欧洲汽车业惊人反弹，但势头能持续多久？
周二，标致雪铁龙集团（PSA Group）公布了今年上半年的业绩，其首席执行官唐唯实（Carlos Tavares）兴奋地说：“我们的订单量很大。”
唐唯实这么兴奋是有道理的。这家法国汽车巨头公布的上半年利润为5.95亿欧元（约合6.97亿美元）。分析师预计的该公司营业收益为2.22亿欧元，但实际实现了5.17亿欧元。当然，标致雪铁龙集团清楚新冠疫情将使今年的市场萎缩，欧洲市场将萎缩25%，中国市场萎缩10%，但这并不意味着完全失败。
类似的故事也在德国上演。戴姆勒（Daimler）的首席执行官康林松（Ola Kaellenius）上周盛赞“销量复苏的初步迹象”，这家梅赛德斯-奔驰（Mercedes-Benz）的制造商预计今年整体上是盈利的。Ifo经济研究所（Ifo Institute for Economic Research）在周二称，汽车行业是德国持谨慎乐观态度的出口行业中“最大赢家之一”。
梅茨勒银行（Metzler Bank）的高级顾问尤尔根•皮珀向《财富》杂志表示：“我认为经济不会很快复苏，但过去两三周的情况比我预期的要乐观。复苏就在发生，你可以看到并感觉到，但要恢复到2019年的水平还需要几个月的时间。”
柏林的分析师马提亚•施密特说：“我当然看到市场在回暖，但我认为2020年全年市场将会有20%的降幅。不过这比大多数人几个月前的预期要好。”
但有些分析师并不那么乐观。
瑞士圣加仑大学（University of St. Gallen）指导汽车分析的斐迪南•杜登霍夫在四个月前告诉《财富》杂志，由于新冠疫情的冲击，欧洲大陆的汽车工厂纷纷关闭，他预计西欧汽车市场需要整整十年时间才能恢复到2019年的销量水平。
他现在也没有改变自己的想法。他预计，随着即将到来的旅游行业破产浪潮，以及政府为还清因为拯救企业和支持就业而背负的巨额债务增加征税，消费者的信心将遭受重击。此外，还有可能出现第二波疫情，阻挡潜在客户进入展厅。
杜登霍夫在周二说：“我们认为，今年下半年的情况将会非常困难，全球经济不会真正复苏。我们看到欧洲汽车制造商在削减产能，这很合理。每周我们都能看到裁员发生。”
有人猜测，戴姆勒今年可能不得不进行大规模裁员。
不过，本文采访的其他分析师指出了几个原因，表明前景没有那么悲观。
不乘坐公共汽车
首先，皮珀提出，疫情可能会促使人们选择私人交通工具。他说，虽然消费者以前很关心汽车使用对环境的影响，但“人们意识到开车可能比乘坐公共交通更安全。”
其次，包括法国和德国在内的一些政府已经采取行动，通过推出电动汽车购买补贴政策来支撑汽车行业。法国还推出了一项旧车报废计划，以鼓励车主放弃使用化石燃料汽车，选用电动汽车。
施密特说：“法国是6月欧洲唯一反弹的市场。原因之一就是法国政府提供的补贴……这对标致雪铁龙集团等法国（制造商）来说是好消息，对标致雪铁龙集团的新车注册量产生了很大影响。”
施密特还表示，普遍低迷的汽车市场和电动汽车激励措施相结合，将让欧洲汽车制造商更容易达到欧盟设定的排放目标，从而受益。
“法国和德国政府积极选择通过完善慷慨的刺激政策（补贴或财政刺激）支持电动汽车，（制造商们）现在可以舒服地坐下来，看着他们车辆的平均排放量安全通过合规线，避免了其他人曾经预测的某种形式的致命合规灾难。”施密特说道。
购买传统汽车不能享受同样的激励政策，但正如施密特所说，大众汽车等制造商仍然在试图通过在有限的时间内承担某些车型的购置税来刺激需求。
施密特说：“我们将看到更多的交易达成。”
杜登霍夫称，欧洲制造商在中国市场的发展将成为关键，因为中国正出现更明显的复苏。
他说：“希望在中国，下一个十年将是中国的十年，因为中国在抗击疫情方面做得最好……祝戴姆勒和其他在中国销售汽车的公司好运……与中国保持密切联系的公司都是幸运的。”（财富中文网）
译者：Biz
周二，标致雪铁龙集团（PSA Group）公布了今年上半年的业绩，其首席执行官唐唯实（Carlos Tavares）兴奋地说：“我们的订单量很大。”
