In July, Honda's sales volume of terminal vehicles in China was 133556, with a year-on-year increase of 23.5%; However, due to the significant decline from March to may, the cumulative sales volume of Honda still dropped by 9.2% from January to July, reaching 812784 vehicles. In addition to the COVID-19 epidemic and the tight supply of parts and components, Honda's poor performance in the first half of the year was also due to its inadequate response to the lack of core, the loss of popularity of explosive products, and the unbalanced development of benchmark models.

What is worth looking forward to is that Honda's sales in China have shown a trend of gradual recovery; At the same time, the arrival of Honda's first pure electric vehicle in China, such as e: NP1 / E: NS1, the new generation xr-v, and the new product Zr-V, is also expected to boost Honda's recovery.

Honda, which has experienced a downturn in China, seems to be on track.

On August 3, Honda China released data: in July, Honda's terminal vehicle sales volume in China was 133556, with a year-on-year increase of 23.5%; However, due to the significant decline from March to may, the cumulative sales volume of Honda still dropped by 9.2% from January to July, reaching 812784 vehicles.

For the sluggish performance in the first half of the year, Honda attributed all the reasons to "COVID-19 and tight supply of parts". However, compared with the overall passenger car market or competitors in the same period, Honda's performance was significantly "decadent".

Specifically, in the first half of the year, Honda performed slightly better than the overall passenger car market in only three months; However, in March, may and June, Honda fell significantly behind the market as a whole. Among them, it lost 32.6 percentage points in March, 29.4 percentage points in May and 21.8 percentage points in June.

In comparison with its competitor Toyota, Honda has also recently fallen into a disadvantage. In 2020, the sales volume of the four joint ventures of Honda and Toyota in China, Dongfeng Honda, GAC Honda, FAW Toyota and GAC Toyota were 820400, 806600, 800000 and 765000 respectively, and Honda was also in an overall dominant position; In 2021, Honda has shown a declining trend. FAW Toyota has achieved "counter attack" to win the championship, GAC Toyota has led the growth rate and rose to the second place, "the growth rate of the two books" has changed from rise to fall, "and" Liangfeng "has thus achieved both surpassing the" two books "; In 2022, Toyota's leading edge further expanded. In the first half of the year, Guangfeng opened the gap with a substantial advantage, Yifeng continued to play steadily, while dongben fell by 22.25%

"COVID-19 and tight supply of parts" is a challenge that the entire automotive industry needs to face, but Honda's performance is obviously inferior to that of the market as a whole, and there is obviously an "inside story". From a specific analysis, it is obvious that Honda is not fully prepared for the shortage of chips. The biggest factor restricting Honda's growth in 2021 is the lack of production capacity caused by the lack of cores, and even the supply of hot-selling models is seriously short. At the end of 2021, the reporter of China economic network learned during the interview that the preferential range of guangben haoying was significantly reduced, and the chip shortage led to the uncertainty of the vehicle production schedule. Dongfeng Honda CR-V also faced the dilemma of "lack of vehicles", which made its performance in the second half of the year flat.

This has also led Honda to fall behind in a highly competitive environment, and there are no cars to sell in the end market, which has dampened its popularity to a certain extent. The gold lettered signboard of guangben - accord is the best case. Its sales volume dropped "strangely" to only 3138 vehicles in June 2021, and finally missed the annual sales volume for three consecutive times; In 2022, the gap between guangben accord and Guangfeng Camry is still widening, with 35990 vehicles falling behind in the first half alone.

Not only accord, in the A-class car market, Toyota corolla and leiling are also firmly holding the spotlight of Honda Civic; In the MPV market, Honda Odyssey and Allison, which used to be the best domestic MPV players, have also lost their luster, while Toyota's introduction of domestic Saina is strong, and it has ranked among the top three in MPV sales in the first half of this year.

With the loss of popularity of the popular products, it is naturally difficult to support the overall development of Honda. In addition, compared with the balanced development of the two Toyota joint ventures in terms of products, it is difficult for dongben and guangben to keep abreast of each other. For example, dongben life, Yingshi school and other products have no performance, while guangben's haoying and Xingge are not as good as dongben CR-V and civic, which are more like the products that are forced to make up under the "two car strategy" and also disperse the energy of the enterprise.

However, it is worth looking forward to that Honda's sales in China have shown a gradual warming momentum through the July data; At the same time, the arrival of Honda's first pure electric vehicle in China, such as e: NP1 / E: NS1, the new generation xr-v, and the new product Zr-V, is also expected to boost Honda's recovery. (China economic net reporter Guoyue)