Core ideas
Behind SAIC's "insistence on the soul" is the worry about becoming a "foundry", and it is also a huge voice anxiety;
In the era of software-defined cars, traditional car companies are no longer focused, but they are still not willing to end. Looking at the development of SAIC In recent years, the joint venture brand has taken the lead, and the independent brand "bleeding" is not "out of the circle", so the improvement of sound volume is still its current priority;
In the face of the collapse of sound, SAIC Motor group not only innovates ideas, but also continues to explore intelligent electrification and the construction of "new SAIC" sound volume, and actively saves itself.
The market value is invisible, and the feelings are lost to reality. Confessions of an old SAIC shareholder.
"I've been buying SAIC shares for decades," Lao Zhao, a veteran investor of SAIC, said about his own investment history.
Old Zhao is accustomed to the rise and fall of SAIC's stock price, and has also witnessed that with the improvement of living standards, cars are entering homes, and people's requirements for car brands, quality and intelligence are constantly rising.
"I feel that SAIC Motor, as the absolute leader in the automobile market, has fully enjoyed the dividends of economic growth." he said.
"Investing in this matter, sometimes you have to learn lessons to grow. I have made too many mistakes in judging SAIC. Then Lao Zhao turned his words sharply, "SAIC still relies on the public to make money now, and its own things are not hard enough." ”
Lao Zhao believes that saicid has truly become a company worth taking for a long time, there is only one way out - the rise of independent brands, "with its own things, is it not easy to sweep around?" Instead of making a wedding dress for others. ”
Yiou Automobile also saw that out of trust in the stable performance and profit growth rate of "China's largest automobile manufacturer", even if SAIC's market value does not match its volume, there are not a few shareholders who buy SAIC group shares and hold them for a long time like Lao Zhao.
In the infinite game of stocks, which requires a normal mind, the worries about SAIC's vague positioning and chaotic layout are often accompanied by insomnia.
Old Zhao's distant nephew in his twenties came to visit, and after three rounds of drinking, he could not avoid recounting some drastic changes in life, talking about Santana who ran all over the streets in those years, the young man scratched his head, and said slowly and half-beat: "SAIC I don't know much, I can only say that Junsheng I am not born, I am born Junjun is old haha."
Gradually losing the sense of existence is an embarrassment that SAIC cannot avoid.
As everyone knows, it was also the king of traffic, a local state-owned enterprise at the main hall level that was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 1997, backed by the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Shanghai Automotive Industry entered the stage of vehicle manufacturing and developed into a mass manufacturing base. Since the reform and opening up, SAIC Motor has rapidly grown into an important pillar industry in Shanghai and an important automobile manufacturing base in China.
On April 11, 1983, a hand-assembled sedan slowly drove out of Shanghai, and China's first Santana sedan was born, and the Chinese auto industry also moved towards the road of joint venture.
In 1984, SAIC Signed an agreement with the German Volkswagen Group, and in 1985, Shanghai Volkswagen Co., Ltd. was established, establishing its own entire supply chain system, which greatly improved product quality and production efficiency, and gradually changed from "German heart" to "Chinese star".
From staying in Shanghai to going to the sea and crossing the ocean, SAIC Motor's external development road is orderly.
According to the "2020 Research Report on the Value of China's Independent Car Enterprises Going overseas" by Yiou Think Tank, SAIC Motor adopts the "global" overseas mode, plays foreplay with products, invests in resources, innovates with research and development, builds factories to deeply cultivate the local area, relies on long-term thinking to deeply lay out the global market, and obtains a dominant position.
As of 2020, SAIC Motor's vehicle sales have been in the leading position in the industry for fifteen consecutive years.
Since the 11th Five-Year Plan, SAIC has begun to build and lay out its own brands and new energy vehicles, further accelerating the transformation of electric intelligent technology.
01 Build a body or a soul? SAIC Suffers from "Voice Anxiety"
Since the brief highlight of the market value reaching 374.33 billion yuan at the end of 2017, saicid's annual K-line portrait of SAIC's market value has begun to disappear on the road of flop.
In view of saic's relatively low stock price in recent years, at the 2020 annual shareholders' meeting of SAIC Held earlier, anxious shareholders issued a car-making group chat invitation to "huawei and other third parties with a first-mover advantage in automatic driving".
Unexpectedly, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, resolutely refused, "It is like having a company that provides us with a holistic solution, so that it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body." For such a result, SAIC is unacceptable, and it is necessary to take the soul into its own hands."
