Text: Second brother head
There is no doubt that Changan is one of the most outstanding auto companies in the market performance this year.
According to the official data of Changan Automobile, in 2021, Changan Automobile sold 2.3 million units, an increase of 14.8% year-on-year, the annual cumulative sales of Changan Chinese brand cars exceeded 1.75 million units, an increase of 16.7% year-on-year, and the annual cumulative sales of Changan Chinese brand passenger cars exceeded 1.2 million units, an increase of 23.1% year-on-year.
The background of such excellent results is that the domestic automobile market environment is not very peaceful, and objective factors such as the epidemic, raw materials, and lack of cores have entangled the Chinese auto market for nearly a year, and major brands are struggling to find the strength to break through in this uncertain factor.
The performance of Changan Automobile is particularly prominent.
First, in 2021, Changan Automobile ushered in a highlight moment
Sales volume is the most intuitive measure of how well a company has performed in the past year.
In 2021, a total of four Chinese brands in the Chinese auto market exceeded the million mark, namely Changan's 1.75 million (up 16.7% year-on-year), SAIC-GM-Wuling's 1.66 million (up 4% year-on-year), Geely's 1.32 million (1%), and Great Wall's 1.28 million (15.2%)
Judging from the data indicators, Changan Automobile plays a well-deserved leading role in the Camp of Chinese Brands, not only ranking first in overall sales, but also its year-on-year growth rate is also the first.
Admittedly, it is not too difficult to achieve growth in 2021 (mainly because the base of some automobile companies in 2020 is too low), according to the data released by the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the cumulative sales volume in 2021 reached 20.146 million units, an increase of 4.4% year-on-year.
However, this achievement of Changan Automobile is particularly worth mentioning, because on the one hand, thanks to its good epidemic control and the orderly resumption of work under the leadership of senior management, Changan Automobile has completed sales of 1.5 million (Chinese brands) in 2020, which is not a small base.
The second is the growth rate, changan automobile's growth rate is much larger than the disk, which shows that Changan's product strength and brand power have been recognized at the market level, just like the wind knows the grass, and the board knows the chengchen.
Specifically, the annual sales of the CS75 series exceeded 280,000; the annual sales of the Yidong series exceeded 170,000, and the cumulative sales volume has exceeded 1.2 million; the UNI series has exceeded 120,000, which has stood on the threshold of 10,000 monthly sales; the annual sales of the CS55 series are 140,000 vehicles. Among them, the cumulative orders of the second-generation CS55PLUS exceeded 85,000 in the four months of listing; the annual sales of the CS35 series exceeded 80,000, becoming the only million sales model in the small SUV; Changan Auchan X5 series 128,000 units, Auchan X7 series 100,000 vehicles; Changan New Energy Benben E-Star sales exceeded 70,000 vehicles; Changan Kaicheng annual sales exceeded 180,000 vehicles...
The reason for spending a lot of time to introduce the achievements of the Changan series of models is mainly because after the sales data of Changan Automobile has been stripped apart, its valuable points can be found more, that is, the sales structure of Changan Automobile is very healthy, and there is no so-called "egg basket" story.
The wider the coverage, the more balanced the development of the product line, which means that Changan Automobile has a stronger ability to resist risks, and it is one of the few enterprises that achieves high-quality and high-quantity development.
Second, back to the first, what did Changan Automobile do right?
As we all know, the Chinese auto market fell into a state of low growth or even negative growth in 2018, the price of joint venture brands continued to decline, and the total demand contraction continued to compress the living environment of Chinese brands.
The same is true of Changan Automobile, which has been looking for a road to glory that returns to the magnesium lamp.
Note that the word used here is "back" . In fact, before 2017, Changan Automobile was the well-deserved leader in its own brands, and in 2016, the sales volume of Changan brand passenger cars reached 1.28 million, 210,000 vehicles ahead of the second place and 500,000 vehicles ahead of the third place; but in 2017, the name of China's independent brother changed hands, and Geely became the defender.
Later, with the further decline in the market share of independent brands and the gradual decline in the discourse power of the domestic passenger car market, Changan Automobile, which once represented the image of Chinese automobile brands, also ushered in the darkest moment, and sales once shrank to 800,000 units.
However, Chang'an, which was born in a military enterprise, did not sink like other losers and go with the flow, but like the movie that came out two years ago, it staged a realistic version of my life, and in 2021, it stood firm and turned back.
Changan Automobile can achieve contrarian growth in 2021, and we believe that there are the following reasons.
First of all, after falling to the bottom, Changan did not mess up, and the leadership team reacted quickly, for example, in 2018, Changan Automobile opened its third entrepreneurship, rethinking where the users are, where the technology is, and how Changan Automobile will achieve breakthroughs and innovations.
On the product side, the successive launch of the PLUS plan and the UNI series has made Changan Automobile's products begin to become "clear and distinct", departing from the unorthodox design in the eyes of the Chinese people, and refreshing consumers' cognition of the cost performance of independent brands.
Secondly, in terms of brand, Changan Automobile began to build a layout around the brand, through a series of technologies, such as automatic parking, ultra-long automatic driving cruise, Blue Whale engine thermal efficiency test, engine continuous working hours in harsh conditions, live crash test, low wind resistance model certification test... established a strong independent brand image in the minds of consumers.
Through the dual upward trend of product + brand, Changan Automobile has been rebounding since it hit the bottom, and finally ushered in the harvest season in 2021.
