Chinanews client Beijing April 1 (Zhang Xu) For the auto industry that has not yet come out of its trough, the onset of the new crown pneumonia epidemic is undoubtedly worse. According to China Automobile Industry Association statistics, in the first two months of this year, car sales fell 42% year-on-year, of which 79.1% in February.

Recently, many local governments have successively introduced policies to encourage automobile consumption. The State Council Executive Meeting held on March 31 has also proposed promotion policies for used cars and new energy vehicles. Can the new market be intensively injected into the auto market?

Data sheet: Motor vehicles on the road. Photo by China News Network reporter Jin Shuo

New energy vehicles usher in good news

In order to promote automobile consumption, the executive meeting of the State Council held on March 31 proposed that the first is to extend the policy of subsidies for new energy vehicles and the exemption from purchase tax for two years; the second is to replace the central government with awards to support Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. The regional elimination of diesel trucks with national emission standards of three or below; the third is the sale of used cars to second-hand car dealers, which will be levied a value-added tax of 0.5% on sales from May 1 to the end of 2023.

For the sluggish auto market, the introduction of these policies can be described as a snowfall. Taking new energy vehicles as an example, the data from the Federation of Trade Unions showed that the number of new energy vehicles in the first two months of this year was 55,000, a year-on-year decrease of 57%; of which, 56% year-on-year in January and 63% year-on-year in February.

The industry believes that the introduction of these policies is expected to prevent car sales from continuing to decline.

Zhang Xiang, an automotive expert at the Talent Exchange Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, analyzes, "Although the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles is the same as last year, related technologies are also improving, and it is expected that sales promotion will be greater than last year. In terms of traditional vehicles, the policy to eliminate yellow standard vehicles What was not available last year, coupled with the high sales volume and strong driving force in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, therefore the introduction of these policies will have a great effect on automobile sales throughout the year. "

Previously, China Automobile Industry Association predicted that China's automobile sales would decline by about 2% in 2020. Considering the impact of the epidemic and the promotion of related policies, Zhang Xiang believes that this year's car sales may be the same as last year.

Promoting consumption with subsidies

Prior to this, various regions have successively introduced a number of policies to promote automobile consumption. "Overall, there are two main types of newly introduced policies. One is to relax restrictions, such as increasing car purchase quotas; the other is to stimulate consumption upgrades, such as exchange subsidies." Zhang Xiang said.

On February 3, Foshan took the lead in issuing the “Notice on Several Measures to Promote the Consumption Upgrade of the Automotive Market (Trial)”, which intends to provide financial subsidies to consumers registered with local automobile sales companies to purchase “National Six” standard-displacement vehicles. Different purchases of new cars, change of cars, or purchase of multiple passenger and truck cars at one time will give subsidies of 2000-5000 yuan.

After Foshan started the "first shot" of subsidies, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Nanchang, Chongqing and other cities followed suit. Guangzhou provides a comprehensive subsidy of 10,000 yuan for consumers to purchase new energy vehicles, and a subsidy of 3,000 yuan for replacing or purchasing Guoliu new vehicles.

Data Map: New Energy Vehicle Production Line. Photo by Zhang Bin, China News Agency

Zhuhai stipulates that subsidies will be given to consumers registered in Zhuhai to purchase "National Six" standard-displacement vehicles, and those who meet the requirements of auto show deployment companies and auto show car sales companies will be given subsidies for venues, publicity inputs, and sales incentives. . Simplify car registration and used car transaction procedures, and optimize auto financial services.

Some regions choose to subsidize specific models. On March 1, Xiangtan Economic Development Zone, Hunan Province issued the "Encouragement Measures for Promoting Geely Real Estate Vehicles' Consumption and Upgrade in Changzhutan," which was formally implemented. Changzhutan residents purchased Geely Binyue and brand new Geely Automobile Xiangtan Jiuhua base Long-term vision, can get 3,000 yuan / car subsidy.

In addition, subsidies in Nanchang, Ningbo, and Changchun stipulate that consumers who purchase locally-produced and sold passenger cars and license them locally will be given a one-time concession for each car, ranging from 1,000 to 6,000 yuan.