唐唯实这么兴奋是有道理的。这家法国汽车巨头公布的上半年利润为5.95亿欧元（约合6.97亿美元）。分析师预计的该公司营业收益为2.22亿欧元，但实际实现了5.17亿欧元。当然，标致雪铁龙集团清楚新冠疫情将使今年的市场萎缩，欧洲市场将萎缩25%，中国市场萎缩10%，但这并不意味着完全失败。
类似的故事也在德国上演。戴姆勒（Daimler）的首席执行官康林松（Ola Kaellenius）上周盛赞“销量复苏的初步迹象”，这家梅赛德斯-奔驰（Mercedes-Benz）的制造商预计今年整体上是盈利的。Ifo经济研究所（Ifo Institute for Economic Research）在周二称，汽车行业是德国持谨慎乐观态度的出口行业中“最大赢家之一”。
梅茨勒银行（Metzler Bank）的高级顾问尤尔根•皮珀向《财富》杂志表示：“我认为经济不会很快复苏，但过去两三周的情况比我预期的要乐观。复苏就在发生，你可以看到并感觉到，但要恢复到2019年的水平还需要几个月的时间。”
柏林的分析师马提亚•施密特说：“我当然看到市场在回暖，但我认为2020年全年市场将会有20%的降幅。不过这比大多数人几个月前的预期要好。”
但有些分析师并不那么乐观。
瑞士圣加仑大学（University of St. Gallen）指导汽车分析的斐迪南•杜登霍夫在四个月前告诉《财富》杂志，由于新冠疫情的冲击，欧洲大陆的汽车工厂纷纷关闭，他预计西欧汽车市场需要整整十年时间才能恢复到2019年的销量水平。
他现在也没有改变自己的想法。他预计，随着即将到来的旅游行业破产浪潮，以及政府为还清因为拯救企业和支持就业而背负的巨额债务增加征税，消费者的信心将遭受重击。此外，还有可能出现第二波疫情，阻挡潜在客户进入展厅。
杜登霍夫在周二说：“我们认为，今年下半年的情况将会非常困难，全球经济不会真正复苏。我们看到欧洲汽车制造商在削减产能，这很合理。每周我们都能看到裁员发生。”
有人猜测，戴姆勒今年可能不得不进行大规模裁员。
不过，本文采访的其他分析师指出了几个原因，表明前景没有那么悲观。
不乘坐公共汽车
首先，皮珀提出，疫情可能会促使人们选择私人交通工具。他说，虽然消费者以前很关心汽车使用对环境的影响，但“人们意识到开车可能比乘坐公共交通更安全。”
其次，包括法国和德国在内的一些政府已经采取行动，通过推出电动汽车购买补贴政策来支撑汽车行业。法国还推出了一项旧车报废计划，以鼓励车主放弃使用化石燃料汽车，选用电动汽车。
施密特说：“法国是6月欧洲唯一反弹的市场。原因之一就是法国政府提供的补贴……这对标致雪铁龙集团等法国（制造商）来说是好消息，对标致雪铁龙集团的新车注册量产生了很大影响。”
施密特还表示，普遍低迷的汽车市场和电动汽车激励措施相结合，将让欧洲汽车制造商更容易达到欧盟设定的排放目标，从而受益。
“法国和德国政府积极选择通过完善慷慨的刺激政策（补贴或财政刺激）支持电动汽车，（制造商们）现在可以舒服地坐下来，看着他们车辆的平均排放量安全通过合规线，避免了其他人曾经预测的某种形式的致命合规灾难。”施密特说道。
购买传统汽车不能享受同样的激励政策，但正如施密特所说，大众汽车等制造商仍然在试图通过在有限的时间内承担某些车型的购置税来刺激需求。
施密特说：“我们将看到更多的交易达成。”
杜登霍夫称，欧洲制造商在中国市场的发展将成为关键，因为中国正出现更明显的复苏。
他说：“希望在中国，下一个十年将是中国的十年，因为中国在抗击疫情方面做得最好……祝戴姆勒和其他在中国销售汽车的公司好运……与中国保持密切联系的公司都是幸运的。”（财富中文网）
译者：Biz
"Our order book is stellar," PSA Group CEO Carlos Tavares enthused Tuesday as the Peugeot and Citroën parent reported its results for the first half of the year.
