IAUTO
Speed Depth Attitude
Introduction |
2022/01/12
It is not difficult to know, but it is difficult to do.
Reporter 丨 Cao Jiadong
Responsible editor 丨 Cao Jiadong
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
"A five-seat SUV equipped with a 2.0L naturally aspirated engine can push the price to 268,800 yuan, and Wei Sa is fierce enough!" When the price is announced, I believe that more than one person will make such an exclamation.
Indeed, in the years when the popularity of automobile consumption has been high, the high premium of the Toyota brand is almost everyone can see. The brand siphon produced by Alpha/Wilfa is amazing enough, and from the Korean and American systems to successively give up their market share, the north and south volkswagens are no longer popular, and the spring that belongs to Toyota has never ended.
It is not that Chinese consumers blindly worship the Toyota brand, and in the new stage of polarization in the market, Toyota, which is already known for its reliability, is nothing more than stepping on the rhythm of the times. Therefore, in the system of GAC Toyota, when the two pillar models of Camry and Highlander can repeatedly pull the luxury brands at the same price, I think consumers are just paying for the endogenous forces behind Toyota.
So, does it mean that GAC Toyota can borrow brand dividends to complete the re-expansion of the market?
Shallow, definitely. But the deeper level is that GAC Toyota also hopes that the new generation of models represented by Weisa will build a full SUV product matrix spanning the 150,000 to 350,000 price band, from mainstream to personality, and launch a surprise attack on the north and south Volkswagens, and try to achieve the established goal of "annual sales of one million vehicles".
Willsa admission, sufficient and necessary
Toyota is not a brand that is keen on crazy expansion, and the Chinese auto market is a place full of variables. For this reason, for a long time, Toyota has been extremely cautious in market control and product introduction. Even in the decade from 2010 to 2019, when SUVs soared, Toyota's attitude towards the RAV4 and Highlander was extremely subtle.
Seeking quality without quantity, laughing at the control of the entire basic disk by the joint venture SUV led by Volkswagen Tiguan and Buick Encore, Toyota's calmness is really puzzling. In this way, compared with FAW Toyota, which holds models such as Vios, Corolla, RAV4 and Crown, GAC Toyota has no other way but to follow Toyota's ideas.
However, with the sinking of Yaris and Yizhi one after another, do you believe that GAC Toyota has no ideas for introducing new models?
Being in the same battlefield, with the same title, is about a parity. Under the ever-expanding automobile base, how can GAC Toyota's ambitions be limited to that one acre and three points of land. Although the addition of Leiling has risen to the height of 400,000 vehicles per year from 2015 to 2017, unfortunately, the tepidness of the seventh generation Camry is something that no one expected.
Obviously, from this time on, gac toyota's urgent need for more sales fulcrum has been revealed.
Now it seems that apart from the existing IP of the "Landa" family, the emergence of Wei Sa has always appeared to be abrupt. Surrounded by Veranda and Highlander, Weisa, which is priced at 216,800 to 303,800 yuan, has only the word "good-looking" left. But if you look back three years ago, you will find that everything has cause and effect.
That year, that is, in 2018, the eighth generation Camry went public, C-HR appeared, whether due to geopolitics, consumer trends and other objective factors, GAC Toyota finally jumped to the production and sales mark of 580,000 vehicles at the end of the year. It was also this year that Toyota's TNGA global architecture began to promote the entire Toyota to adjust its thinking on the development of China.
The implementation of the two-vehicle strategy and the formation of a hybrid family, GAC Toyota's "disregard" has since had a strong support. Especially after entering 2021, in view of Toyota's entry into the heyday of the brand, it is good to derive existing models, and take out new models such as Lingshang, Xena, and Fenglanda, and all the means to achieve market expansion will come one by one.
In other words, although Wesa is not a model that can go in volume, it does not necessarily stand out in the Lanta family. But in the territory of GAC Toyota, as long as the brand dividend is still there, what Weisa can do is to occupy a certain right to speak in that small market segment, as for the result, we will talk about it later.
