Multiple Models See Price Increase, Mercedes-Benz and Audi to Exit Price Wars?

Just a few days ago, BMW China decided to halt its "price reduction to maintain market share" strategy that has been going on for nearly a year. Subsequent media visits to the terminal market found that traditional luxury brands, including Mercedes-Benz and Audi, have also followed suit to end the "price reduction to maintain market share" strategy.

It is understood that a Mercedes-Benz 4S store salesperson said: "Many models are currently being sold at a loss, with a C-class losing about 70,000 yuan, which is not a sustainable state." In addition to the Mercedes-Benz brand, mainstay models such as Audi Q5L, Audi A6L, and Audi A4L have all seen a slight increase, and there may be further increases later, but the range will not be too large.

Not long ago, it was revealed that due to the severe losses caused by the price war, BMW will start from July to stabilize prices by reducing sales volume to alleviate the operational pressure on stores. In response, BMW China stated that in the second half of the year in the Chinese market, it will focus on business quality and support dealers to be steady and solid.

In the first half of this year, traditional luxury brands actively participated in the "price war" in China. The BMW i3's bare car price, which was half off the official guide price of 353,900 yuan, once made the news hot search. At the same time, the starting price of the BMW 5 Series fuel car, which was previously called the "ceiling of the working people," once dropped to about 310,000 yuan, equivalent to a 30% discount. The reason is the "price reduction to maintain market share" strategy that BMW has adopted since last year.

Data shows that BMW's full-year discount rate in 2023 was 17.66%, higher than the industry average of 15.7%. On July 11th, BMW Group officially announced the sales data for the first half of 2024: a total of 1,213,359 new cars (including BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce) were delivered worldwide, a year-on-year decrease of 0.1%. Among them, the BMW brand delivered 1,096,486 new cars worldwide, a year-on-year increase of 2.3%. At the same time, BMW sold a total of 376,000 cars in China in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 4%. Both the decline in new car delivery and the slowdown in growth rate reveal the difficulty of exchanging the market with price. In BMW's view, the price reduction strategy will undoubtedly cause greater damage to brand value, so it was previously predicted that it is only a matter of time before luxury brands exit the price war.