The effect of subsidies is immediate. Take Changchun, which is affected by the epidemic, as an example. In the past week, Changchun City produced 1,377 new cars registered in the province and sold them, an increase of 23% from the previous month.

Car purchase restrictions relaxed

In addition, increasing the purchase restriction index has become one of the main measures to stimulate car consumption in restricted cities.

On March 13, 23 departments including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting Consumption Expansion and Quality Enhancement and Accelerating the Formation of a Strong Domestic Market" to all provinces and cities. Regions should appropriately increase car number plate limits.

Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, as cities that implement car purchase restrictions, have also begun to “unbundle” car purchase targets. Guangzhou plans to study further new car purchase targets on the basis of an increase of 100,000 cards and lottery indicators last year. Shenzhen is also speeding up the deployment of new car indicators to give priority to the needs of families in their first purchase.

On March 25, Hangzhou issued the "Announcement on Allocation of One-time Passenger Car Indicators in 2020". The announcement proposes that Hangzhou City will increase 20,000 passenger car indicators at one time in 2020, and configure it by the method of personal ladder number and personal index number of counties (cities) at a ratio of 3: 1, that is, 15,000 personal ladder numbers and counties (cities). ) 5000 personal indicators.

The picture comes from the Shanghai public account.

In fact, Shanghai had already acted before Hangzhou announced the increase. According to information released by Shanghai, the Shanghai personal quota for March was 11,970, a significant increase from February's 7,966, and the bid winning rate also increased from 6.1% to 8.9%.

The industry believes that for large cities where consumer demand is higher than supply, the loosening of purchase restrictions will undoubtedly increase car sales in the short term. Ye Shengji, chief engineer and deputy secretary-general of the China Automobile Industry Association, said that in the cities where purchases are restricted, there are many consumers who just need money to purchase, and the release of purchase restrictions is very important to stimulate domestic demand.

"Relaxing measures such as car purchase restrictions will help to expand physical goods consumption and promote consumption replenishment." On March 26, Director of the Ministry of Commerce's Service Trade and Commercial Services Industry Department, Guo Guoyi, said at the press conference that the Ministry of Commerce encourages localities to combine local realities. In light of this, measures such as promoting new energy vehicle consumption and launching trade-in vehicles for new ones have been introduced to further stabilize and expand automobile consumption.

Auto market gradually picks up

With the epidemic situation under control and measures introduced everywhere, the automobile consumer market is gradually picking up.

According to a survey by the China Automobile Dealers Association of 8,569 4S stores across the country, as of March 24, the store return rate was 94.7%, and the passenger flow recovery rate was 61.7%.

The data from the CIC also show that the average daily retail volume of the domestic passenger car market in the first three weeks of March (March 16-22) was 16,700, 21,700, and 25,800, respectively, compared with February. The average daily retail volume for three weeks was more than a thousand vehicles, which has seen a significant increase from the previous month.

A section of Hangzhou. Photo by Qian Chenfei

Credit Suisse Research Institute predicts that domestic car demand will return to normal levels by the end of April and will resume year-on-year growth in May. Therefore, Credit Suisse Research forecasts that passenger car sales for the full year of 2020 will fall by 8% year-on-year, which means that May-December sales will increase by 4% year-on-year.

CITIC Securities expects that the automobile consumption policy will start from key cities, and will be implemented on a large scale. It is estimated that in a conservative and optimistic situation, the policy will bring about an increase in automobile consumption of about 390.6 billion to 82.4 billion yuan, which is 9.9% -20.4% of the retail sales of automobiles in 2019.

Chen Shihua, deputy secretary general of the China Automobile Industry Association, said: "From the data point of view, although the decline in production and sales has still reached 50%, compared with the decline in production and sales in February has been significantly improved. From the overall trend of the automobile market, as companies resume work The recovery rate will increase, and the overall auto market performance in March will be better than in February, and the auto market performance in the later period will also become better and better. "(End)