The number of passenger cars in China exceeds 290 million, which makes OBD detection controversial?
Recently, "OBD detection" has caused a hot discussion on the whole network, and many netizens and used car practitioners have complained bitterly: this is forcing consumers to forcibly eliminate old cars for new ones! Therefore, netizens are beginning to wonder whether the domestic auto market is already too saturated. Otherwise, why force people to change cars?

Fortunately, CCTV dismissed rumors and let people put down their hanging hearts. However, a few days ago, an "Analysis of Automobile Scrap Export Portfolio" was released, and some data also attracted the attention of the industry: How much space is there in the domestic automobile market?

The number of people per thousand has bottomed out and the market is not saturated?
The data shows that by 2023, the number of passenger cars in China is 291 million, and the year-on-year growth rate is decreasing year by year, reaching 6% by 2026. The scrapped export volume was 4.85 million vehicles, with an increase rate of 38%, reaching the highest value in seven years; The number of new cars registered is 21.73 million each year, a year-on-year increase of 5%. At the same time, as shown in the following table, as of 2023, the number of passenger cars per thousand people in China is 207, which is equivalent to one car for every five people, which is indeed a great progress compared with one car for every nine people in 2016.

In this regard, some insiders believe that the per capita possession of such people is still low, because according to another set of data, there are 550 vehicles per thousand drivers in 2018, while there are 600 vehicles per thousand drivers in 2023. In the past, only two holders can own a car, and the speed of car ownership per thousand drivers in China is relatively slow.
At the same time, the growth rate of scrapping and transferring out is also increasing, and some areas such as Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have all increased by more than 30%. This is the pulling effect of policies such as "trade-in" and promotes automobile consumption, so the market is still large.

The market is saturated, and brands seek opportunities to decompress.
However, some practitioners believe that the current domestic auto market is in a relatively saturated state.
One is the inventory situation. It is reported that in November this year, the early warning index of joint venture brand inventory exceeded 52.3%, which was higher than the domestic total index of 51.8% in the same period, and 58.2% of dealers thought that the market performance did not meet expectations.

The second is the price war. In addition to the direct fracture, many brands have adopted the "value war" to stimulate automobile consumption through limited-time price, limited-time concessions, state subsidies+factory subsidies, and node concessions such as "Double Eleven Promotion". For example, FAW Toyota’s sales in November increased by 38% year-on-year and 18% quarter-on-quarter under the incentive of "the top 15 users in the Double Eleven enjoy a maximum subsidy of 49,999 yuan"; SAIC-GM also achieved five consecutive month-on-month growth, with terminal sales of 66,797 vehicles (including exports) in November, an increase of 14.7% from the previous month.

The third is the decline of luxury brands. In the first 10 months of this year, BMW’s sales volume was 498,200, down 13.4% year-on-year, and imports fell 9%. Porsche’s imports fell by 34% and it plans to close 50 stores; Imports of Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Audi all fell by more than 15%. This not only shows that domestic consumers are increasingly favoring domestic high-end new energy brands such as Ideal, Wonderland, Extreme Krypton and Xiaomi, but also shows that the share of domestic high-end and luxury segments is still limited.

Therefore, from the market data, the current market is relatively saturated, which is not friendly to most non-head brands, especially mainstream joint venture brands and luxury brands, which need more space to decompress.
In a word, whether from a pessimistic or optimistic point of view, China auto market has entered a balanced period. Stimulated by benign incentive policies such as "trade-in", it still plays a considerable role in stimulating automobile consumption, so there is no need to push the vehicle scrapping iteration too aggressively. Of course, this is not to say that OBD testing is totally useless. It can be used as a "filter" to eliminate some old cars that are really unsuitable for the road. At the same time, it can also be used by consumers and second-hand car dealers to screen out the problem cars, which can also play a positive role in second-hand car trading. What do you think?



















