Per reporter: Sun Tongtong Per editor: Pei Jianru
A few days ago, Volvo Cars announced the 2021 sales report card. According to the data, in the Chinese mainland market, Volvo Cars' total annual sales exceeded 171,300 units, an increase of 3.1% year-on-year. Among them, its sales volume of volvo XC60 exceeded 65,000 units in the whole year, an increase of 6% year-on-year; XC90 sales increased by 16% year-on-year, and S60 sold nearly 28,000 units, an increase of 29% year-on-year.
In terms of electrification, RECHARGE models increased by 63.9% year-on-year, accounting for 27% of global sales for the whole year, a record high; Chinese mainland market RECHARGE models increased by 77% year-on-year in December 2021 and 96% year-on-year.
In fact, since 2021, due to the repeated global epidemic situation, chip shortage and other factors, many multinational car companies have had to reduce production and stop production, and the global auto industry is facing unprecedented difficulties. According to industry experts, in 2021, the global production will most likely be reduced by 7 million to 8 million vehicles, of which the Chinese market will probably reduce production by 2 million vehicles. In this context, Volvo Cars has also been affected to a certain extent, failing to achieve full production throughout the year, and the production capacity has been reduced by about 50,000 units.
"In the more than ten years I have been in the industry, the company is fully productive. Even if the sales model has changed, from the wholesale orientation of the manufacturer to the retail orientation, it has not experienced such a big ups and downs. But we still move forward steadily at our own pace. Affected by the lack of cores, Volvo's production capacity in China last year was reduced by about 50,000 units, and its market share was between 6.2% and 6.4%. Yu Kexin, vice president of marketing of Volvo Cars' greater China sales company, said in an interview with the Daily Economic News reporter.
Image source: Courtesy of the enterprise
Yu Kexin believes that in the context of insufficient chip supply and repeated epidemics, Volvo can still achieve positive sales growth, mainly due to two key points: one is that Volvo's purchasing end and supply side continue to exert efforts to ensure the supply of production capacity; second, the sales side compresses the overall inventory and manages orders properly.
Facing 2022, Volvo has set a sales target of 200,000 vehicles in the Chinese market. But this year is a small year for Volvo's products, in addition to the new pure electric model C40 listed, the other 5 models will still be sold according to their own way of playing, which makes Volvo's sales team in China face a lot of pressure.
"We hope that in 2022, the XC40 and S60 will each have monthly sales of 3500 to 4000 vehicles, which will significantly help to achieve the annual sales target of 200,000 vehicles." We will not fight a price war, nor will we be disturbed by mainstream brands, we will refer to the marketing means of major brands, but we will not blindly follow, take our own path, or have the opportunity to complete the overall sales planning in 2022. Yu Kexin said.
At the same time, Volvo is accelerating its electrification transformation. 2021 is a year of comprehensive acceleration of the electrification transformation of Volvo Cars, Volvo Cars is the first to realize the electrification of the entire range of products in the mainstream luxury car brand, all of which offer a variety of power options including 48V hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electricity.
Image source: Photo by reporter Sun Tongtong
According to the plan, by 2025, Volvo will achieve the goal of full electrification, when the proportion of pure electric models will reach 50%, and the rest will be hybrid models; in 2030, Volvo wants to become a pure electric luxury car company.
In the channel layout of electrification products, Volvo has also begun to test the official direct sales model. Since November 1, 2021, Volvo's plug-in hybrid models have begun to adopt direct sales mode in Shanghai, and S60 RECHARGE T8, S90 RECHARGE T8, XC60 RECHARGE T8, XC90 RECHARGE T8 and other models have adopted a unified "one-price" sales model.
"Volvo started very early in the electrification process, and there were already electric vehicles in Sweden many years ago, and the technology is relatively mature. Compared with other brands, we do have a time difference in the past two years, but the Volvo brand's electrification strategy and determination are very resolute, and after the XC40 RECHARGE and C40 are launched, more electric models will be launched in the future. Yu Kexin said.
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