Will motorcycle sales be reinvigorated by the effect of the Coronavirus?

[advrider 0]

All current indications are that the post-Covid motorcycle market will boom, according to the McD industry forecasting team in Italy.

The World Motorcycles market lost 64% in April and is projected to lose 47% in May and 21% in the entire year 2020. However, clinics conducted in China and Europe indicate huge new demand for individual mobility, perfectly satisfied by the two-wheelers and first sales data in countries already in the post-covid stage, confirm the industry fast recovery, with 2021 expected to exceed 2019 in many areas.

The post Covid19 new normality will be on two wheelers!

All the economic activities will remember the 2020 as the hardest year ever, since the end of the Second World War, with the deepest economic crisis since the 1929 Great Depression. However, for most of the countries, this crisis will be even the one with the fastest recovery due to a combination of factors, although this risk to be valid for all countries, due to impressive mistakes done by few local leaders, too overbearing to listen to scientist and learn by experience.

Focusing on our industry, in the countries with a fast economic recovery post-covid, the two-wheeler will represent the ultimate goal for individual mobility, and the acceleration post-covid will be faster than after any other crisis before, projecting the market ahead to new record founding new customers which never drove a two-wheeler before.

We can affirm this not only on the base of clinics conducted in China , the first country experiencing the post-covid, and in Europe, but even on the base of actuals and interview we have conducted in this month with European dealers in Italy, France and Spain.

In the clinics people affirm to search more individual device for mobility, and the scooter is considered the best, in particular those easy-to-drive, while people already expert on riding motorcycles affirm to wish come back on two wheelers after years of travelling by car or with public transportations.

Re-opening after Covid19 in April, China is now assisting to a real boom on new vehicles, both cars and motorcycles, with Car sales in May up 14%, the best in 5 years and preliminary data on motorcycles data, up 18%.

In Europe, May sales in France have been down only 15% and in Italy 11%, although dealers reopened during the month. Since the 20th of May, daily sales in France and Italy are higher than in the correspondent period last year and now a limit to the sales is represented by the low level of dealer stock, after plants shutdown in Europe for over 1 month.

Of course, current data are awful with Global sales down 24.7% in the first quarter 2020, followed by April 65.7% lost with sales at 1.8 million from 5.3 in the 2019. Preliminary data for May (not all countries has been yet collected by our team) project the month at 3.0 million sales, down 46.8%.

The full year 2020 is actually projected at 49.3 million, down 21.3% with significative question marks on India, the largest market still in shutdown with no improvement on Covi19 fight and with the risk to keep the shutdown in July.

A loss of more than 21% might seem like everyone’s least favourite nightmare. But considering how many motorcycle factories closed for a time, and how many are still closed, it’s a remarkably good result. And with a bit of luck the increasing move to two-wheeled transport that’s foreshadowed by those clinics will also take place in the US and other sophisticated markets. It is not hard to imagine that it might do just that: imagine you’ve been cooped up for months in an apartment; do you want to be cooped up in a car when you get out?

Vezi sursa