Text | Qin Fanghui
Design | microcosm
Producer | Chen Zixuan
Shen Congwen said: "Every day goes backwards, people grow up to be adults, and although the winter nights are very long, they will never exhaust their dreams." ”
Unconsciously, 2021 has entered history.
In the bumpy year, the changes of the times have spawned unlimited possibilities, the automotive industry we are in has undergone profound changes, the survival of the fittest, the survival of the fittest, and China's automobile industry has firmly embarked on the road of nirvana of quantitative change to qualitative change.
Sort out the development trajectory of the industry and gain insight into the future trend.
In this issue, AutoMotive Reviews has specially sorted out the top ten news events in the automotive industry in 2021, and reviewed this fantastic and incomparably real year together.
In 2021, in the case of the overall car market sales are not sluggish, the new energy "car-making fever" still maintains a high-flying trend, and many cross-border players who come to see the new energy automobile industry also want to share a piece of the new energy automobile industry.
At the Xiaomi new product launch conference at the end of March, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi will build a car wholly. In September, Xiaomi Car Manufacturing Company was established, injecting 10 billion yuan, and Lei Jun personally took command. On November 27, Xiaomi and the Beijing Economic Development Zone Management Committee reached a cooperation agreement, Xiaomi Automobile Headquarters Base, R&D Headquarters and Sales Headquarters settled in Beijing Economic Development Zone; Beijing Vehicle Factory is divided into phase I and Phase II construction, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 units; in 2024, the first model will be off the production line to achieve mass production.
Xiaomi, Baidu, Apple and other technology companies are not PPT car manufacturing, they all bring strong funds, advanced technology into the game, have strong ecological advantages, generally have good development prospects, will continue to enhance the development of new energy vehicles.
On April 19, 2021, at the Shanghai International Auto Show, a woman wearing a white T-shirt with the words "brake failure" printed on her chest stood on the roof of the Tesla exhibition car and shouted "brake failure" and other rights protection words, which became the focus of the whole network for a time.
Subsequently, the two sides sued each other - Tesla sued Ms. Zhang for violating the right to reputation, demanding a public apology and compensation for the direct property losses caused to Tesla by the incident "provisionally 5 million yuan"; Ms. Zhang also sued Tesla and Tesla's global vice president Tao Lin for infringement of the right to reputation.
On December 24, Ms. Zhang sued Tesla and Tesla's global vice president Tao Lin over the right to reputation, which was heard at the Beiguan District People's Court in Anyang City, Henan Province, and after nearly six hours of intense debate, the case was not pronounced in court.
On December 29, Ms. Zhang posted on social platforms exposing the latest trial between her and Tesla, revealing more details. It shows that Tesla conveyed the appeal through the judge - if the female owner agrees to withdraw the lawsuit, Tesla will also withdraw the lawsuit against its 5 million yuan case. This plan was rejected by Ms. Zhang without hesitation.
Why things will evolve to this point precisely reflects the difficulty of female car owners to protect their rights, and reflects the existence of problems in two responsible subjects, one is that Tesla blindly avoids the problem and does not solve it, and the other is that the relevant government management departments have no significant results after the interview.
For Tesla, the biggest difficulty encountered is not the problem itself, but the "courage" to face the problem head-on.
On August 31, 2021, FAW Mazda released its last tweet: The road is long, don't forget it, and bid farewell to the past 16 years.
For a time, it triggered the feelings of countless industry insiders, car fans and old car owners.
The Joint Venture Company of the Mazda Brand in China will be changed to a tripartite joint venture, namely Changan Mazda (47.5%), Mazda (47.5%), and China FAW (5%), Changan Mazda will inherit the related business, while FAW Mazda will change the joint venture of Growing Anmazda.
In China, an extremely important market unit, no car company is willing to become a "niche" or "non-mainstream". From the state of imbalance to the focus on the main body of Changan Mazda, it will play a key role in the cost reduction and efficiency increase and coordinated development of the Mazda brand, and will also help accelerate the introduction of more local models and promote the performance of the Chinese market.
On 27 December 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce issued the Special Administrative Measures for Foreign Investment Access (Negative List) (2021 Edition), which came into effect on 1 January 2022.
In this revision, in the field of automobile manufacturing, the restriction on foreign ownership in passenger car manufacturing and the restriction that the same foreign company can establish two or fewer joint ventures in China to produce similar vehicle products are abolished.
In other words, starting from 2022, foreign brands can compete for more equity in joint venture car companies, and even have the opportunity to build separate factories in China. The "catalog system" that has been implemented in the automotive joint venture for 24 years will completely enter history.
After the liberalization of the joint venture share ratio, the existing mature joint venture car companies have equal strength in China and foreign countries, and their sales volume is far ahead, and it is likely that they will continue to maintain the existing system structure for a long time.
For many marginal car companies that are poorly managed, it will be a big impact, and the big wind and waves in the domestic car market will come.
Zotye Automobile, which has been in crisis for two years, has seen the dawn of the future.
With the takeover of Jiangsu Shenzhen Commercial, the restructuring of Zotye Automobile proceeded smoothly, and finally got rid of the risk of bankruptcy and bankruptcy at the end of the year in 2021.
