Chinese Motorcycles Market is in crisis. Following a 2023 ended with 16.7 million sales, down 2.4%, the start of the 2024 has been sharply negative with first quarter sales at 3.7 million, down 16.2%.
Chinese Motorcycles Industry Trend and Perspectives
Chinese 2-Wheelers market disappointed again in 2023, after the decline reported in the previous.
Reasons of disappointing are not in the total market volume, which are declining although near highest level, but in the reasons behind the fall: electric vehicles crisis.
The market was disappointing already in the first half, although total sales were a little higher than last year. Indeed, last year the industry was hit by “zero-covid” strategy and by short supply in the raw material, while no specific issues were in place this year and expectations were for a rebound in customer demand.
Following a 2023 ended with 16.7 million sales, down 2.4%, the start of the 2024 has been sharply negative with first quarter sales at 3.7 million, down 16.2%
As anticipated, the surprise is not in the total market decline, anyhow higher than expected, even in a Chinese economic environment less positive than few years ago, but the reasons behind this decline.
While traditional manufacturers are selling in line with the past or moderately declining, the top EV specialist, starting from Yadea and Niu Tech, are reporting a unexpected and deep decline, dragging down the entire industry. Electric vehicles sales are actually down over 50% year-on-year.
Following the rapid development of electric vehicles in the 2015-2021 period, sustained by strong government incentives for manufacturers, the new policy has impacted hardly the market.
Indeed, the incentive scheme was not really focused on middle terms, while on supporting the growth of a national EV industry, able to dominate not just the domestic market, but the globe. Incentive did not care about product contents, so a kick-scooter or a supersport motorcycles could benefit in the same way.
Then, metropolitan areas started to ban the risky use of kick-scooter and the national/local incentives have been reduced (even assuming the the trend was ahead of the target, having the EV gained over half of 2W market already in 2020).
Now, we are not only assisting at the sharp decline of EV sales in the domestic market, due to the less competitiveness of EV models versus the ICE models, having excluded the incentives, but even to the fall of export, hitting other markets, like the European, where Chinese were leader thanks to the unrivalled price offered on their models.
