BMW recently announced changes to its guidance for fiscal year 2024, predicting a year-on-year drop in delivery and a cut in EBIT margins to 6-7 per cent from an earlier estimate of 8-10 per cent.
The news sparked concerns about BMW’s prospects, and BMW shares fell sharply, affecting the performance of European auto stocks.
BMW said the revision of the guidance was mainly due to the suspension of some cars caused by technical problems and the continued sluggish demand in key markets such as China.
Since last year, overseas luxury car brands such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz have been involved in the price war in China’s auto market.
However, in the face of fierce competitive pressure, BMW began to try to maintain sales by cutting prices last year, until it officially announced its withdrawal from the price war in July this year.
BMW China said it would pay more attention to business quality and support dealers in the second half of the year.
However, BMW’s sales fell further after withdrawing from the price war.
BMW sold just 34800 vehicles in China in August, almost halving from 60, 000 in the same period last year.
By contrast, sales of Mercedes-Benz and Audi also declined, but by a smaller 13.
83% and 16.
0%, respectively.
After announcing their withdrawal from the price war, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi all began to gradually raise prices for their models.
However, although everyone is raising prices, the range is not the same.
Mercedes-Benz and Audi mainly increase the price of the main selling models, while BMW has raised the price of many of its models several times, ranging from 30, 000 to 80, 000 yuan.
By contrast, the price increases of most Mercedes-Benz and Audi models are only about 10, 000 to 20, 000 yuan.
This also directly leads to a further widening of the sales gap between BMW and Mercedes-Benz and Audi.
According to statistics, Mercedes-Benz has replaced BMW as the leader in China’s luxury car market of more than 200000 yuan.
In the Chinese market, BMW is in the awkward situation that it wants to roll but does not win, and it is stabbed by its companions if it does not want to roll.
All signs show that the pattern of China’s luxury car market is changing.
In the first half of this year, sales of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi were 350705, 363998 and 329556 respectively, down 10 per cent, 5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively from a year earlier.
The rise of Chinese car brands in the luxury car market is mainly the result of asking questions, looking up, and other domestic high-end brand models, as well as ideal, Ulay and other new power brands.
In the past two years, Chinese automobile brands have continued to develop to the high end, making breakthroughs not only in new energy technology and intelligent driving, but also in automobile brand image promotion, after-sales service construction and channel marketing.
Recently, BMW announced that it will work with Toyota to build the first model of the hydrogen fuel cell system jointly developed by both sides, which is scheduled for mass production in 2028.
In addition to BMW, many overseas brands have a layout in the field of “hydrogen cars”.
However, the market demand for hydrogen vehicles is not strong, although Toyota, Ford and other brands of hydrogen vehicles are sold in Japan and the United States, they have not been able to enter the market on a large scale.
At present, many domestic car companies are also developing hydrogen-fueled vehicles, but there are not many hydrogen-fueled vehicles in the market.
In terms of domestic battery factories, in June this year, Ningde era signed a cooperation agreement with reshaping Energy to further increase the research and development of hydrogen fuel cells.
in addition, BYD also began to distribute hydrogen energy as early as 2007 and has obtained a number of fuel cell patents.
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