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On April 29th, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 1 1 ministries jointly issued the Notice on Several Measures to Stabilize and Expand Automobile Consumption, including five aspects of automobile market stimulus policies, including adjusting the implementation requirements of the national six emission standards, improving financial support for the purchase of new energy vehicles, speeding up the elimination of old diesel vehicles, smoothing the circulation and trading of used cars, and encouraging the credit and financial business of automobile consumption.
Although China's automobile manufacturers have gained a respite from the policy support, in the European continent where automobiles were born, European automobile manufacturers are still clamoring for their own automobile market stimulus policies.
Epidemic crisis
As the second epicentre of COVID-19 epidemic after East Asia, Europe has gradually won the war epidemic through strict grounding and shutdown orders in the past two months. But the economic cost of these measures is also huge.
According to the data recently released by ACEA, the sales of passenger cars in 28 EU countries (including Britain) decreased by 45% year-on-year in March, only 567,000. According to Ernst & Young's forecast, in April, when the economic life was most seriously affected, the sales volume of passenger cars in EU countries will drop by 70% year-on-year, which is roughly consistent with the 79% year-on-year decline in China in February, when the epidemic was the worst.
At present, CCFA, the French Automobile Manufacturers Committee, and SMMT, the British Automobile Manufacturers and Traders Association, have released the passenger car sales data of France and Britain in April respectively. The sales volume of passenger cars in France in April was only 20,997, down 88.8% year-on-year; The sales volume of passenger cars in the UK in April was only 43,265,438+0, down 97% year-on-year, returning to the level of 65,438+0,946 after World War II.
By May, all European countries except Britain and Russia had passed the inflection point of the epidemic. Among the major European countries, Germany, which has recovered fastest, has allowed car dealers to reopen stores since April 27, while European automakers such as Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler have gradually resumed production on April 20.
The question now is: how to motivate consumers to buy cars again.
How to save the market
The only magic weapon is still the consumer subsidy for buying a new car.
This form of subsidy once saved the European automobile industry in the name of "environmental protection subsidy" and "trade-in subsidy" during the financial crisis in 2008. At that time, the French government took the lead in promoting the policy of encouraging consumers to exchange old cars for new ones, and announced that it would reward 1000 euros for car owners who were over 0 and bought new cars with small displacement and environmental protection. Since then, 13 EU countries, including Britain, Germany, Austria and Italy, have successively announced their follow-up. At that time, the British government and British car companies promised to provide a subsidy of 1000 for the redemption group over10.
Germany, which has the strongest financial strength, announced that it will give 2,500 euros to replace the old car for more than 9 years. In less than half a year, the number of applicants for this subsidy in Germany exceeded 654.38+0.2 million. At that time, the sales volume of passenger cars in Germany increased by 23.3% in 2009, 720,000 more than that in 2008. In the annual sales volume, 6.5438+0.93 million passenger cars received state subsidies.
With the successful precedent in 2009, the German automobile industry has frequently put pressure on political circles since mid-April, demanding to restart the large-scale new car purchase subsidy program, and hoping to cover all electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles and fuel vehicles that meet Euro 6 emission standards.
Although there is no specific strength of subsidies publicly expressed by automobile manufacturers, it is estimated that the subsidy amount of more than 4,000 euros per vehicle is more practical, and the fund pool provided by the government is at least 2 billion euros.
BMW CEO Chip publicly put forward the word "innovation dividend", aiming at accelerating the transformation of decarbonization by stimulating electric vehicles and advanced fuel vehicles: "We see double opportunities in car purchase subsidies. First, this policy can promote economic restart, and second, it can accelerate the energy transformation of the automobile industry. "
RalfBrandst, chief operating officer of Volkswagen brand? Tter) also said that the automobile industry needs extensive subsidies and incentives, which should be implemented before this summer. FrankWitter, the chief financial officer of Volkswagen Group, also made it clear when he announced the first quarter financial report that Volkswagen Group hoped for the government's stimulus policy.
A similar voice came from Daimler. Kang Song Lin, CEO of Mercedes-Benz's parent company, also expressed the requirement of implementing the auto market stimulus policy as soon as possible at the first quarter earnings report meeting, and reminded consumers that the wait-and-see attitude caused by the indecision of the policy will further suppress the sales data. Daimler's earnings before interest and tax in the first quarter dropped by 78% year-on-year, which is also the least optimistic among the German Big Three.
Theoretically, if the auto market stimulus policy can be launched in time, its effect will exceed the financial crisis ten years ago. At present, the average age of 48 million passenger cars in Germany has reached 9.6 years, compared with 8.5 years ten years ago. The emission standard of 6.5438+0.9 million cars is even Euro 4 or Euro 3 standards.
For the first time, the demands of Germany's three major automakers have been supported by local political circles. Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Baden-Wü rttemberg are the headquarters of BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler respectively. Because the automobile industry is very important to the local economy and employment, the governors of the three States have jointly asked the federal government to take action as soon as possible, and even asked Berlin to lobby the EU headquarters to introduce a pan-European automobile market stimulus policy.
However, at least for the moment, it is highly probable that Germans will play a leading role in the EU policy when major European automobile producing and selling countries such as France, Italy and Spain need to gradually open their economies after May 10.
bristle with/be beset with difficulties
Wishful thinking does not always work.
If there is no domestic 1 1 combination boxing policy issued by ministries and commissions, it is not so easy for European countries, which have very limited operating space for automobile market stimulus policies, to eat fresh food all over the world.
