"We have been out of grain for more than ten days, and we are still pressing on twenty or so orders", "The customer can't urge it, but now we have to wait, and it is expected that it will take more than 20 days at the earliest..."
Luo Weiwei, general manager of Chengdu Wanyou High-tech UNI Store, has been worried recently, and the continuous increase in orders is a happy thing, but the reality of no car to deliver has made him embarrassed.
In order to alleviate the tense supply and demand relationship, Changan Automobile's Liangjiang plant in Chongqing has all the equipment in its production lines at full capacity, and since the start of construction after the festival on January 2, 13,682 new cars have rolled off the production line. Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, said that according to the plan, the Liangjiang plant will complete the output of 79,165 units throughout January.
Such "happiness" troubles not only plague Chang'an, but also for other brands, especially for head independent brands like Great Wall and Geely, which also have annual sales of more than one million. However, in the context of the cold car market, the epidemic and the chip crisis, Geely Automobile and Great Wall Motors have not reached the established annual targets, but they have also achieved good results. In 2021, Geely's total sales reached 1.32 million, a slight increase of 0.59% year-on-year. Great Wall Motor also completed 1.28 million units, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year.
In contrast, Changan Automobile completed its goal. The cumulative annual sales of Changan Chinese brand cars exceeded 1.75 million units, up 16.7% year-on-year, of which Changan Chinese brand passenger cars exceeded 1.2 million units, an increase of 23.1% year-on-year, an increase of more than double digits, and it is also the highest increase in the top three independent car companies.
From the perspective of main models, the total sales of Geely's "star" products in 2021 exceeded 210,000 vehicles, including Xingrui, Xingyue L, Xingyue S and other models, and the Boyue family also performed well, contributing 220,000 vehicles, which constituted the main force of Geely Automobile's SUV sales. The Haval brand also contributed 770,000 orders to Great Wall Motors, an increase of 2.6% year-on-year, of which haval H6 sold 370,000 units in the whole year.
Changan CS75 family, driven by CS75PLUS, performed very strongly, receiving 280,000 orders in the whole year, an increase of 5.6% year-on-year. In addition, the Changan CS55 series, which is a "phenomenon-level explosion" in the 100,000-yuan SUV market, also performed well, with annual cumulative sales exceeding 140,000 units, an increase of 27.9% year-on-year. Similarly, the Auchan brand also continued to rise, with annual sales of 228,000 vehicles, an increase of 49% year-on-year, of which the main model Auchan X5 sold 128,000 vehicles throughout the year, and the momentum was very strong.
It is worth mentioning that in October last year, the cumulative sales of the CS75 series exceeded 1.5 million units, and in March of the same year, it ended the 93 consecutive months of sales of the Haval H6, and the CS75PLUS also became the king of China's SUV sales in 2020. It can be said that this car allows everyone to see the strength of Changan Automobile in the design, intelligence and powertrain level. In particular, the blue whale new generation 2.0T engine it is equipped with has been selected as one of the top ten engines of the "Heart of China" in 2021 for five consecutive years.
It is understood that the second generation of CS75PLUS will be listed in the first quarter of this year, which makes everyone have higher expectations for Changan Automobile. Taking advantage of the trend of product replacement, it is a clever trick of Changan Automobile to launch models with higher product strength to increase market competitiveness. The advantage of this approach is that, on the one hand, with the help of the good market reputation accumulated by mature models, the rapid breakthrough of new products at the beginning of the listing can be realized; on the other hand, many highlights of the upgraded new products are more easily accepted and recognized by users in the comparison with the original models.
In addition to SUVs, another source of sales of the three major car companies is in the car sector, the Geely Emgrand family has accumulated sales of more than 200,000, and similarly, the Changan Automobile Yidong family has maintained a high output of 170,000 vehicles, and the two continue to lead the national car market. Although Great Wall Motors has a huge volume in the SUV market, it does not have a car brand, so it has not achieved anything in the car sector for the time being.
In addition, in the high-end brand, the Lynk & Co brand performance is eye-catching, the annual sales of 220,500 vehicles, an increase of 25.68% year-on-year, the current Lynk & Co brand has established a relatively complete coverage of cars, SUVs, etc. including the full category matrix, its future development is worth promising. Changan Automobile's high-end sequence "UNI" also sold more than 120,000 units in the whole year, with an average of more than 10,000 units per month. In contrast, the Great Wall Weipai is slightly inferior, with annual sales of 58,400 vehicles, but the sales of tank brands are hot, of which the delivery of tank 300 continues to rise, with more than 80,000 vehicles delivered throughout the year.
In terms of new energy, Great Wall Motors has performed prominently, and Euler, which has won the favor of female consumers with high appearance and retro styling, contributed 135,000 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 140% year-on-year, becoming a hot product in this year's new energy brand model list. Geely New Energy's performance is still relatively weak, with annual electrified model sales of only 100,000 vehicles, of which the Extreme Krypton brand delivered 6,007 vehicles throughout the year; Changan Automobile's overall strength in new energy is currently inferior to the previous two, and its only A00-class car Changan Ben E-Star has sold more than 70,000 vehicles in the whole year.
Accelerating the transformation has become a consensus, and new energy and intelligent high-end products will become the "highlight" of the three head brands.
From the perspective of the history of the automobile industry, if an independent automobile company does not reach the scale of one million vehicles, it will be difficult to escape the fate of being merged and reorganized. Even if it reaches the scale of production and sales of more than one million vehicles, if it does not build the core competitiveness, it is difficult to escape the risk of being marginalized.
