Author: Feng Jingang
Introduction
The stunning March indicates that this year may achieve greater breakthroughs.
In March, the global new energy vehicle market achieved an astonishing increase, with a year-on-year growth of 173% and a month-on-month growth of nearly doubled. The sales volume base also reached 531,000 units, which is the second-best historical sales record after December last year, indicating a greater breakthrough in December this year.
Due to the rapid growth in March, the sales volume base in the first quarter reached 1,128,003 units, a year-on-year increase of 144.5%. If this growth rate is maintained in the remaining three quarters, the total sales volume for this year will reach 4.5 million units, which is slightly different from the industry’s expected 5 million units.
In terms of market share, the market share of new energy passenger vehicles in March reached 8.2%, of which BEV accounted for 5.4%. The market share in the first quarter of this year was 5.8%, which is higher than last year’s 4%, and BEV accounted for 3.8%. In some local areas, the market share of new energy is even higher, such as more than 50% in Norway, 15% in Europe, and 31% in Shanghai in Q1.
Model List
In March, there were not many changes in the cumulative sales list of vehicle models. Tesla Model 3 / Y and Wuling MINI still led significantly, followed by BYD Han, Ora Black Cat, and Aiways AION S. The Nissan Lingerie also had a high increase in March.
Only the Volvo XC60PHEV, a plug-in hybrid model, was listed in the top 10, the rest were pure electric. The plug-in hybrid models in the top 20 are mainly from Volvo, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, and there is no Audi. The e-Tron, Audi’s best-performing model, is a pure electric model. It can be seen that in the development of new energy, several traditional luxury brands in Europe have shown differences in their strategies.
Taking out the top 20 luxury car models separately is more obvious. Tesla Model 3 / Y, the two pure electric models, ranked first and second, and won a total of 16% of the market share. The other 7 models have only 1% market share, and 6 are plug-in hybrids, and one is a pure electric model. The Ideal ONE is the only Chinese brand model.
Brand List
There was a big highlight on the brand list this month. Tesla’s monthly sales volume exceeded 100,000 units for the first time, becoming the first brand with new energy vehicle monthly sales volume exceeding 100,000 units in history, which has significant industry significance. Although the total sales volume is increasing, Tesla’s market share has decreased by 3 percentage points from last year’s 19%, indicating that the market growth is greater than Tesla’s growth.
We also list the luxury brands separately. Tesla is not as dominant as in the model rankings, while BMW and Mercedes still have a considerable market share due to their quantity of models and combination of pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, especially Mercedes, whose share has doubled compared to last year and is approaching BMW.
In addition, Volvo is growing rapidly thanks to the performance of its several plug-in hybrid models, such as XC60 and XC40, but its performance in pure electric is still unsatisfactory. Under Geely’s grand plan, Volvo’s traditional power will be transferred to LYNK&CO and Geely, and Volvo can only be forced to break through with new energy. Currently, the effect is good, but mainly in the European market and with high subsidies. For Volvo to achieve greater success in the new energy market, it must make a breakthrough in the pure electric field.
Group
Previously, due to the low sales figures, the global ranking of car companies mainly relied on brand rankings. Now, with some traditional car companies generally pushing into the new energy market, although the single brand sales figures are not high, it is considerable when multiple brands are integrated into a group, so the ranking of new energy in the future will return to the algorithm of the traditional car market with the group as the main factor.
In this way, another pattern emerged in the global new energy market. In the first quarter, Tesla is still the leader, but SAIC Motor Corporation Limited is following closely behind, with only 3 percentage points behind Tesla. The growth of SAIC is visible, especially Wuling, which has won 9% of the market share with only one brand.
Then VW Group, BMW Group and the newly established Stellantis alliance, the three European companies. Volkswagen has made significant progress. With the MEB platform strategy, vehicle models are as numerous as dumplings, but the performance of Volkswagen is still a bit lackluster, showing a significant difference between Europe and China. BMW has maintained a high ranking in the past decade, but mainly depends on plug-in hybrids, and the pain point of pure electric is still there. As for Stellantis, it has as many as 205 brands. Calculated, the sales volume of a single brand in Q1 is only 324 units.
Conclusion
Previously, the industry expressed concern about the year 2021 after the subsidies faded away, but looking at it now, it is totally unnecessary. The just needs of China’s new energy market have been activated, especially in the luxury car market led by Tesla and the commuting car market led by BYD and others.
As for Europe, the market has also been activated due to the existence of super subsidies, similar to the Chinese market five years ago, but there is also some distortion, and it will inevitably become rational in a few years.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.