To be honest, according to this idea, I really didn't think there was any problem before.
Whether you admit it or not, in the past two years, Toyota's brand aura has been the guarantee of sales. In the terminal market, no one will doubt that any new car launched by Toyota is not a good car. Even if it is full of European and American atmosphere, such as Supra, such as the whole Lexus, even if it is generally configured, up to LC, down to the Corolla, so what?
It can only be said that after Ling Shang lost the A-class car market, in fact, there are still variables.
Facing the million mark, it is not easy to talk about
Looking back at 2021, this year's GAC Toyota has indeed had a good time. Consumer enthusiasm activates the output of the entire enterprise to the end market. The cumulative sales of more than 800,000 vehicles in the whole year also tell us that the full output of the product line has long been different from the past few years.
As China's SUV market undergoes a fierce reshuffle, the collapse of the inherent pattern has spawned a new consumer boom, and major brands really need a more forward-looking leader in the pursuit of new market segments. As a model born from Toyota's TNGA global architecture, Wesa is Toyota's new idea for market iterative output, and it should be recognized by GAC Toyota as a new force to undertake the 5-seat mid-size SUV market.
Honda Guandao/UR-V, Volkswagen Tuon X is the first player to enter this field. In the early days, the monthly sales of more than 5,000 vehicles can prove the existence of this seemingly narrow market segment. But don't forget, the fall of Nissan Loulan and the entry of luxury brands at the same price SUV have actually been adding a lot of uncertainty to the market trend.
Those who are familiar with the history of Wesa will understand that as a model of Toyota positioned at the high-end leisure tour, the first generation of Toyota Wesa is based on the Toyota FT-SX concept car released at the 2005 North American Auto Show, sharing the platform of highlander in the same period. The design and development of the car was completed at Toyota Design Studio and Technology Center in the United States, and the production site is also located at the Toyota plant in Kentucky, USA.
The first generation toyota Venza
Such a means has indeed brought new thinking to Toyota's construction in the field of segmentation, but because the model does not have particularly prominent features compared to highlander, coupled with the fact that since its launch in 2009 to the end of production, the original Wesa has not undergone a large degree of upgrading and modification. This has led to the fact that under the premise of already mediocre sales, with the completion of the replacement of Camry and Highlander, Wesa has no need to stay more.
Today, the reboot of Wesa seems to be the result of the development of TNGA's global architecture. Becoming a piece of the puzzle in gac toyota's entire SUV product matrix, the birth of Wei Sa is certainly not wrong. On the other hand, when the US version of Venza directly locks competitors in 5 medium-sized SUVs such as Honda Passport and US version of Ford Ruijie, its purpose in China is undoubtedly to complete a new round of expansion by taking advantage of the gap under Highlander.
What's more, since the sale of 580,000 vehicles in 2018, GAC Toyota has been growing at a high speed every year, once GAC Toyota's fourth plant adjacent to the third plant and the fifth plant in Xiaohudao, Nansha are all put into operation in late 2022, the release of 1 million production capacity will inevitably require Fenglanda, Weisa and even future electric vehicle models to make a breakthrough on top of today's 800,000 annual sales.
There is no longer a way back. Enriching market diversity is no longer the only task of Weisa. Even if Fenglanda and Xena can achieve monthly sales of 10,000 vehicles and 5,000 vehicles respectively, if GAC Toyota is determined to achieve the goal of 1 million vehicles per year in 2022, Weisa will seek to compete with the head of the market segment in the new year.
40,000 units, which is Honda Guandao's cumulative sales last year. What heights can Wesa reach? If it is impossible to speculate simply, then naturally we should not be blindly optimistic, and the next problem left for GAC Toyota will only become more and more difficult to solve. Being in China, having ambitions has always been a good thing, the car market is fickle, and who can guarantee smooth sailing. Only from the beginning of Weisa, GAC Toyota still has to tell every new story for each new car, like the Camry and Highlander of that year.
| Cao Jiadong |
Gasoline running in the blood,
Only fast is not broken!