For a time, the "SAIC Soul Theory" triggered extensive discussion.
How did the "fragrant food" that needs to continuously strengthen cooperation in the eyes of many domestic technology companies become a "dementor" in SAIC Group? In this regard, the outside world generally questioned whether SAIC Motor was too closed.
Yiou Automobile believes that behind SAIC's "insistence on the soul" is the worry of becoming a "foundry", and it is also a huge voice anxiety.
Recently, the rumors of Santana's suspension of production are another example.
As an evergreen tree in the car market, a taxi memory kill and a driving school companion, Santana, the "pioneer" of the domestic joint venture car brand, has been confused for nearly a long time.
However, a copy of the "SAIC Volkswagen Yizheng Factory 2022-2023 Model Technical Transformation Project Proposal" that is currently circulating has made Santana stop production rumors very loud.
According to the EIA data, from 2022 to 2023, the four models of the new Santana, Santana, Xinrui and Xindong will be discontinued after the technical transformation.
In the context of the double points policy, as an entry-level model with a relatively low profit margin, is the "post-80s national god car" Santana really going to become the tears of the times?
In this regard, the relevant person in charge of SAIC Motor group said: "Our current plan is to suspend the production of Santana models from next year, and the suspension of production does not mean that it is abandoned, but the need for upgrading." ”
The suspension of production is endless, coupled with this intriguing response, the "small pride" of SAIC that the halo is no longer is really lamentable, if one day the feelings are no longer there, how will SAIC Group treat itself?
In June this year, as the "Zuo Qinglong" behind SAIC Group, SAIC Volkswagen was exposed to "buy inventory within 40% off by employees", with the highest subsidy reaching 80,000 yuan. For general consumers, SAIC Volkswagen has also launched a battery rental car purchase program.
Paradoxically, the reduced car purchase fee is exactly the same as the monthly battery rental fee, which makes people suspect that SAIC Volkswagen has reduced the price in disguise to retain customers after poor sales.
In October, SAIC Volkswagen was severely fined by its dealer Shanghai Hualong Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. for its private promotion of "ID.series up to 37,000 yuan".
Dealers violate contract norms, SAIC motor's "righteousness and extermination" is not to blame, but dealers "willing to take the big risk", does it also reflect the dilemma faced by SAIC Volkswagen in the sales of electric vehicles?
The noble, cold and unsettled SAIC Volkswagen, when it encounters a dealer who makes coincidences only for selling cars, is it the loss of credibility or the decline of sound?
If even SAIC Volkswagen, the minister of humerus stocks, can not be relied upon, can the top seat of saic oil sales king still sit firmly? I am afraid that even SAIC Motor itself is panicked, afraid of losing control of its own development.
02 SAIC: I was panicked, but there was nothing I could do
This is the era of software-defined cars, and traditional car companies are no longer focused, but still do not want to end.
Looking at the development of SAIC In recent years, in addition to the transformation of electric intelligence, the improvement of sound volume is still a top priority.
SAIC Volkswagen's voice volume is too strong, resulting in a low volume of SAIC Group
A cruel status quo is that people only know SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC Maxus, or SAIC-GM-Wuling, but not SAIC Group.
Holding many joint venture brands that can be "beaten", SAIC Has been called "lying down to make money" for many years, but in terms of sound, it is not as good as these sub-brands, can it still laugh?
In terms of sales, in fact, after the highlight of SAIC's sales of 7.05 million vehicles in 2018, it has fallen sharply for two consecutive years, with sales of only 6.23 million units in 2019 and 5.6 million units in 2020.
According to the November production and sales report released by SAIC Motor on December 7, SAIC Motor sold 601,000 vehicles in the month, down 6.6% year-on-year; from January to November this year, the group's cumulative sales volume was 5.54 million units, down 13.3% year-on-year.
Among the cumulative sales from January to November this year, SAIC Volkswagen decreased by 6.7% year-on-year, SAIC-GM decreased by 17.9% year-on-year, SAIC-GM passenger cars decreased by 5.7% year-on-year, SAIC-GM-Wuling decreased by 21.8% year-on-year, SAIC Iveco Hongyan Commercial Vehicle decreased by 2.9% year-on-year, Nanjing Iveco fell by 18.4% year-on-year, and SAIC Chia Tai decreased by 15.2% year-on-year.
Now that 2021 has quietly passed, people can't help but sweat about saic's total sales performance last year.
