Auto suppliers are also joining the digital push. Germany’s ZF Friedrichshafen has started marketing aftermarket products through a live- streaming service hosted by Chinese e-commerce giant JD.
VW executives say a new kind of Chinese customer is emerging — one eager to own a personal vehicle to avoid the risks of infection on public transport. Many of those consumers, VW says, are first-time car buyers — which describes 60 percent of China households.
“The lockdown will have a catalyst-like effect on the long-term change towards digitization of sales, services and marketing in our industry,” VW China CEO Stephan Wöllenstein said in a LinkedIn post May 6. “We have to make the connection with customers, not the other way around, and become a part of their everyday digital ecosystem.”
April’s new-vehicle sales increase — after 21-straight months of declines — inspired Wöllenstein to write of sales climbing “to the peaks again.”
But his optimism is not widely shared. In the first 10 days of May, new-vehicle sales fell 14 percent from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