Third, research and development is the foundation of Changan Automobile's breakthrough
In the automotive industry, research and development is always the foundation, and the essence of Changan Automobile's round of leaps is a leap in product strength. The key to the leap in product power is inseparable from R&D investment in a thousand words.
Changan Automobile is a well-known heavy R & D enterprise in the industry, every year will invest 5% of sales revenue in research and development, far exceeding the average of 3% of the entire industry, "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" so far, has invested nearly 110 billion yuan.
Changan Automobile currently has 11,000 global R&D personnel (more than 7,500 independent R&D), more than 400 senior experts, 13 people have been selected into the national "Thousand Talents Plan", in Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Italy Turin, Japan Yokohama, The United Kingdom Nottingham, the United States Detroit to establish a global R & D pattern, according to the evaluation results of the National Enterprise Technology Center, Changan Automobile's R & D strength has been ranked first in China's automotive industry for 5 consecutive years.
Reflected in patents, as of 2021, Changan Automobile has applied for a total of 14,477 domestic and foreign patents, of which 4,733 have applied for invention patents.
The benefits of making great strides forward in technology are self-evident, simply take the Blue Whale NE1.5T engine as an example, its maximum power is 132kW, it can output 300N·m maximum torque when approaching the idle state, the thermal efficiency is as high as 40%, and the data indicators lead the industry.
Based on this advantage in core power, the Changan car series equipped with Blue Whale Power will exceed 1 million sales in 2021, accounting for a new high.
In terms of the current popular intelligence and electrification, Changan Automobile still has a deep accumulation of technology, for example, in terms of intelligence, Changan Automobile has mastered more than 200 intelligent technologies in the field of intelligent driving, intelligent networking and intelligent interaction, and has now realized the mass production of a number of intelligent functions, including ACC, APA5.0 (APA6.0 also achieved the first technology launch in 2021), intelligent voice, flying screen interaction, etc.
In terms of new energy, Changan Automobile has core capabilities such as software and hardware development of control systems, integrated design of battery systems, and integrated design of electric drive systems, and has broken through the mastery of a number of key core technologies of new energy, and its technical strength has remained leading in China.
At present, Changan has two major new energy product architectures, CHN architecture and SDA architecture, the former integrating the advantages of Changan, Huawei and Cataline Era in the field of vehicle integration, software technology and battery, and the latter upgrading to the SDA platform architecture through the integration of EPA0, EPA1 and EPA2, mainly to create economic products.
At the 2021 Changan Automobile Ecological Technology Conference in the middle of the year, Changan Automobile said that it will strive to achieve sales of 3 million vehicles in 2025, of which new energy will account for 35%, and the above technical reserves are the basis for achieving this goal.
The idea of re-research and development has enabled Changan Automobile to not only reap fruitful results in the consumer market in 2021, but also won awards from many well-known third-party institutions.
For example: Yidong PLUS was awarded the benchmark model of in-car air quality, CS75PLUS won the "China Design Gold Award", won the "2021 China Automotive Intellectual Property Excellent Enterprise Award", the first user satisfaction index, UNI-V was selected as China's top ten body, UNI-K high score passed the C-IASI crash test of China Insurance Research Institute, and Blue Whale won the top ten engines in China for five consecutive years...
It can be seen that the deep technical reserves will become the first driving force for Chang'an's continuous upward mobility.
Fourth, on the basis of product strength improvement, Changan's services have been upgraded again
Probably from around 2019, a wave of car consumption upgrades wrapped in a wave of rejuvenation has surged forward.
In addition to the transformation of this generation of consumers' cognition of car attributes from a means of transportation to a third living space, their value dimension has also evolved from a simple car purchase and after-sales service to a full-life cycle value that covers pre-sale attention, in-sale car purchase, after-sales car purchase and brand derivation.
So in this context, a service system covering the whole cycle of the car is very important.
In fact, as early as the third entrepreneurial plan, Changan Automobile had already proposed the direction of transformation from serving customers to operating customers.
In 2019, Changan Automobile announced that it would invest 3 billion yuan in three years to create a "Zhiyin Partner Service Plan" and make "five commitments to honest service" to users in terms of price transparency, time standards, quality assurance, rapid response, and professional service; in 2020, Changan Automobile launched the Tianzi No. 1 Project - Customer Service Project, striving to provide customers with the fastest and most efficient service; in the future, it also includes the Shenbing Pan Warehouse Plan, channel upgrade plan, talent promotion plan, etc.
In January 2021, Changan Automobile also took the lead in building a transparent workshop, making the maintenance service process open, transparent and reassuring, making the service center management more simple, fast and refined, and fundamentally solving the "last mile" problem of customer trust in the service center, so as to enhance the customer's perception and sense of trust.
In December 2021, Changan went one step further and UNI Service was born, committed to breaking the underlying diseases of the industry and solving the pain points of customers in more scenarios.
To put it simply, "UNI Service" is a new service industry that is seamlessly connected online and offline, aiming to bring Changan Automobile's 20 million users the ultimate service experience with temperature, personalization and expectations.
Connect products and services, use high-value products, and a full-dimensional service system to bring Changan Automobile users a more perfect car experience.
Write at the end:
2021 is a fruitful year for Changan Automobile, relying on the continuous accumulation of technology and continuous innovation in products and even services, Changan Automobile is still striding forward at a time when the entire industry is in difficulty, with rapid growth, which is quite a unique meaning of scenery. With the gradual improvement of Changan Automobile's layout in new energy and intelligence, there is reason to believe that in the next decade of competition, Changan Automobile will still maintain a leading posture and continue to lead China's auto industry forward.