In contrast, SAIC Volkswagen, the main joint venture of SAIC Motor Group, continued to increase sales after the listing of mid-to-high-end new products such as the new generation Tiguan L and Passat, with monthly sales of more than 15,000 units.
In terms of SAIC-GM, on November 17, after the first medium-sized luxury SUV cadillac LYRIQ of the "Aoteneng" pure electric platform opened pre-sale, the deposit orders have reached nearly 5,000.
The newly launched Wuling Star SUV sold more than 15,000 units in November, which shows Wuling's ability to cultivate explosive models in the market segment.
The decline in sales will inevitably lead to the loss of performance.
Recently, SAIC Motor announced its financial report for the third quarter of 2021, with operating income of 181.76 billion yuan in the quarter, a year-on-year decline of 13.5%; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 7.04 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 14.8%.
According to the annual report previously released by SAIC Motor, the company's net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company in 2020 is expected to be about 20 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 21.9%, and the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company has declined by more than 20% for two consecutive years.
The reason is that SAIC's disadvantage of relying heavily on joint venture brands has gradually emerged. Since its inception, the profits of the two joint venture brands of SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM have accounted for more than 70% of the total profits of SAIC Group.
However, in the context of "core panic", SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM sales are not satisfactory.
Last year alone, SAIC Volkswagen's sales fell by 24.8%, and SAIC-GM also fell by 8.3%. Although Wuling can sell ok, the contribution of 89 yuan of bicycle profit to the total profit can be described as a drop in the bucket.
SAIC Volkswagen was saddled with the insult of "cutting corners" because of the collision results of passat and Tiguan L," and its reputation once declined and its sales "collapsed".
Once the quality control is not strict, consumers will vote with their feet, and the credit system "breaks the hole", which is not a simple sewing can be solved. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, it is natural that the reputation of the joint venture brand will decline and the decline in sales will affect SAIC.
Yiou Automobile's concern is: take away GM and Volkswagen, what is left of SAIC? How long will the "cash cow" work?
SAIC Group's excessive support for SAIC's own brands has led to a low sense of its own existence
From imitation to innovation, SAIC motor has gradually cultivated its self-research ability in the early learning of GM and Volkswagen.
Combined with the joint venture vehicle technology that has been mastered, in June 2014, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, proposed the goal of "ranking first in the domestic camp for the development level of independent brands and new energy vehicles" at the shareholders' meeting.
Since then, SAIC Passenger Cars, with two independent brands with British ancestry, Roewe and MG, have joined hands with SAIC Maxus to begin homogeneous competition with many car companies, bringing continuous upward confidence to SAIC Group.
In recent years, the proportion of head brand (top 5 sales) sales in the overall sales of independent brands has shown a trend of continuous increase, from 48% in 2017 to 54% in the first half of this year. Among them, SAIC Motor ranked first with sales of 816,000 units, accounting for 8.2% of the country's total passenger car sales.
The RX5 series sold nearly 15,000 units, and the monthly sales of i5, MGZS and MG5 have always remained above 10,000 units. Mg's first "Zhichao Technology SUV" MG ONE released at the Guangzhou Auto Show has exceeded 3,000 orders in only 7 days of pre-sale.
In terms of overseas market performance, it should not be underestimated. The "China Single Brand Overseas Sales Champion" MG brand has sold more than 310,000 units overseas (including 245,000 exports and 66,000 overseas production).
Since the beginning of this year, the MG brand has sold 46,000 new energy vehicles in the market of developed European countries such as britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, becoming an important part of China's new energy vehicles to open up overseas markets.
On the whole, the performance of SAIC's own brands in the third quarter is more eye-catching. Among them, SAIC Motor's cumulative sales of passenger cars in the first three quarters were 495,000 units, an increase of 22.8% year-on-year, and SAIC Maxus increased by 34.8% year-on-year.
On the day of the announcement of the financial report, SAIC Motor issued an announcement that in order to rapidly develop its own brand of high-end intelligent electric vehicles, the company intends to invest 6.65 billion yuan to establish Feifan Automobile (R) Technology Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 7 billion yuan.
In the future, Feifan Automobile will focus on the 200,000 to 400,000 intelligent electric vehicle market, and Zhiji will face the market of more than 400,000 yuan.
In order to establish a complete matrix of independent brands, SAIC Motor has taken pains and dared to "bleed".
