Sold only 15,000 units in the whole year!
This data alone is enough to make people call a "miserable", but this figure is still the sales volume of a car company in 2020. It is not a declining car company such as Zotye, Haima and Lifan, but a southeast car that has almost been forgotten by everyone and can be said to be a moribund southeast car.
Once backed by the technical support of veteran Japanese companies, holding decades of family business accumulation, although the sales volume is not much hot, but at least catch up with the SUV Red Sea fishing, in 2013 sold the "peak" of 116,000 vehicles. Unfortunately, the product is weak, the transformation is slow, the decline of the cliff in recent years is obvious, and the old partner Mitsubishi parted ways, and Southeast Automobile seems to have embarked on a dead end.
However, in the last month of 2021, Southeast Auto tried to save itself. At present, Southeast Automobile has completed the equity reform, and the brand has been officially renewed after the first capital increase of 2 billion yuan by the four major shareholders of Fujian Automobile Industry Group, Fuzhou Transportation Construction Investment Group, Minhou County Construction Investment Group and Taiwan Zhonghua Automobile.
"HuanYi" Southeast Automobile Renewal Meeting was held in Fuzhou, at the scene, In addition to releasing the latest LOGO and three new car plans, Southeast Automobile reorganized its own development positioning, indicating that it officially entered the new track of electrification and intelligent vehicles, forming a strategic policy of new energy vehicles as the mainstay and fuel vehicles as the supplement. So it seems that under the rescue of fujian automobile industry, Southeast Automobile has ushered in the opportunity of "salted fish turning over"? Seriously, it's too hard!!!
Take it, enough choking!
Indeed, at the renewal meeting, we saw the changes in Southeast Automobile: equity reform, the LOGO designed by "Peng bird", the new design of the model appearance, and the future development direction, and then nothing. But now that the auto market is in full bloom, are these changes needed by consumers? Will these changes be able to return to the market? Judging from the press conference, the technology and product transformation of Southeast is far from enough to endorse the brand's renewal, and after Man Ge read it, a word floated in his heart" "Just this?" ”
Chen Wenhao, chairman of Southeast Automobile
Taking the new flagship product DX9 as an example, the DX9 is a new model unveiled at the press conference, and the factory also said that the new car combines the advantages of SUV and MPV: it has an SUV-like domineering appearance and strong passability, the second row of seats is equipped with 400mm ultra-long adjustable rails, and after leveling the second and third rows of seats, you can harvest more than two meters of "RV" space with very high practicality.
In terms of power, it is equipped with a 1.8T turbocharged engine that is said to be able to provide 180 kW of power, which is from BMW Brilliance and is also a product that has long been obsolete and has long been abandoned. The shape and product description can indeed make people have a little expectation, but the engine has been changed from Mitsubishi to Mianyang Xinchen, in trying to "pay tribute" to the previous practice, Southeast Automobile still has not come up with its own research and development of power products, the so-called "new" from where to talk, the original expectation and "sigh" is gone.
We will define the car before it comes out, which is indeed a bit unkind, but according to the data released so far, it is also possible to predict the future market of this flagship model. Referring to the current southeast car's most expensive model DX7, priced at 9.99-13.99 million yuan, as a flagship model, Mange blind guess will be between 140,000 and 180,000. There are too many hot-selling SUVs in this price range, and they are all hot-selling models. You say big space, CR-V, Star L performance is satisfactory enough; you say to save fuel, Song PLUS DM-i can be described as the fragrant food of today's market; you say through sex, BJ40, tank 300 are the first choice of players; what can this 1.8T engine do to help Sinopec make money? Imhomed, the prospects for DX9 are really dark.
