In April, production and sales in China's auto industry continued to face uncertainty, the CPCA said.
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The current Covid pandemic has caused direct losses of about 20 percent of China's auto production, local media The Paper quoted Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), as saying today.
The situation still faces a great deal of uncertainty in the future, Cui added.
Since mid-March, the Covid pandemic has continued in Shanghai and Changchun, putting pressure on production at some car companies and even directly causing some production shutdowns.
Short-term production stoppages have brought serious losses to some car companies, and luxury brands including Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have also been hit to varying degrees, with output seriously lower than expected, Cui said, as quoted by the Securities Times.
Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces around Shanghai are the important areas of supply of core auto parts, and the Covid outbreak in Shanghai will have a big impact on the supply of key parts for the auto industry, he said.
Wholesale sales of all passenger vehicles by vehicle companies in China in March were 1.814 million units, down 1.6 percent from a year earlier and up 23.6 percent from February, data released earlier today by the CPCA showed.
Wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles were up 122.4 percent to 455,000 units in March, up 43.6 percent from February, according to the CPCA report.
In April, production and sales in China's auto industry faced uncertainty, the CPCA report said.
Shanghai and Jilin each account for about 11 percent of China's auto production, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, and passenger car production and sales in the core regions will be greatly affected in April, the report said.
Due to the long auto industry chain, the shutdown of the core production and logistics bases has a wide impact, and production and sales pressure in the auto market in April could be high, according to the report.
In Deutsche Bank's view, April could become a lost month for electric vehicle companies in terms of sales, with Covid control leaving the new energy vehicle chain facing supply disruptions.
"Based on our channel checks and conversation with companies, the Covid situation in China is becoming much more disruptive than we anticipated even just a week ago," Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu's team said in a research note sent to investors Monday.
