Commercial vehicles are greatly affected by iron ore; the industry believes that the auto industry may further increase prices
On Saturday, Baosteel Group and Rio Tinto of Australia reached an iron ore price agreement for 2008. Rio Tinto's iron ore lump price rose by 96.5%. Subsequently, some auto companies began to raise prices. Industry insiders believe that the increase in iron ore prices may trigger further price increases in the domestic auto industry in the next six months.
After the official announcement of the price increase at Gonow, the domestic micro-vehicle boss SAIC-GM-Wuling also raised the prices of some commercial vehicles at the beginning of this month. This price increase is within the range of RMB 1,000, mainly including minibuses such as Wuling Light. Among them, single- and double-row buses have been increased by 1,000 yuan/car, Wuling's light has increased 300-1000 yuan/car, and the price increase rate is about 2%. SAIC-GM-Wuling related sources said that apart from the cost pressure brought about by the upgrading of State III emissions, the main reason is that prices of all materials cannot be increased.
Cai Yaxi, director of SAIC-GM-Wuling’s executive director of public relations, said yesterday that the price increase was mainly affected by the recent sharp increase in prices of automotive materials such as steel, precious metals, and energy, and the implementation of Euro III emission regulations. “We have been trying to find ways to improve the price of most raw materials through internal management optimization, operational efficiency improvement, and technological upgrading. However, due to the low price of micro-vehicles itself, its sensitivity to cost is far greater than that of cars. Gao, in the company's best efforts, still can not digest all the material cost increases.†Cai Yaxi believes that from the trend point of view, the price of these materials is still in a rising channel.
Because the proportion of raw materials such as steel and iron accounts for a large proportion of the total cost, most commercial vehicle manufacturers have raised their prices since the beginning of this year, and the price adjustment actions have remained basically the same. In the passenger vehicle sector, due to the fierce competition and relatively high profits, the possibility of price increases is not high. In recent months, there has been an increase in the margin of preference. Chery’s partial price increase has also been canceled. .
Automobile industry analyst Zhong Shi said that the main factor affecting car prices is steel, followed by rubber and plastics. Zhong Shi pointed out that in terms of production management and financial management, auto manufacturers still have a lot of room to reduce costs.
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