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    Since the beginning of February, the rescue of the "city" policy came thick and fast.

    On April 3, guangzhou municipal development and reform commission and other nine departments issued the "measures to promote automobile production and consumption in guangzhou", including measures to boost the consumption of new energy vehicles, encourage the acceleration of automobile upgrading and create an automobile consumption environment.

    One of the most eye-catching measures is that individual consumers from March 2020 to the end of December, the purchase of new energy vehicles to enjoy a comprehensive subsidy of 10,000 yuan. Compared with foshan, zhuhai, changsha, nanchang, ningbo, changchun and other cities that have already introduced subsidies, guangzhou's latest policy is undoubtedly the largest subsidy.

    Before that, on March 4, guangzhou issued the notice of "guangzhou resolutely wins the COVID 19 epidemic prevention and control war and certain measures to achieve the economic and social development targets for the whole year" to boost automobile consumption, a month later on April 3, guangzhou finally implemented the measures.

    In addition to direct subsidies for new-energy vehicle consumption, guangzhou is also accelerating the construction of new energy infrastructure such as charging piles. On March 25, the guangzhou municipal bureau of industry and information technology issued a public consultation on the "guangzhou electric vehicle charging infrastructure subsidy fund management measures (revised draft)", clear charging infrastructure construction projects and the special, public charging facilities to give annual operating power subsidies standards.

    After all, only by fundamentally solving the problem of difficulty in charging new energy vehicles, for example, can the sales of new energy vehicles be effectively increased.

    In 2019, the car market continued the trend of "winter" since 2018. Since the outbreak of the new epidemic in January 2020, the car market is even worse. In the first week of February 2020, the average daily retail sales volume of passenger cars was low to the hundreds of digits, and the total monthly sales volume was down 80% compared with the same period last year.

    Guangdong has always been a big auto sales province. In 2019, the sales volume of guangdong continued to rank the first in the country, with the province's auto sales volume reaching 2.461m units, down 1.9% year on year. The drop in sales in guangdong last year -- about 320, 000 -- is likely to be the same as in all other provinces, such as heilongjiang and jilin. Therefore, it is particularly important to boost car sales in guangdong province.

     A number of major car companies in guangdong province, such as byd and gac, saw their performance decline sharply in 2019.

    Byd's revenue in 2019 was about 127.74 billion yuan, down 1.78% year on year, and its net profit of 1.61 billion yuan, down 42.03% year on year. Byd sold 461,000 cars in 2019, down 11.4% from a year earlier. Among them, the sales volume of new energy vehicles was 230,000, down 7.4% year on year.

    In 2019, gac group's revenue was 59.7 billion yuan, down 17.5% year on year. The net profit returned to mother was 6.62 billion yuan, down 39.3% year on year. Group auto sales totaled 2.062 million units, down 4% year on year. Gac new energy sold 42,000 vehicles.

    To this end, gac group also began to increase subsidies after the government's new policy. On April 3, gac said it would add 8,000 yuan to 36,000 yuan in subsidies for different models, covering all major models under its brands.

    Stronger policies are good for consumers, dealers and carmakers. But it is the product, not the subsidy, that drives car consumption. Although the subsidy can stimulate consumption in the early stage, once it declines, it will have a major impact on the market of new energy vehicles whose products are not perfect. Total new-energy sales finally fell in 2019 for the first time in a decade after local subsidies for new-energy vehicles were removed on June 25 last year.

    Instead of being tied down by subsidies, carmakers should accelerate their pace of innovation and launch products that better cater to consumer demand, truly unleashing the consumer potential on the demand side. In 2020, byd will launch a new flagship electric car han series, gac group will also launch a total of 19 new and modified models.

    What really stimulates consumer demand is not subsidies, but the products themselves.