According to the plan, next year's positioning of the high-end luxury intelligent electric market Feifan Automobile R7 and Zhiji Automobile L7 will be listed, SAIC Group's own brands are expected to achieve "double increase in volume and price".
At the same time, Yiou Automobile also saw the B side of the performance of SAIC's own brands.
For a long time, SAIC passenger cars were a negative asset for SAIC.
Since its establishment in 2007, SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicles has failed to make a profit for fourteen consecutive years, which can be described as "always losing money and never making a profit".
In terms of public recognition, perhaps because several of SAIC's independent brands are generally cost-effective, SAIC's own brands are generally favored by taxis and business people, and cannot reach a wider consumer group.
Coupled with the gradual decline of new energy subsidies since 2019 and the impact of new car manufacturing forces, the future development of SAIC's own brands is increasingly uncertain.
In this regard, SAIC's choice is to carry "care" and endless feedback, and sometimes it is inevitable that it will not have time to take care of its own voice construction.
According to the plan, SAIC motor will sell 6.17 million new cars in the whole year, while only 5.54 million have been completed so far.
Whether the autonomous plate with high hopes can "ride the savior alone" will be left to time to prove. But for now, its "uncertainty" has at least a positive impact on SAIC's sales targets this year.
Yiou Automobile believes that SAIC's support for its own brands seems to be excessive. Cause it to have its own vocal volume, but do not see the splash.
Today, with the R-label "solo flight" and Feifan Automobile operating independently, the future of the two brands of commercial vehicles "sticking to the base", Roewe and MG, is also more challenging.
In 2019, in the face of the decline in sales and operating profits of the Volkswagen Group, Chief Financial Officer Frank Witte has publicly stated that "Volkswagen's best era is over." ”
In the message area of the public account of Yiou Automobile, there are also readers who have complained: after the purchase of SAIC new energy vehicles, five or six docking people have not been able to solve the problem, the 400 complaint telephone is purely a decoration, and on the issue of charging piles, four outsourcing companies kick each other.
The consumer complained angrily to the Economic and Information Commission, intending to fight for a long time.
Should SAIC Reflect on Whether the improvement of after-sales and user care mechanisms has kept pace with high sales.
All along, we think that the skinny camel is bigger than the horse, but SAIC Should also focus on itself, and there is some sense of crisis.
03 SAIC's self-help: 1234 transformation directions after the collapse of sound
At the beginning, SAIC Motor Group in order to gild themselves and improve its visibility, Volkswagen, General Motors and other international groups in order to open up the domestic market, looking for "agents" purpose, everyone hit it off. In this regard, SAIC motor is undoubtedly the beneficiary.
For decades, SAIC Motor, which is facing an "elephant turn", is wide and fat, and in terms of sound volume and energy, it is actively transfusing blood to subsidiaries, but its own sense of existence is very low.
Nowadays, compared with SAIC Group, the melon-eating masses are obviously more familiar with the names of subsidiaries such as SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM, pretending to be the names of others, losing their true nature, and SAIC Group should also brush up on the sense of existence.
Some people may say: There is a sense of existence that is silent, but everywhere.
However, although SAIC's sense of existence is not to find this person, it is also a thin day.
While the stock price and performance are sluggish, saicid's debt ratio has continued to rise in recent years.
From 2016 to 2020, the company's asset-liability ratio was 60.19%, 62.39%, 63.63%, 64.58% and 66.28% respectively, and its total liabilities reached 609.373 billion yuan.
In the view of Yiou Automobile, when the joint venture brand of SAIC Group's living water source is gradually broken, the industry no longer wins or loses based on vehicle sales, and it is particularly necessary to liberate autonomy from the shadow of the joint venture.
At the same time, many people in the industry predict that the structure of the new energy market is changing from "dumbbell type" to "spindle type", and the structure of the traditional fuel vehicle market is highly similar, and the high-end market will be a new blue ocean.
The "old-school" SAIC motor is trying to catch up with the wave of technology in the field of automatic driving and three electrics, and can the value orientation of the capital market match with SAIC Motor in the future?
Perhaps accepting the lessons of the fuel vehicle era, SAIC currently puts its independent research and development capabilities in the first place.
In terms of software development, SAIC Motor has also established a wholly-owned subsidiary, SAIC Zero Beam.
According to official information, SAIC Zero Beam will mainly focus on intelligent driving system engineering, software architecture, basic software platform and data factory, including SOA software platform, a new generation of centralized electronic architecture, cloud service platform, computing chip, etc.
