China Automobile Dealers Association: Analysis of China's imported automobile market in April 2022

(I) Supply: After three years of decline, automobile imports increased slightly in 2021. From January to April 2022, 319,000 vehicles were imported, a slight decrease of 4.9%. In April, 94,000 vehicles were imported, a year-on-year decrease of 5.8%; the import value reached 127.99 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.4%.

(II) Demand: From 2015 to 2019, terminal demand for imported vehicles remained relatively stable. Affected by the short-term impact of the epidemic and chips, the imported automobile market began to decline in 2020. From January to April 2022, sales were 241,000 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 26.2%, of which April decreased by 46.8%.

(III) Inventory: With supply being less than demand in 2019-2020, the inventory depth of the entire imported automobile industry showed a significant decline; supply and demand were basically balanced in 2021, but sales declined; in April 2022, the inventory depth rose sharply to 4.8 months, a record high.

(IV) Price: The unit price of imported automobiles has increased year by year. From 2015 to 2022, the unit price of imported automobiles has increased from 252,100 yuan to 401,200 yuan, breaking the 400,000 yuan mark for the first time. The first reason is the consumption upgrading trend, the second is the localization trend of low-priced products, and the third is the recent depreciation of the exchange rate.

(V) Brand structure: Affected by the epidemic, the overall imported car market has declined sharply, with super luxury cars, luxury cars and non-luxury cars all falling by about 50% year-on-year, reflecting the overall impact of the epidemic prevention and control lockdown on the car market. From January to April, luxury cars accounted for more than 90%.

From January to April 2022, only Toyota among the top ten brands achieved year-on-year growth, with a year-on-year growth of 7.7%, a slowdown from the previous month; Lexus remained in first place, with a year-on-year decline of 32.3%, Mercedes-Benz and BMW ranked second and third, with Mercedes-Benz down 5%; Audi and Subaru had the largest declines among the top ten brands, both exceeding 40%; looking at sales in April alone, the top ten brands all declined, with four brands declining by more than 30%.

(VI) Vehicle model structure: From January to April 2022, all vehicle models experienced declines to varying degrees, among which MPVs turned from a 13% increase in the previous month to a decline of 2.4%, and the year-on-year declines of sedans and SUVs accelerated, reaching 28.2% and 25.8% respectively; the year-on-year decline of Sedan models was smaller than the overall market, while the decline of Sportback models reached more than 50%.

(VII) Displacement shifts downward: the 1.5-2.0L displacement range accounts for 47.3%, which has declined compared to 2021, but still remains the largest displacement range; the 2.5-3.0L displacement range has increased by nearly 3 percentage points compared to 2021; parallel imported models have gradually resumed supply, and the share of displacement above 3.0L has rebounded to 5.6%, an increase of 1.7 percentage points from 2021.

(VIII) Fluctuations in sales of imported new energy vehicles: From 2016 to 2018, sales of imported new energy vehicles were between 15,000 and 20,000 units. Driven by Model 3, sales of imported new energy vehicles soared to 60,000 units in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 191%, accounting for 5.4% of the total imported vehicles. With the domestic production of models, sales volume fell back to 27,500 units in 2020. With the contribution of PHEV, sales increased by 26.2% year-on-year in 2021. In 2022, NEV sales were 7,430 units, a year-on-year decrease of 10.7%, mainly due to a 20.2% decrease in pure electric sales.