Sales are expected to increase slightly by 1.5% in 2021.
Editor’s note: This article comes from “ Future Car Daily ” (WeChat public account ID: auto-time), author: Xiao Cheng Yi.
Author | Cheng Xiaoyi
Edit | Li Huanhuan
Moody’s rating has a negative attitude towards global car sales in 2020 because the outbreak disrupted the pace of car supply and demand.
On February 26, the internationally renowned credit rating agency Moody’s Investor Service lowered its forecast for the global car sales outlook for 2020, saying that global car sales will decline by 2.5%, lower than 2019’s 4.6 %, “But worse than our previous forecast of a 0.9% drop this year.” However, Moody’s expects sales to rebound slightly in 2021, an increase of 1.5%.
“If the situation worsens, this seems to be a reasonable assumption.” LMC Automotive, a UK-based survey company that provides forecasting services for the automotive market, is even more pessimistic, in their report expecting light vehicle sales to fall by as much as 4.4%.
Moody’s believes that due to the impact of the epidemic, China, the world’s largest automotive market, will be hit hard. The agency expects China’s auto sales to decline by 2.9% in 2020, rather than the 1% increase previously forecast.
According to the data of the China Federation of Passenger Transport Associations, affected by the comprehensive adjustment of the Spring Festival and the epidemic situation, the retail trend of the national passenger car market in February was extremely low. Retail sales in the third week of February reached an average of 5411 vehicles per day, a year-on-year growth rate of 83%. In the first 16 days of February, the retail sales of passenger cars in China plummeted 92% year-on-year to 4,909 units, far lower than the nearly 60,000 units in the same period last year.
The domestic auto market’s sales in January were also bleak. According to the data of the China Automobile Association, passenger car sales in January fell by 20.6% year-on-year to 1.607 million, a drop more than expected. The China Automobile Association predicts that the domestic auto market sales may decline by more than 10% in the first half of this year, and the annual decline is expected to be about 5%.
Apart from China, Moody’s believes that the US and Western European markets will also continue to weaken. And Japan will be the only major auto market with sales growth, and young car sales are expected to increase by 0.4% in 2020. But as the epidemic develops in Japan, the growth of the Japanese market may become more difficult.