Tavares’s enthusiasm was warranted; the French auto giant posted a profit of €595 million ($697 million) for the period. Analysts expected to see €222 million in operating income, but got €517 million. Sure, PSA knows the coronavirus pandemic will shrink the market this year—by a quarter in Europe and by 10% in China, it predicts—but all is not lost.
A similar story is playing out in Germany, where Daimler CEO Ola Kaellenius last week hailed "the first signs of a sales recovery"—the Mercedes-Benz maker expects this year to be profitable overall—and where the Ifo Institute for Economic Research on Tuesday described the auto industry as "one of the biggest winners" in the country's cautiously optimistic export sector.
"I don't see a very quick recovery, but the last two to three weeks have been somehow more positive than I expected," Jürgen Pieper, a senior adviser at Metzler Bank, told Fortune. "The recovery is there—you can see and feel it—but it will take a couple months before we see 2019 levels."
"I certainly see the market rebounding, but for full-year 2020 I see the market ending the year with a shortfall of about 20%," said Berlin-based analyst Matthias Schmidt. "That’s better than most people were expecting a couple months ago."
Some analysts aren't so optimistic.
Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, who leads automotive analysis at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, told Fortune just over four months ago—as the continent's car factories were shutting down because of the COVID-19 onslaught—that he expected Western Europe's auto market to take a full decade to recover to 2019 sales levels.
He hasn't changed his mind on that—indeed, he expects consumer confidence to be whacked by an imminent wave of bankruptcies in the travel sector, plus tax hikes that will be needed to pay off the titanic debts governments are taking on as they bail out businesses and prop up employment. And then there's the possibility of a second wave of the coronavirus keeping prospective customers out of showrooms.
"We believe the situation will be very difficult in the next half year, and we don’t think [there will be] a real worldwide recovery," Dudenhöffer said Tuesday. "All we see is it makes sense for carmakers in Europe to reduce capacity. We see job cuts each week."
There's speculation that Daimler, for one, may have to make big job cuts this year.
However, the other analysts interviewed for this piece identified several reasons for a less-bleak outlook.
Don’t take the bus
First, Pieper proposed, the pandemic might be pushing people toward private transport. While consumers were previously concerned about the environmental impact of car use, he said, "people realize driving a car could be safer than the alternative use of public transportation."
Secondly, some governments—such as those in France and Germany—have moved to prop up the auto sector by subsidizing the purchase of electric cars. France has also introduced a scrappage scheme to incentivize drivers of fossil-fuel cars to get rid of them and go electric.
"France was the only market in Europe to rebound in June," said Schmidt. "One reason was the subsidies offered by the French government…That's positive for the French [manufacturers] such as PSA. It had a big impact on PSA registrations."
Schmidt also suggested that the combination of a generally depressed car market and electric-car incentives would benefit European automakers by making it easier for them to meet emissions targets imposed by the EU.
"With French and German governments enthusiastically choosing to support plug-ins with improved generous stimuluses, be it subsidy or fiscal stimuluses, [manufacturers] can now comfortably sit back and watch their fleet average emissions sail silently over the compliance finish line, avoiding what others had predicted would be some form of compliance carmageddon catastrophe," he said.
The same incentives aren't there for traditional-car purchases, but, as Schmidt pointed out, manufacturers such as Volkswagen are still trying to stimulate demand by covering the sales tax on certain models, for a limited time.
"We're going to see a lot more deals," Schmidt said.
According to Dudenhöffer, European manufacturers' exposure to China—where more of a demonstrable recovery is underway—will be key.
"The hope is China," he said. "The next decade will be the decade of China because they do the best job in combating the coronavirus…Daimler and others that sell cars in China—good luck to them…Companies with strong links to China are the lucky guys."
