China’s car sales crash
Cars and deals aplenty as Chinese sales plummet in the wake of the CoronavirusNew car sales have collapsed in world’s biggest car market as the Coronavirus locks China down.
Its sales over the first two weeks of February have been cruelled by an astonishing 92 per cent, with some analysts estimating even huge megacities like Shanghai experience just two percent of their normal road traffic.
Its daily average sales rate for the first week of February was even worse, down 96 per cent to just 811 car sales a day from a usual run rate beyond 20,000.
Even in January, the China’s Passenger Car Association (PCA) reported sales had fallen 22 per cent to 1.71 million car sales.
The most stunning drops came in electric cars (EVs), which are mostly sold in the types of Chinese megacities most affected by the lockdowns.
The issue isn’t a shortage of cars – though that will strike globally later this quarter, as factory shutdowns cripple the world’s supply chains – but a shortage of customers in showrooms.
Buyers are locked in their own houses and those showrooms that are open are ghost towns.
The PCA said this week that February sales would crash by 70 per cent for the full month, dropping the year’s volumes by 40 per cent so far.
“There was barely anybody at car dealers in the first week of February as most people stayed at home,” PCA Secretary General Cui Dongshu said.
China’s sales were already slumping before the viral outbreak struck, moving towards its third straight full year of decline.
Tags
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