With the completion of the reorganization plan, *ST Zotye is about to enter the stage of resuming work and production, restoring the original production and business plan, sales channels and sales strategy. At the same time, *ST Zotye will also introduce new brands and business forms, and may also develop micro-electric vehicles, reflected in online ride-hailing and other operations, open up new ideas, and completely revitalize *ST Zotye.
With the help of the powerful Shenzhen Commercial Group, there will be various possibilities for restarting the car manufacturing industry in the short term.
On December 6, CCTV financial channel publicly "named" Euler Automobile, pointing out that the brand side "stole the core", played word games or was suspected of consumer fraud, and Euler's "chip door" once again attracted the attention of all parties.
It is reported that the cause of the "chip door" is that Euler said in the sales promotion that Good Cat will be equipped with Qualcomm's new professional vehicle intelligent service platform, with 8 Kryo CPU processing cores. However, after the owner picked up the car, he found that the chip actually equipped by Euler Good Cat was an Intel quad-core CPU.
On December 9, Euler issued a new statement, emphasizing that in addition to the previously promised 7200 yuan rights package, the first owner of Euler Good Cat can also enjoy a lifetime warranty and 10,000 yuan charging rights. However, Euler's owners did not accept Euler's compensation plan.
Here, great wall motors and Euler automobiles still need to be able to properly solve users' doubts, after all, it is related to brand image and corporate reputation.
Entering 2021, the shortage of vehicle-grade chips has become more and more intense, and the haze of "core famine" continues to envelop the car market.
At the same time, there is a "core speculation" in the supply chain where dealers hoard and ask for prices, which aggravates market panic. Automobile companies have no choice but to choose a large number of hoarding goods to increase chip inventory to resist future risks, further exacerbate the dilemma of "lack of core", resulting in a vicious circle.
Affected by this, many mainstream auto manufacturers have successively reduced production, terminal delivery has also been affected, and cars such as price increases and indefinite periods have become the norm, and the traditional "golden nine silver ten" no longer exists. Industry bodies predict that global vehicle production will be reduced by 3.9 million units in 2021.
In the fourth quarter, the lack of cores in the automotive industry has eased, and the state has also taken measures to rectify the "core speculation" behavior. However, the deep-seated reason for the lack of core core technology is the lack of core technology, and independent enterprises still urgently need technical research, which is the root cause of avoiding repeating the same mistakes.
Near the end of the year, Dongfeng Motor and Dongfeng Yueda Kia, which have been working together for 19 years, officially parted ways.
It is reported that Dongfeng Group, which holds 25% of the equity, announced the formal withdrawal of Dongfeng Yueda Kia, and the 25% equity transfer project of Dongfeng Yueda Kia has been delisted at a transfer price of 297 million yuan.
The withdrawal of Dongfeng Group means that Dongfeng Yueda Kia will change from the original tripartite joint venture to a two-party shareholding of Yueda and Kia. According to Dongfeng Yueda Kia, after Dongfeng Group withdrew from Dongfeng Yueda Kia, the company's future share ratio is still under negotiation with Yueda, and the results are expected to be announced in April.
The industry generally believes that on the one hand, it is because the joint venture period between the two sides is about to expire, and on the other hand, it is because of the poor sales performance of Korean cars in China.
Dongfeng Motor's farewell to Yueda Kia may be able to invest more resources and energy in products with more development potential and better benefits, so as to achieve longer-term goals.
When Kia gains more control, decisions from all sides are in their own hands.
On November 19, the Tank 500 was released during the Guangzhou Auto Show, and the order was full for a while.
At the same time that a large number of orders poured in, the tank brand began to face the problem of scalpers frantically selling car purchase orders, and the "crusade" for the tank 500 also followed.
In response to this phenomenon, the tank brand officially issued an announcement and proposed a solution: the delivery confirmation process will be upgraded, and from November 28, for new orders, orders that do not match the actual consignee, and cannot prove that they are immediate family members or the lease relationship of the limited city license are considered invalid orders. Such a measure is bound to crack down to a certain extent on the problem of second-tier dealers wantonly selling car purchase qualifications.
Although the speculation of scalpers has increased the heat of the product to a certain extent, the reason why the tank brand came forward to "strike hard", in addition to safeguarding the rights and interests of car owners and reducing the probability of complaints and rights protection in the later stage, is also in response to the negative impact caused by network public opinion such as "new car false orders with large moisture" and "hunger marketing".
The comprehensive transformation of electrification, Japanese brands no longer hesitate.
In October 2021, Honda held a launch conference on the electrification transformation strategy, releasing the pure electric brand "e: N" and 5 models; in November Nissan released the 2030 vision, planning to launch 23 electric drive models; on December 14, Toyota and Lexus released the future global electric vehicle strategy, and for the first time showed up to 15 pure electric vehicle models.
For consumers or the media, this may be an electric empire that Japanese brands have risen overnight, but for Honda itself, it has long had deep reserves in the field of electrification, and it has only been the beginning of the long-awaited electrification strategy.
Looking back at the complex and changeable year of 2021, the booming automotive industry is exploring more possibilities while also leaving a reverie ending.
Live up to the past, not afraid of the future.
2022 has begun, the darkest hour seems to have passed, standing at a new starting point where history meets, will the automotive industry usher in the next spring?
Why not continue to wait and see.