Financial Services Association, Feb. 19: After experiencing the impact of price cuts at the end of last year, January is often a low season for sales in the car market. Recently, major NEV manufacturers have successively released their first sales report card for 2024. Overall, the year-on-year growth trend was obvious, and the month-on-month performance was not as good as expected. The polarization of car companies is obvious, and there has also been a big change in the NEV TOP10 retail sales list compared to last month.

Looking at the overall market, sales of passenger vehicles in the narrow sense of NEV were 668,000 units in January, up 101.8% year on year and down 29.5% month on month.

According to an analysis by the Passenger Federation, the retail market achieved the expected good start in January, and pre-holiday consumption before the Spring Festival brought a peak season for the car market. However, there are two reasons worth paying attention to: the first is the overdraft of some sales due to price reduction in December, which affected sales in January. Second, the price correction of some models in January and the reduction in local consumer vouchers formed characteristics that were not conducive to strong sales in January. The polarization of car companies is becoming more and more obvious.

In terms of specific brands, BYD still maintains a leading edge with retail sales data of 206,904 vehicles. Despite a significant month-on-month decline, retail sales data of over 200,000 vehicles still refreshed the highest sales record in January of all years. Geely (64,286) and Changan (51,109) sold more than 50,000 units in a single month, ranking 2-3 on the list. The 4-10 rankings were SAIC-GM-Wuling (41,066 vehicles), Tesla China (39,881 vehicles), Ideal Auto (31,165 cars), Cyrus Motors (30,854 cars), Great Wall Motors (23,491 cars), GAC Aeon (21,938 cars), and Dongfeng Motor (12,973 cars).

Traditional NEV companies showed strength in January. With retail sales data of 64,286 vehicles, Geely Auto jumped to second place in the list last month's fourth place, with a year-on-year increase of 632.1%. At the same time as the year-on-year increase, there was also a slight increase month-on-month.

Compared to the month-on-month retreat of other car companies on the list, retail sales of Changan Automobile, which is third in the list, and Dongfeng Motor, which is tenth in the list, grew significantly in January, with month-on-month increases of 21% and 33.3% respectively. The latter also became the “new face” of the January list with the highest month-on-month growth rate on the list.

Compared to traditional big manufacturers, the pattern of new car building forces changed in January. Overall, the performance of new car builders in January was mediocre. With the exception of the ideal car with extended range and the new energy outlet, Celis, which is backed by Huawei's “Big Tree,” which achieved retail sales of more than 30,000 units, none of them, such as NIO, Nana, and Xiaopeng, performed well.

Notably, thanks to the rise of the Dark Horse series, Cyrus's retail sales surged nearly 600% year over year in January. The retail sales record for January was 30,854 vehicles, an increase of 590.4% over the previous year, ranking 7th in the list.

On the other hand, the three ideal L series products will undergo a facelift in March. At that time, M9, which is the benchmark for the ideal L9, will also begin large-scale delivery. It is said that orders have already exceeded 54,000. In an environment where the overall sales performance of new car builders is sluggish, this year's ideals and questions about who can become the “new king” of the new forces in the Year of the Dragon will undoubtedly be a major highlight of the market.