It can also be seen from the production and sales data in 2021 that among the top ten car companies, only Changan, Great Wall and Geely have reached the million level of Chinese brands.
For this point, the three head car companies have a clear understanding.
Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, believes that the birth of the new track has enabled Chinese auto brands to usher in a century-old opportunity for brand renewal, value return and lane change overtaking. He believes that in the next 10 years, China will give birth to world-class automobile companies.
Similarly, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, also said that the next three to five years will be the best opportunity for Chinese auto brands to take the lead in the field of new energy and intelligence, and this opportunity is only once.
Also in the outline of Geely Automobile's five-year development plan, it is also clearly stated that by 2025, the market share ranks first among Chinese brands, with sales of 3.65 million vehicles (including Extreme Krypton vehicles), of which smart electric vehicles account for more than 30%.
Based on this understanding, the three independent powers are making every effort to accelerate the transformation: the Great Wall has put forward the goal of transforming into a "global technology travel company"; Geely is committed to transforming into a "technology travel service provider"; Changan said to accelerate the transformation to a "smart travel technology company".
In the next five years, Changan Automobile will invest 150 billion yuan to build a technology ecosystem of technology companies, accelerate the construction of software and intelligent capabilities, and introduce and train a large number of intelligent software talents. In 2021, Changan Automobile has ushered in a series of latest achievements such as APA6.0, APA7.0, Blue Whale iDD hybrid system, and a new generation of super collector electric drive. Since the release of the "Third Entrepreneurship - Innovation and Entrepreneurship Plan" in 2018, Changan Automobile has mastered more than 500 intelligent and low-carbon technologies.
In addition, Great Wall Motor will also actively practice the global layout of the company, Geely will continue to optimize products, continuously improve the layout of platform-based products, actively expand overseas markets, and further enhance sales of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid models.
In terms of platform, Great Wall released three major technology brands of "lemon", "tank" and "coffee intelligence", and carried out a thorough self-revolution with the change of "rebirth". Geely announced that it has fully entered the era of architecture car manufacturing, which will apply BMA, CMA, SPA and SEA basic module architectures. Changan also released a new intelligent architecture, Changan Ark Architecture, which empowers the iterative evolution of vehicle basic performance such as body and chassis with intelligence and big data.
For the next development of the high-end brand Krypton, Geely's relevant sources revealed that "this year, Extreme Krypton Automobile plans to complete the delivery target of 70,000 vehicles, and export the Krypton 001 model to the EU market early next year, and it is expected that the overall overseas exports of Kr will reach 100,000 units in 2025." Among them, Extreme Kr Automobile will launch 7 models", which can also be seen from Geely Automobile's sales target in 2022, the total sales volume of 1.65 million, compared with 1.32 million units in 2021, an increase of about 24%, in this 300,000 increment, the Extreme Krypton brand should occupy at least half, which is also an average of 10,000 units per month.
The Great Wall has also set a target for 2022: to achieve annual sales of 1.9 million vehicles, an increase of about 48.32% over 2021. According to the understanding of automobile life, in 2022, Great Wall Motors will launch 19 new models, including all sub-brands, including more popular models such as tank 500, especially it is worth mentioning that Great Wall Motors, which has been deeply cultivating in the field of SUVs, will also launch a sedan project in 2022.
Although Changan Automobile's goal in 2022 is not yet known, combined with the views of Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, at the previous Changan Automobile Science and Technology Ecological Conference, "the new energy penetration rate will reach 30%-40% in 2025" and the sales performance of Changan Automobile in 2021 of 1.75 million, it is not difficult to guess that Changan Automobile's requirements for itself are not low, especially in the field of new energy.
In the last few days of 2021, the news of the independence of Changan New Energy brand has not gone away. "Changan New Energy will change its name in the first quarter of 2022 and use a new brand logo." It is understood that Changan Automobile's new new energy brand has three products this year, including pure electric and extended range hybrid models. Among them is the "C385" previously unveiled, which is also the first model after the independence of the Changan New Energy brand.
In addition, Changan also entered the hybrid market, on January 6, Changan passenger car high-end product sequence UNI, launched the first SUV model equipped with the Blue Whale iDD hybrid system UNI-K iDD, and opened pre-sale.
Avita, a high-end intelligent brand that integrates Changan, Huawei and Ningde Times, also debuted on the eve of last year's Guangzhou Auto Show, and the first model, Avita 11, has been determined to start delivery in the third quarter of 2022 at the latest. Its cruising range can reach at least 700 kilometers, accelerate within 4 seconds of 100 kilometers, and has a high-voltage super fast charge of 200 kilowatts and 400Tops of computing power.
Whether in the entire automotive sector or in the field of passenger cars, Great Wall, Geely and Changan have all stood out from the autonomous camp and occupied a clear leading edge in scale. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, believes that "traditional fuel vehicle joint venture brands are under pressure this year, and independent brands have gained the opportunity to comprehensively counterattack, from rural to urban to first-tier cities, the performance of independent brands in the consumer market is exciting." ”
For the current independent three, no one can crush each other in all directions, but in this state of competition between contrast and contrast, the three continue to enhance their strength and lead the Chinese automobile industry to become bigger and stronger. As the ancient Roman poet Ovid once said, "A horse will never gallop without another horse chasing and overtaking it." ”
Note: The above pictures come from the brand official