Chery is ok again? 960,000 units were sold in 2021, the best in 24 years, but marketing executives are difficult to promote

Wen | Han Ling, author of the weekly magazine "Finance and Economics"

Editor| Mao Shiyang

Chery, which has fallen out of the front line of its own brands for many years, is returning to the field of vision with rapid sales growth.

On January 7, Chery Holding Group announced the 2021 annual sales data, which showed that Chery's annual sales volume was 960,000 vehicles, an increase of 31.7% year-on-year, of which 270,000 vehicles were exported, an increase of 136.3% year-on-year. New energy vehicle sales were 109,000 units, up 144.6% year-on-year.

It is worth mentioning that this is chery's best sales performance since its establishment in 1997. Although sales broke records, Chery did not achieve its goal of 1 million annual sales in 2021.

Specifically, Chery Automobile sold 656,000 vehicles (including exports) in the whole year, an increase of 46.3% year-on-year, of which the annual sales volume of Tiggo 8 series exceeded 160,000 units, as the main sales model of Chery Automobile, Tiggo 8 series, Tiggo 7 series, Tiggo 5X sales accounted for more than 65%.

It is worth noting that the price range of the above models is 7-17 million yuan. Chery has launched 9 products and more than 60 models in this narrow range. The complex and huge product matrix makes the price coverage range of the Tiggo series overlap more, and the internal consumption of the product is serious.

And this kind of internal friction has also continued to the different brands under Chery. According to Chery's current brand matrix, Xingtu is positioned as high-end, and Jietu is positioned lower than its parent brand Chery.

According to statistics, its high-end brand Xingtu will sell 37,000 vehicles (including exports) in 2021, an increase of 121% year-on-year. As Chery's mid-to-high-end brand, Xingtu's sales have been sluggish since its listing in 2019.

Statistics show that the cumulative sales of Xingtu in 2019 were 14,000 units, and in 2020, the sales volume was 18,000 units. Compared with other independent high-end brands in China, Geely Lynk & Co sold 170,000 vehicles in 2020, Great Wall Motor's high-end brand WEY sold 78,000 vehicles in 2020, Lynk & Co sold 220,000 vehicles in 2021, and WEY sold more than 58,000 vehicles. It is clear that Xingtu is already a long way behind, and from the goal of selling 50,000 vehicles a year last year, Xingtu has failed.

At the launch of the listing of Xingtu at the beginning of last year, Yin Tongyue said, "This year's Sales of Xingtu reached 50,000 vehicles, and I took away the 'deputy' word before Ye Lei's title (executive deputy general manager of the marketing center)."

Nowadays, it seems that the "vice" word before Ye Lei's title may not be "picked".

The sales volume of the Jietu brand increased significantly last year, with a total of 154,000 new cars sold (including exports) in the whole year, an increase of 17.9% year-on-year, and the cumulative total sales of Jietu Automobile exceeded 460,000 units. In fact, since its official launch in early 2018, Jietu has performed well in the entire Chery Group, with cumulative sales of 40,000 units in 2018, 138,000 units in 2019, and 126,000 units in 2020. Li Xueyong, deputy general manager of Jietu Automobile and general manager of the marketing center, said that if it were not limited by the shortage of chips, it might break 200,000 sales in 2021.

In terms of new energy, small ants account for 60% of Chery's nearly 110,000 sales, while large ants drag Chery New Energy's hind legs, and the cumulative sales of Chery big ants in 2021 are only 902 vehicles, and the sales volume in November is only 50 vehicles. It is not difficult to understand why Chery has now shifted the focus of new energy to Chery QQ ice cream. In 2022, Chery QQ Ice Cream will work with Chery Ant to achieve an annual sales target of 300,000 units.

However, in the A00-level electric vehicle market, there are already Brands such as Wuling Hongguang, Euler, Zero Run, Andding, etc., and the price gap is not obvious, and it is difficult to open the gap between brands. Some insiders pointed out that from the perspective of the development path of fuel vehicles, A00 level is only a transitional plan, under the trend of consumption upgrading, it will eventually be eliminated, and electric vehicles will probably follow this law. In addition, A00-level products have low profits, low technical content, and low premium capabilities, and they still need to rely on high-end products in the middle and late stages.

This year, Chery put forward the goal of "ensuring annual sales of 1.5 million vehicles, striving for 2 million vehicles, and annual operating income of 200 billion yuan". This means that Chery must double all indicators on last year's basis to achieve the target.

In fact, as early as 2017, Chery mentioned that it wanted to strive for the goal of 1 million vehicles, and in 2020, Chery once again set a sales target of 1 million vehicles, but actually completed 730,000 vehicles. Four years later, that goal remains unfulfilled.