On the other hand, we also launched a special super subsidy activity covering more than 100 brands nearly 1,000 car models with the highest subsidy of RMB6,000 effectively stimulate the market purchasing power. [Foreign Language] Also speaking the automobile industry will continue to be valued by the state as well as the government this year. So we think that with the actual implementation of various policies, if you similar market consumption vitality and promote high quality and steady development of the automobile industry this year, we’re pretty confident about that. [Foreign Language] Okay. That’s all for my answer to the first question. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you.
Craig Yan Zeng: [Foreign Language] The second question about the dealer’s data product future potential will be taken by Mr. Zeng. So the answer is that actually we see the total number of the paid merchants for dealer data products already exceeded 20,000. So the growth potential is pretty significant. [Foreign Language] So our objective is to let more merchants together utilize our modules to promote their own sales to help them to cut costs and improve efficiency. So in the future, we will continue to develop new models in this asset. We will also help this model to better operate so as to facilitate our merchants. On average, each of the merchants will purchase five products. But we do have another 11 established and a mature product.
Therefore, there is still a lot of potential for us to tap into. In Q1 of this year, we see that the growth of this business is already to 27%. It shows very strong competitive ads. So we believe that there will be a bit potential in the future.
Sterling Song: Okay. Operator, the next one.
Operator: All right. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ritchie Sun of HSBC. Please proceed with your question, Ritchie.
Ritchie Sun: [Foreign Language] Thank you management for taking my questions. I have a question about the used car business. So I noticed that Ping An has some — has been under some impact from the new car price war in first quarter. So this actually is continues. So how should we think about the future growth trend and what is our strategy to tackle this? Thank you.
Tao Wu: [Foreign Language] Okay. I will take this question from three different aspects. First, from the market perspective, we see that in the first quarter, you can see that the used car grew by 7.6% year-on-year, a slowdown in the growth. By the end of March of this year, domestic used car trading PMI index has been below 50 point mark for 16 consecutive months. The industry as a whole is under some pressure. So I think that this is partly due to the price war. According to the data released by CPCA, you can see that the new car discount has been hit 18%, but in the previous year, it was only 12%. The new car price cost has been imposing a lot of pressure on their used car. So we see that this is happening. But in effect, this will not continue for a long time because it will only slowdown the replacement but with only some post deployments as well as delay, but it will not continue forever.
[Foreign Language] And the second part is from policy perspective; I think that this is favorable to the used car market. Ministry of Commerce launched the trading policy sell old and then buy new bringing new development about opportunities to the used car industry. So you can see that a large number of the car parts will also facilitate used car trading on this margin. And PPP is also a very important link in the consumption of trade-in sell old and buy new. So we believe that it will ensure a lot in the future. [Foreign Language] And the third part is from PPP itself, we can see that recently PPP launched a 30 minutes high speed online national bidding service, including on-site inspection, instant online bidding and online offers to sell cars quickly.
Consumers can drive to the site for free testing and then get quotes from the real buyers online within 30 minutes. This model greatly improves the efficiency of consumers’ car purchases, realize the seamless connection between selling olds and buy new. And combined with the new energy offline experience store, consumers can sell old and buy new in one-stop, which helps to activate the used car market as well as to promote the related transactions. And with the offline collaboration between Autohome and the Group as a whole, it will greatly support PPP’s future extensions.
Sterling Song: Okay. Operator, the next question, please.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please ask your question, Thomas.
Thomas Chong: [Foreign Language] Thanks management for taking my question. My first question is about management comments about the recent Beijing Auto Show and how we should think about the EV sector this year. And my second question is about the use of cash. Thank you.
Craig Yan Zeng: [Foreign Language] Okay. Thank you for raising the question. Let me take this one. So for this year’s Beijing Auto Show was the first Habibi [ph] Auto Show how embarrassing and possible use and therefore the most attention grabbing in recent years, attracting a large number of attention from all work supplies and vesting groups. In 10 days of the Auto Show, including the holiday, we attracted in total 900,000 visitors with the world debut of 117 vehicles and 378 new energy models. [Foreign Language] So in the year 2023, we see that the NEV production NCO’s accounted for more than 50% of the global total. China’s automobile going global campaign continued to heat up and intelligent development accelerated year by year with a strong product power as well as the technical strength.
Although the sales figures for the whole month of April are not yet available, but as Mr. Wu Tao mentioned, market penetration of domestic NEV sales in the first half of April already achieved 50%, exceeding traditional fuel vehicle sales for the very first time. So while in the same time, we also see that the new energy industry continue to diverge in NEV players. We can see that the players represented by BYD and Lee [ph] Alto still effective gradually appear and profitability continue to improve. But in this time, there are also part brands that may gradually lose market share and increase losses in a fierce price wall. The next three years will be an important period of competition for sales, cost, as well as technology and any big companies grow strong with strong product power expected to gain more market shares.