The automobile market stimulus policy met with fierce opposition from the beginning.
The first controversy focuses on the determination of the scope of the subsidy model.
As a pioneer in the era of fuel vehicles and a poor student in the era of electric vehicles, Daimler hopes to extend the subsidized models from electric vehicles and Euro 6 standards to all fuel vehicles. Michael Brecht, chairman of Daimler Trade Union, publicly expressed the hope that the subsidy policy would treat all models equally, and Kang Song Lin, CEO of Daimler, also said that "simple and universal car subsidies are needed".
However, in Europe, which pays attention to energy conservation and environmental protection, this proposal has been opposed by most environmentalists. If all models can get subsidies, it means that electric vehicles that used to enjoy subsidies for new energy vehicles have been improved in disguise, which is obviously not conducive to achieving the EU's carbon neutrality goal in 2050.
At present, Germany has raised the subsidy for electric vehicles from a maximum of 5,000 euros to 6,000 euros in February this year.
On the political level, Daimler's proposal also met with resistance. Although Bavaria, where BMW is located, and Lower Saxony, where Volkswagen is located, both support expanding the scope of subsidized vehicles, in Bavaria, where Daimler is located, the governor of the state is from the Green Party, and he also opposes subsidizing fuel vehicles for political reasons. Even at the German federal level, German Economy Minister Altmeier said: "There will be no exactly the same car subsidies as in 2009, and we will only subsidize low-carbon cars." At the highest level of the European Union, the European Commission has indicated that it is willing to allocate nearly one third of the 250 billion euro revival fund to the automobile industry, but it only promotes energy transformation in the form of loans, rather than directly throwing money at the consumer side.
The second focus of the debate is whether the automobile industry needs special care.
Although the automobile industry is a pillar industry in Europe, it has contributed nearly 10% of the economic output value and 800,000 direct employment opportunities in Germany alone. BerndOsterloh, chairman of the Volkswagen Trade Union, wrote directly in an internal email: "We know that we are calling for the use of taxpayers' money, but we also know that this money will be better distributed, whether it is economic, social or environmental. "Volkswagen CEO Diss also publicly stated on German TV 1 that the best entry point to save the economy is the automobile industry.
But don't forget that the industries in urgent need of government assistance are far more than the automobile industry. Tourism, catering, medical supplies and civil aviation are all the hardest hit areas. Among them, the operating income of tourism, catering and civil aviation decreased by more than 90%, and compared with large automobile manufacturing enterprises, the cash flow of tourism and catering industries, which are mainly small and micro enterprises, could not last for more than one month, and these industries also created a wider range of employment opportunities.
Even in Germany, where the automobile industry is extremely important, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia tends to tilt the finance to the IT industry to solve the structural problem of backward digital infrastructure exposed during the long-term home office.
The third focus of the debate is how effective the car subsidy is.
Different from the economic crisis that broke out in the financial industry ten years ago, this crisis has caused a wider range of unemployment, short working hours and a wider range of corporate capital chain breaks. Compared with the top-down financial crisis, the bottom-up COVID-19 crisis directly threatens the lives of ordinary people. The income decline caused by unemployment or short-term working system, the fear that employers may close down and the increase of uncertainty about the future are the main factors that hinder the purchase of new cars. Many politicians, including members of the European Commission, believe that compared with thousands of euros of subsidies, ensuring the survival of enterprises at the macro level, rapidly reducing the unemployment rate, and launching flexible financial instruments at the micro level are the keys to revitalizing the automobile market.
A typical case is that during the financial crisis in 2008, Hyundai Motor once seized the market in the United States through the slogan of "certainty in an uncertain period", while General Motors declared bankruptcy at the same time. At that time, Hyundai Motor allowed car buyers to return their cars when they were unemployed or unable to repay their loans.
In addition, the follow-up of the car subsidy policy in 2009 is also mixed. In 20 10, after the subsidy expired, the sales of passenger cars in Germany dropped by 24% again, which was even worse than that in 2008. Until today, the annual sales volume of passenger cars in Germany has never reached the high point in 2009.
In the almost saturated passenger car market in Europe, car subsidies will release the backlog of car demand in advance and consume the purchasing power in the following years. In a sense, this policy is the same as the negative interest rate policy of the European Central Bank. The question is whether German car companies, which are in urgent need of catching up with Tesla's electrification, can once again bear the sluggish demand in the next decade.
Another side effect of the subsidy policy in 2009 was that compared with the expensive German luxury brands, Hyundai and Fiat with low prices were the biggest beneficiaries of the subsidy in that year. The resulting car change tide has also led to a large number of well-maintained vehicles flooding into the used car market, causing the price of the used car market to plummet.
Even though the car subsidy ten years ago stipulated the precondition of Euro 4 standard, the effect of this policy on environmental protection is still difficult to reach an agreement. According to a survey conducted by the German Ministry of Environment, the emissions of 6,543,800+7,000 passenger cars that meet the Euro IV standard are reduced by one fifth compared with the old cars that have been eliminated. In another independent survey commissioned by OECD OCED, subsidies actually greatly stimulated the purchase demand of large-displacement vehicles such as SUVs.
It is worth mentioning that, in fact, the re-introduction of car subsidies lacks a public opinion base at least in Germany. According to the statistics of the polling agency Civey, among the 1.7 million respondents, 62% have a negative attitude towards the policy of stimulating the automobile market, and 39.8% of them even said that they would never support the government to implement any form of subsidies. Only 29.3% of the respondents are positive about this.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.