but all can stand alone. Tesla, on the other hand, is the advantage brought about by its leading autopilot and cost reduction to have the recent price increase capital. As for GAC EAN, there is no plug-in hybrid product, which will obviously lose a large chunk of the market and needs to be supplemented by Transn. Traditional new energy car companies, some of them are competing for the high-end market, but the market response is general. The new power models are few, so the scale effect is not visible, but in terms of gaining public support is a long-term "domination".

　　Electric Vehicle Development Relies on Charging Pile Density

Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the Federation, said that the state proposed to protect the advantages of new energy vehicles and accelerate the construction of charging system. At present, most of the highway charging stations are still the charging stations of the state network, other operators are afraid of losses, many have not yet entered, the system construction of the highway charging network should be released, the introduction of social capital into the highway and other charging services. Although the highway charging system is still losing money in the short term, it still has the potential to be profitable in the long term.

　　In addition, the pure electric vehicle market is still relatively low in popularity in small cities and county and township markets, and it should be said that there is huge room for the development of new energy vehicles. In fact, the core is the construction of slow charging system, which is the main way to replenish the energy of more than 90% of electric vehicles in the future. We should encourage the development of integrated family light storage and charging. Generally, the area of farmers' homes and roofs is relatively large, these areas are good space for photovoltaic power generation, and then charging electric vehicles, which should have a lot of space.

However, the purchasing power of the county and countryside decided that if the mainstream choice of electric vehicles, but also the economy car, compact cars, even the old man Le battery car is still prevalent. Because the same class of vehicles, fuel cars are lower than the price of electric cars. Auto companies need to keep costs down, lower selling prices, reduce range, and offer cheaper products just to meet the rural consumer base, which may have inherent strategic contradictions with their urgent need to boost their brand image in order to compete with Tesla and others. A more prudent approach at this point seems to be to gradually win in the big city market first over fuel cars in the same class. After completing this long process, it will be the turn of further development to less developed and less densely populated areas.

(Article source: Yangcheng Evening News)