Looking at the second model unveiled on the same stage under the new strategy, the Southeast N7, the styling is different from the previous model, with split headlights, two-color body color and a sneaky roof, which is said to be for young people. Claiming that it has a high-tech cockpit structure, Southeast Automobile has also released some information on AVP autonomous parking technology and S-Pilot intelligent driving system, but information about the power system and body parameters has not yet been announced. The so-called intelligent function, everyone has done L3 +, this L2 has nothing to pay attention to, the appearance and interior design does not have amazing highlights, and the power system is not announced.
Unfortunately, whether it is DX9 or N7, or the pure electric coupe A7 that has not yet appeared, we have not been able to see the core technology developed by Southeast Automobile, which can be roughly considered to be "new bottle of old wine" and "take-ism", so that it wants to return to the embrace of consumers, which is a bit of a fool's dream.
It may also be that Southeast Automobile still does not know where it loses today, in the period when the independent brand is just about to break out, although many car companies still use Mitsubishi engines, but the Great Wall, Changan, Geely and other brands that were once equal to it now have core technologies that can match or even surpass the joint venture brand. It is still surviving on the technology that others have eliminated. Without their own technology, blindly relying on other people's "take-ism", doomed to not last long. If Southeast Auto continues to maintain such an attitude and ideas, even if it changes a few MORE LOGOs and increases the capital by 20 billion, it will be a bamboo basket to fetch water.
Play PPT electrification?
In 2018, Southeast Automobile also spent 150 million yuan to follow the wave of new energy transformation, which is also southeast in 2005 after the first chassis technology research and development, and once again actively participated in the research and development of the core technology of the automobile. Until the first half of 2019, Southeast Automobile said it would launch a new automotive product with a cruising range of up to 500 kilometers, and was committed to going further and doing better in the field of new energy.
Open the official website, you can only find only one Southeast DX3 EV on sale, the official guidance price is 17.15-19.15 million, still stuck in 2019, the vehicle's 351km cruising range in the same level of products is not only uncompetitive, and even difficult to get the national new energy subsidy qualifications. What about the 500 km? Now don't even give me 400?
As we all know, building a car is itself a capital thing, otherwise how dare Evergrande Automobile build a car, right? The injection of 2 billion yuan has indeed initially solved the capital problem of Southeast Automobile, but the direct competition between such an asset volume and domestic head car companies is still a small witch. Weilai founder Li Bin once said bluntly that there is no 20 billion yuan not to build a car, as a reference, at the end of September 2021, the net asset volume of GAC Group was 89.984 billion yuan, the net asset volume of Changan Automobile was 55.626 billion yuan, the net asset volume of Xiaopeng Automobile, the new force of head car manufacturing, was 43.914 billion yuan, and the net asset volume of the ideal car was 40.747 billion yuan. When today's major car companies are often hundreds of billions of dollars for electrification and intelligent strategic planning, Southeast Automobile, which is worth less than 2 billion yuan, will also develop electrification in the case of fuel vehicles, which is simply a pebble.
The N7 and A7 released by Southeast Automobile at this renewal meeting feel like a start-up reading PPT, the difference is that as a traditional car company, Southeast Automobile does not even know how to tell the story behind the parameters. Therefore, at the press conference, the 400km-800km cruising range, AVP autonomous parking technology, and the intelligent driving system of the benchmark L2 level claimed by the Southeast Modular Pure Electric Platform not only lack the decisive competitive advantage of the same level of products in the market, but also make it difficult for consumers to establish trust in the brand.
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Manga spicy review
Without the blessing of self-developed technology, nor the endorsement of strong research and development capabilities, and without strong funds, relying only on 3 new cars that barely keep up with the mainstream product force of the market and unattractive speeches, shouting "new" is actually more like a "dying struggle." As a car company with a history of 26 years, Southeast Automobile is "dying" under the first round of reshuffle offensive, and the 2 billion yuan capital increase can temporarily alleviate the urgent need of its capital chain, how to erase the excessive dependence on Mitsubishi in the past, rebuild brand recognition, and come up with strong products, which is the root of the market. Otherwise, this time I am afraid it will be "more fierce than ji ji"...