政府新闻
政府持续车企补贴或将引燃各大企业价格战 2023-06-18
A number of Chinese local governments, including the megacities of Shanghai and Shenzhen, are rolling out more subsidies for car purchases this month. This may trigger a new wave of the price war in the country’s vehicle industry that started at the beginning of the year when US electric car giant Tesla first cut prices.
Shenzhen’s Futian district will be dishing out CNY30 million (USD4.2 million) in subsidies from tomorrow, and will subsidize the purchase of new cars from certain dealerships by up to CNY15,000 (USD2,095) per customer, the local government said.
The hi-tech metropolis’ Nanshan district brought out another batch of subsidies for vehicle buyers yesterday, this time worth CNY150 million (USD21 million), after giving away CNY100 million in April.
Shenzhen, which is home to auto and battery giant BYD, has granted CNY450 million (USD62.9 million) worth of subsidies so far this year for the purchase of new energy vehicles and there is more than CNY40 million that is still to be issued, a municipal government official said.
The subsidies have helped shift over 65,240 NEVs, 60 percent of which are made locally, the person said. They have boosted car sales to CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion), increased 9.9 percentage points yearly.
Shanghai, Nanjing in eastern Zhejiang province and some districts in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, have also announced discounts for vehicle buyers this month.
Competition in the Chinese car market is only just getting started, Yang Dayong, a senior executive at Changan Ford, the joint venture between US auto giant Ford Motor and Changan Automobile Group, said in April.
This round of price cuts follows a previous wave in March when the Hubei provincial government linked arms with auto manufacturer Dongfeng-Citroen to roll out more car subsidies. But the March round mainly involved a backlog of vehicles in inventory and future orders, Yang said.
The price war has dragged both automakers and dealers into a vicious circle of “only pursuing sales volume regardless of profit,” the China Passenger Car Association has said many times.
In the first four months, revenue from car sales in China soared 12 percent year on year to CNY2.8 trillion (USD400 billion), according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. But profit margins have been squeezed to 3.9 percent, down from last year’s average of 5.7 percent, and less than that of industrial enterprises, which was 4.9 percent over the period.
Source: Yicai
