Car sales collapse due to coronavirus - France 24

Hong Kong (AFP)

Auto sales collapsed 92% between February 1 and 16, a professional federation announced on Friday, the world's largest auto market remaining paralyzed by the epidemic of the new coronavirus.

Some 4,900 cars were sold over the period, up from nearly 60,000 over the same period last year, said the China Federation of Individual Car Manufacturers (CPCA).

According to his estimates, the plunge in car deliveries could be 70% over one year for the whole of February, and 40% over the two cumulative months of January-February.

A collapse that reflects the shutdown of the economy, due to the drastic measures taken to contain the epidemic: extension of the Lunar New Year holidays, forced closure of stores, containment measures in many cities.

"Across the different regions, very few dealers were open, and attendance was extremely low, because only customers with urgent needs buy a vehicle in times of epidemic," observed the CPCA.

This dive "will be temporary, but the duration of the recovery will depend on the measures adopted by the authorities in the different regions" to stem the spread of the virus, warns the federation.

In fact, with many workers in quarantine, the resumption of production is still done only very gradually and in dispersed order according to the manufacturers.

And they are also faced with traffic restrictions, which disrupt the delivery of spare parts as well as the delivery of completed vehicles.

The province of Hubei (center), where the epidemic spread and which has been cut off from the world for a month by a drastic sanitary cordon, is also a major center of the Chinese automobile industry.

It is the headquarters of Dongfeng, one of the largest Chinese manufacturers, and a large number of equipment manufacturers are located there, raising fears of serious disruptions in the sector's supply chains.

The Chinese automobile market, the first in the world, fell 9.6% in 2019, penalized by a sharp darkening of the economic situation against the backdrop of the Sino-American trade war.

© 2020 AFP