The bus market in 2010 mainly presents three major trends

On the 8th of November, 4 days before the opening of the Guangzhou Asian Games, the “Guangzhou New Energy and Accessibility of Public Transport Vehicles and the Opening of University City Charging Station” was held at the charging station of Guangzhou University City. With the successive launch of 600 barrier-free buses and 100 barrier-free taxis, Guangzhou Asian Games public transport vehicles have all been put in place. At present, 1,228 buses for Asian Games have been put into use, 1,471 buses have been upgraded to LPG environmentally-friendly vehicles, and 4,316 buses have been renovated.

In the battle for the big bus ticket, bus companies such as Yutong, Daikin Dragon, and GAC Bus all eventually won.

In addition to the large-scale bus demand brought by the Guangzhou Asian Games, the Shanghai World Expo also updated many buses. This year, driven by the Shanghai World Expo and the Guangzhou Asian Games, the bus market showed a good momentum of recoverable growth.

Integration Drives Bus Expansion After inter-city bus services have been piloted in Henan Province, the Pearl River Delta, and the Yangtze River Delta, intercity buses and urban and rural public transportation have been opened in more and more regions. Since the opening of the first intercity bus route in Handan on February 6th and the intercity bus service of Intercity Highway 801 in Yongnian City, the urban and rural bus routes from Feixiang, Chengan and Cixian have also been opened. For this purpose, Handan Bus Company ordered 169 buses.

Jiao Shubin, deputy director of Chang'an Passenger Car Market Department, said: “The demand for urban and rural bus services has increased rapidly in urban and rural areas. Shijiazhuang, Hebei and other cities and towns have begun demonstration operations for urban and rural public transport. The vehicles are all concentrated in about 10 meters. Intercity intercity buses use 10 to 11 meters of buses, and urban and rural buses from the county to the county use 9 to 10 meters of buses. The reason why this kind of demand arises is that intercity buses and urban and rural buses have replaced the original ones. After the highway passenger transportation line, bus operations were adopted and a low fare strategy was implemented. In order to increase passenger capacity, large buses were welcomed by users.”

Correspondingly, with the opening of public transportation in urban and rural areas, the original road buses of these lines were replaced, which led to the decline in the demand for 7- to 9-meter road buses originally selected for these lines. Affected by this, Chang'an Bus successfully entered the large bus market. From January to September, the sales of 9 to 10 meters of buses for Chang’an buses reached 4,871, more than 403 buses for 7 to 8 meters.

Li Tongsheng, deputy director of the Corporate Management Department of Zhongtong Bus, also stated: “The demand for buses of 8 meters and less than 8 meters in small and medium-sized cities has steadily dropped because many places will extend bus lines and open up urban and rural public transportation vehicles, and the models will become larger.”

From the industry point of view, buses above 10 meters are the mainstream of market demand. From January to September, 10 to 12 meters of buses accounted for 46% of the total bus sales.

The second and third tier markets began to take off In the past few years, public transport priority policies have been fully implemented in first-tier cities or some second-tier cities, and buses in some cities have almost completely been updated. However, because of the contradiction of road congestion, the lack of funds, the lack of funds, and the chaotic operation environment, the progress of public transport priority in third-tier cities and most second-tier cities has been relatively slow. With the development of the city, especially with the support of national preferential policies in 2009, the speed at which cars enter the family has been greatly accelerated, and the problem of traffic congestion in second and third tier cities has gradually emerged. In addition, with the rapid advancement of public transport legislation, the financial support and operating environment have been correspondingly improved, and conditions for the advancement of public transport priority policies to second and third-tier cities have gradually matured.

On October 30, Zhongtong Bus delivered the first batch of 297 buses to Qingdao. According to Li Shengsheng, this is the largest order for Zhongtong Bus this year, and Zhongtong’s winning project is also one of the ten major livelihood projects in Qingdao in 2010.

Benefiting from the growth of the second and third tier markets, the sales volume of Suzhou Jinlong's 8 to 9-meter bus reached 1,017 units, accounting for 25% of the total sales volume. This is one of the main reasons for the sales of Suzhou Jinlong Bus to jump to No. 2 in the industry. Hu Jiandu, manager of Suzhou Jinlong Planning Department, stated: “The demand for buses in the second and third-line cities is very large. From our sales point of view, the models of this market are mainly concentrated at 8 to 9 meters.”

The front-line bus companies continue to make efforts in addition to the changes in the demand structure of the bus market, and the ranking of bus companies is also undergoing subtle changes. From January to September, the sales volume of Suzhou Jinlong climbed to the second place in the bus segment, surpassing the old bus companies Chongqing Hengtong and Dandong Huanghai. Yutong, after succeeding in challenging the position of Dandong Huanghai in 2008, has been firmly seated in the bus market. According to industry analysts, first-tier bus companies are gradually integrating the bus market.

Many domestic passenger car companies can be broadly divided into two categories: one is the traditional road passenger car company represented by “One To Three Dragons”; the other is the traditional bus companies represented by Hengtong, Huanghai, Dongfeng Yangzijiang, and Shenwo. In recent years, the fierce battle of “one pass and three dragons” in the road passenger car market has been intensified, and the bus market has been on an upward trend with a large demand. Therefore, they are paying more and more attention to the bus market. The technology, word-of-mouth, management, network, and services accumulated in the road passenger car market by "One-Tour and Three-Rong" are conducive to the development of the bus market. Compared with the production capacity, cost control capability, and brand influence of “One Pass and Three Dragons”, the strength of traditional bus companies is relatively weak.

“Although there is a certain degree of local protection for public transport procurement, which can help local bus companies to stabilize the market, not every area has a passenger car factory, and not every area has adopted local protection. This has provided for the “one pass and three dragons”. The space to be used, and the 'one-pass three-long' network based on the road passenger car market laid the foundation to help it seize the market." Industry sources said.

“Suzhou Jinlong has been developing bus products since 2003, and its products are located in bus buses with a size of 7.7 meters or more in large and medium-sized cities,” Hu Jiandu said.

Yutong introduced the “value-added” activities that had previously only been carried out in the road passenger transport industry into the bus industry, which shows its emphasis on the bus market.

Industry insiders stated that the “one-pass and three-dragon” share in the bus market will increase, and it is expected that the bus industry will fully integrate in the next five years, and the bus market pattern will be shuffled again.