In Spain we had a very strict lockdown (not as strict as the Chinese but still) between March-May 2020 and still over 4k cars were sold that month. Which at the time I thought it was an extremely high number considering everything that was going on (link in Spanish): https://noticias.coches.com/noticias-motor/ventas-de-coches-...
I think the China lockdown situation is a magnitude more extreme (at least based on accounts from people in lockdown there on Twitter).
People are not allowed outside of their units (only a couple per building to pick up deliveries). People testing positive are forced to centralized areas and some have to abandon pets (which then are either getting killed or starving and killing each other in the streets).
Chinese lockdowns are more like martial law style curfews . You cannot go out for almost anything at all.
There are no customers who can go to the dealership, no employees who can sell cars and manage dealerships. Non essential business are not allowed to run at all.
This article title is written to imply that demand has fallen, that is not the case, it is operationally near impossible to make a purchase and take delivery. People still want /need cars and many can still afford to get them .
The pent up demand (with losses due to changing economic conditions) will come back when things return to normal.
