The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced the sales volume of China’s auto market in March 2020 this afternoon. The domestic sales of Tesla’s Model 3 reached 10,160 vehicles, an increase of 160.5% compared to the previous month.
After the data was released, friends from various car companies in the circle of friends expressed their shock. In the community of Garage 42, some users joked, “Copper roots can say: This is an illusion, absolutely an illusion!”
Yes, this data exceeded everyone’s expectations.
Before looking at this data, let’s take a look at the current market environment.
On January 3 this year, Tesla officially lowered the official website price of the domestically produced standard upgraded version of Model 3, and after subsidies, the price was 299,050 yuan, breaking through the threshold of the 300,000 yuan price range.
Since that moment, electric vehicles have entered the field of view of more people. More and more consumers who pay attention to fuel vehicles have set their sights on pure electric vehicles. From that moment on, electric vehicles began to break through. More and more media began to compare Model 3 with fuel vehicles. From that moment on, Tesla began to be favored by the investment market. Tesla’s consecutive days of soaring have made it become the world’s second highest market value car company.
The thriving market performance made Wang Hao, the general manager of Tesla China, confidently proclaimed, “We sell as many as we produce“.
On January 7, when Elon Musk came to the China Gigafactory for the second time, he danced with joy in front of all the media, employees, and car owners. The joy from the bottom of his heart was overflowing on Elon’s face, and transmitted to the heart of every audience present.
When everyone was waiting for Tesla to rewrite the miracle in the US market in the Chinese market, the new coronavirus quietly swept across the entire land of China. In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, everyone began weeks of home isolation, and the national economy almost stagnated.
During the home isolation period, not only was vehicle sales blocked, but some customers who planned to buy a car after receiving the year-end bonus and customers who canceled their previous car purchase plan to ensure their cash flow were affected.
Under the influence of the epidemic, not only a large number of car companies stopped production and operations, but the operation of the automobile supply chain system was almost stagnant. Once this long supply chain was forcibly suspended, the impact was huge and long-lasting.# China’s auto sales hit a record low in Q1 2020
After the global spread of the epidemic in late March, more and more car companies lowered their sales and revenue expectations for 2020, and for all people in the auto industry, this is an extremely dark 2020.
After Tesla released the Q4 2019 report at the beginning of the year, we made an estimate of Tesla’s sales in 2020. However, the increasingly complex external environment makes Tesla’s sales difficult to predict. It is difficult to judge how sales in March are, but our psychological expectation is about 5,000 units.
Now, according to the data from the China Passenger Car Association, Tesla’s sales in March soared to five digits, reaching 10,160 units. Is this data that exceeded everyone’s expectations an outstanding achievement among all models of the same level?
According to the data from the China Passenger Car Association, the domestic Model 3 of Tesla sold 3,900 units in February (estimated). Its sales in March increased by 160.5% over February, which is an extremely exaggerated figure. Looking at gasoline cars, the sales of all models of Beijing Mercedes-Benz in February were 11,272 units. Its sales in March increased by 356.2% compared with February, which is far higher than that of Tesla’s domestic Model 3.
Obviously, the surge in March data is not just about Tesla, but the recovery of the entire auto industry. Therefore, the data that Tesla shocked everyone seems not worth showing off.
Don’t rush to conclusions. Let’s go back one month. According to the data from the China Passenger Car Association, the sales of Tesla’s domestic Model 3 in January 2020 were 2,620 units, and the sales in February were estimated to be 3,900 units, an increase of 48.9% compared to the previous month. In January 2020, Beijing Mercedes-Benz’s comprehensive sales were 67,572 units, and the sales in February were 11,272 units, a month-on-month decline of 83.3%.
In other words, although Beijing Mercedes-Benz’s sales in March increased by 356.2% compared to the previous month, the premise of the increase was that sales in February fell by 83.3%. In other words, Mercedes-Benz’s surge in March was due to a decline in the previous month, while the sales of Tesla’s domestic Model 3 have been growing rapidly since January.
If this data is not powerful enough, let’s look at another group of data. The sales data of Mercedes C-Class, BMW 3 Series, and Audi A4L for March this year has not yet been released, so we will make a comparison with last year’s data.
In March 2019, the sales of Mercedes C-Class, BMW 3 Series, and Audi A4L were 14,015, 15,816, and 14,451 units respectively. Although the sales of Tesla’s domestic Model 3 are not yet equal to BBA’s, surpassing BBA is only a matter of time.According to sales disclosed by Tesla and comments on our articles, there are still a large number of users waiting for the domestically produced long-range Model 3, even though sales of the domestic Model 3 have exceeded 10,000 units. Once Tesla plays this crucial card, it is only a matter of time before they surpass the big three German luxury car manufacturers (BMW, Benz, and Audi).
Looking back at the sales records of the Tesla Model 3 in the United States, after Tesla completed production ramp up in the second half of 2017, they surpassed the sales of the big three German luxury car manufacturers in just one quarter.
Under the pandemic, Tesla quietly achieved sales of 10,000 units. When will they dominate the Chinese market for mid-size luxury cars with the launch of the domestically produced long-range Model 3? We leave that open for discussion in the comments section.
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.