On July 7, SAIC Motor held the "New Track" independent innovation major strategic project oath meeting, and established four major independent innovation strategic projects of Zhiji Automobile, Feifan Automobile, Smart Heavy Truck and Robotaxi.
SAIC Motor will take the four strategic projects as the carrier to precipitate the industrialization and application of SAIC's independent innovation technology, and strive to seize the commanding heights of a new round of development of the automobile industry.
On December 8, SAIC Motor announced that the company's L4 level autonomous driving operation platform, Xiangdao Robotaxi Project, officially launched a demonstration application in Jiading, Shanghai.
The project fleet is the first to deploy 20 Robotaxi (L4 level autonomous vehicles) in the Feifan Marvel R smart electric SUV model.
Through its self-developed high-computing power platform, "vision + radar" multiple redundant sensor solutions, self-developed intelligent wire-by-wire chassis products, full-process data-driven algorithms, "cloud-tube-end" closed-loop automation tool chain and other L4-level automatic driving technologies, combined with previous travel service operation experience, Xiangdao Robotaxi will provide users with safety assurance and intelligent travel experience.
Before the end of this year, the Xiangdao Robotaxi project plans to launch 60 L4 level autonomous vehicles in Shanghai, Suzhou and other places, and carry out demonstration applications to create a "one-click Go" future travel with the model of Xiangdao Robotaxi + Feifan Automobile + Momenta.
With the advent of the era of electric intelligence, SAIC Motor has also made a series of personnel changes, which seems to be placing scientific research talents at the management level and paying more attention to technology research and development and technological innovation.
For example, SAIC Motor has appointed Liu Tao, former brand director of SAIC Roewe, who graduated from Jilin University of Technology, the "Whampoa Military Academy" of the Chinese automotive industry, as the CEO of Zhiji Automobile.
Liu Tao, a "product expert" who has been honing SAIC for more than 24 years, and Jiang Jun, a marketing expert, formed the best CP.
SAIC motor group transferred Wu Bing, CEO of SAIC Mobility's strategic brand "Xiangdao Travel", to BE THE CEO of Feifan Automobile.
In the 20 years since joining SAIC, this "factory and ministerial executive with the most Internet genes in SAIC Group" has worked in marketing, finance, legal affairs and the Internet. In terms of empowering product digital innovation and market development, Wu Bing is also a "veteran" with rich achievements.
In terms of smart heavy trucks, SAIC Motor exchanged positions between Wang Rui, general manager of SAIC Maxus, and Hao Jingxian, deputy chief engineer of SAIC Motor and general manager of SAIC Maxus Technology Center.
Hao Jingxian is mainly responsible for the Yangshan Port Intelligent Heavy Truck Project Group of SAIC Motor Group and the CEO of Shanghai Youdao Zhitu Technology Co., Ltd. SAIC Maxus has repeatedly achieved self-breakthroughs in recent years, of course, it is inseparable from the guidance of high-level executives such as "Hao Gong".
Zhuang Jingxiong, who has served as the executive director of SAIC-GM's purchasing department, the director of saic's president's office, and the general manager of the quality and economic operation department, is now mainly responsible for the SAIC Robotaxi project, and is also a senior management with stronger engineer thinking.
In the words of SAIC: "It is necessary to cultivate and cultivate a talent team with optimized structure, reasonable layout, strong innovation ability and wide radiation field, and form a leading, innovative and composite talent team that is leading in the domestic industry and has reached the international level."
In the future, SAIC does not want to be out of the crowd.
04 Conclusion
In view of the weakness of new energy technology and the mediocrity of independent brands, SAIC Motor's previous innovations may be too low-key, resulting in a weak sense of existence in this era of new energy and intelligence.
In fact, SAIC has not stopped exploring intelligent electrification and building the sound volume of "new SAIC". Today, although it is still not outstanding in terms of its own brand reengineering, it has made significant progress. The internal strength is deep, and it also requires greater courage and layout to be born new.
After hearing a lot of truths, saicid motor group that still has a bad life this time is another paradigm for traditional car companies that no longer focus on the new four era to restart ecological co-construction and refuse to end the sound.
From the beginning to the pilot, the market is ups and downs, and there is not much time left for the "eldest sons" of the car. SAIC's counter-offensive has been brewing for a long time. Uncover the blind box of the smart car track, embrace the possibility of calling with it, and to reach the end of the AI, please bring "dare" a little.