After the new energy vehicle market achieved a “good start” in the first quarter of 2025, the performance of new energy vehicles continued to be outstanding in April. It is particularly worth mentioning that in April, the number of electric vehicles sold in Europe by the leading domestic new energy vehicle companies exceeded that of Tesla, an American brand that has long dominated the European electric vehicle market, for the first time.
With the release of national automobile production and sales data in April, new models of automobile companies continue to be released, and the heat of the automobile market continues. The new car cycle and the support of the “old for new” policy are expected to further stimulate the release of automobile consumption demand. Considering that China and the United States have reached a consensus on tariffs, the automobile supply chain, especially the field of intelligent driving, is expected to usher in positive catalysis.
According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in April, my country’s new energy vehicle sales were 1.226 million units, a year-on-year increase of 44.2%, and the penetration rate (the proportion of new energy vehicle sales to total new vehicle sales) reached 47.3%. From January to April, the sales of new energy vehicles were 4.3 million units, a year-on-year increase of 46.2%, and the penetration rate was 42.7%.
The Ministry of Commerce and other departments made it clear in January this year that the policy of replacing old cars with new ones will continue to stabilize consumer confidence. In addition, the overseas expansion of electric vehicles has accelerated. In the first quarter, the retail, export and wholesale of the automobile industry all maintained positive year-on-year growth, and new energy vehicles maintained a high prosperity. It should be noted that the current market competition is still intensifying. Judging from the first quarter report, the profit of car companies per vehicle has not improved significantly in the last two quarters. On the one hand, although direct price competition has slowed down overall, some car companies have increased their interest-free rights and interests since the fourth quarter of 2024; on the other hand, the proportion of low-end models of some car companies has increased. However, due to the depreciation of the RMB in the first quarter of this year, car companies with a relatively large proportion of exports recorded a large amount of foreign exchange floating profits in the first quarter, which became an important support for the profits of car companies.
Looking forward, the concentrated listing of new cars is expected to continue to boost the sales of car companies in the short term, and the development of automobile intelligence is optimistic in the medium and long term. The current rapid growth in automobile sales has gradually made intelligence the key to competition in the automobile industry. High-end intelligent configurations are accelerating on vehicles, and the penetration rate of models with urban NOA functions priced from 100,000 to 200,000 is expected to drive the process of industry intelligence. With the improvement of the influence of the industry’s own brands and the reconstruction of the industrial chain, the industrial chain status of domestic parts manufacturers is expected to be significantly improved.
In addition, car companies have laid out the robot track with their manufacturing advantages. The increase in the penetration rate of intelligent driving and new fields such as robots may boost the development of the automotive industry chain. The current robot supply chain pattern is tending to be perfect, and the downstream application demand continues to open up, and the robot supply chain and the automotive supply chain have a high degree of overlap. We are optimistic about the high growth of the main automotive business, while expanding the humanoid robot business and relatively low-valued automotive and parts companies.
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