In the whole year of 2021, the Toyota brand did 2 big things - 1. Successfully defended the global sales crown; 2. Sales in the North American market surpassed GM, ending the latter's 90-year dominance. Looking at China, the cumulative sales of the two joint ventures in 2021 reached 1.944 million units, an increase of about 8.2% year-on-year; the sales of imported luxury brands Lexus exceeded 200,000 units.
Looking back at 2021, the entire Toyota brand can be said to be smooth sailing in China. Both in terms of overall sales and new product launches have made big moves. Just at the end of the year, we will review Toyota's 2021 in China from the three aspects of sales, key events and new product planning.
Toyota's domestic sales in 2021: Total sales of 1.944 million units, up 8.2% y/y
In 2021, only Toyota, the three major Japanese brands in China, maintained sales growth. It is inseparable from the sales contribution of two joint ventures, FAW Toyota, GAC Toyota and imported brand Lexus. In addition, 2021 is Toyota's product year, and it has launched the updating and replacement of a number of key new cars, which has received a relatively good market response.
For FAW Toyota, its annual sales volume was 860019 units. Among them, the Corolla family has 330,300 units; the Rongfang family year is 203,400 units; the high-end sub-brand Crown Lufang has sold 25,173 vehicles since its listing in August; Lingfang has sold 7,929 vehicles since its listing in November; and the Asiatic Lion has sold 33,165 vehicles since its listing in April.
GAC Toyota's annual sales volume was 840396 units. Among them, the Camry sold 217724 units in the whole year, which is the mainstay of GAC Toyota's sales; the new Highlander, which went on sale in June, sold 107733 units; and the compact SUV Veranda sold 130,880 units.
As for Lexus, according to the number of insurance, its domestic insurance vehicles are 219,000 vehicles, a decrease of 6.8% over 2020. In terms of models, ES sales were 105,800 units, RXs were 48,600 units, and NX units were 36,500 units.
It can be seen that Toyota's three major domestic sales brands, of which the sales share is concentrated in traditional advantageous models like FAW Toyota's Corolla, Rongfang family, GAC Toyota's Camry and Lexus ES; other new products listed this year have also contributed a considerable amount of sales, more representative is FAW Toyota Crown Land, only 4 months of sales contributed to FAW Toyota's annual sales of nearly 3%, of course, this is related to its own sister model of Highlander. Since Toyota's sales are inseparable from the launch of new models, then we will review the important time node of the Toyota brand to launch new cars this year.
Toyota 2021 Memorabilia: Highlander Replacement of New and Old Halls /North-South Synomic Church; FAW Toyota Launches Crown Sub-Brand; Domestic Xena "Premium Sales"
At the beginning and end of the year, North and South Toyota listed Asiatic Lions/Lingshang in the A+ class, and Corolla Ruifang/Fenglanda and Lingfang/Weissa in the A+ and B+ classes respectively. It looks like 6 cars, but in fact, there are only 3 models, the entry-level SUV - Corolla Cross, the mid-to-high-end SUV - Harrier/Venza, the compact + sedan - "Corolla Extended Edition", respectively, to the north and south Toyotas for domestic sales.
Asiatic Lion/Ling Shang
These three models are general in terms of popularity and importance, so they are also put on the market at both ends of the year. In terms of sales performance, these models are not Toyota's hot models. In addition, there was a naming storm on the Asiatic lion.
The so-called storm was actually the initial naming that would offend consumers in the liangguang area in pronunciation, so the official quickly withdrew the model naming. Here you can actually see the subtle differences between the two joint ventures of Toyota in the north and south. Due to its earlier establishment and stronger seniority, FAW Toyota often gets more good model resources, such as the crown and Ruizhi in the early years, and even the top pillar of the Toyota off-road vehicle family - Prado and Land Cruiser, and even Kosda are placed in the Sichuan base to produce, which will "take out the bottom" of Toyota.
Ling Fang /Wei Sa and Corolla Rui Fang / Feng Landa
The two models that will be launched in the late 2021, the Corolla Cross and the HARRIER, are also not major models. Among them, two domestic versions of Corolla Cross are positioned as entry-level compact SUVs, similar to Volkswagen's Tange, seizing the low-price entry SUV market; the two domestic versions of HARRIER (Venza) are "more advanced RAV4" (you can also understand it as a lite version of NX).
Although the price of the former is low, the product strength is not comprehensive; although the product strength of the latter is strong, the price has gone to a higher level range. It is destined not to set off many storms in the market segment, and it is enough to meet Toyota's demand for a coherent and complete product line. Therefore, from the time of listing, we can also find that these cars do not seem to be very important to Toyota.
Highlander/Crown land release, cloud car purchase to solve the terminal markup problem
Highlander has always been the sales pillar within GAC Toyota, and the third-generation Highlander has been "premium sales" throughout its life cycle from launch to replacement. The replacement and listing of the fourth generation of Highlander can be said to have completely solved the problem of the previous shortage of Highlander supply. From the perspective of time, the two "Highlanders" of North and South Toyota are listed in the middle of the year. Among them, the GAC Toyota version was released in June two months earlier, while the FAW Toyota version was released in August. It is worth noting that although GAC Toyota Highlander went public 2 months in advance, the actual delivery was still in August, coinciding with the listing time of Crown Land. Here's an important point so you can understand the "problems" that arise later in Xena.
Starting with the fourth-generation Highlander, the supply problem of this car has been solved. The fundamental reason is the introduction of the TNGA architecture, the localization of the power system, and the domestic production of this sister car by FAW Toyota. In addition, GAC Toyota has also launched the "Fengyunxing" online car booking and purchase system on this basis, uploading the order scheduling status to the network, so that consumers can more transparently understand the delivery process.
Therefore, the problems of Highlander price increase and delayed delivery for a long time have been solved. At the same time, the increase in production capacity has made Highlander/Crown Lufang the top player in sales in this category.
Domestic Xena will take "premium sales" to the extreme
However, even if the TNGA model is under the structure, it stands to reason that there should be no more capacity problems. But for dealers who have been eating "premium sales" dividends, this is undoubtedly a blow to their heads. The official attitude of turning a blind eye to this may also be a one-eyed one-eye attitude, condemning premium sales but ignoring it. The aforementioned Highlander, when GAC Toyota announced its listing, there was a short "mark-up period", but due to the rapid pace of the listing of the FAW Toyota version and the launch of the official booking APP, highlander's mark-up storm was not hot, and a small number of dealers also got the "early sale" booking premium, and the matter was over.
For hot-selling models such as Highlander, FAW Toyota will never be able to "let go" GAC Toyota to sell them 2 months before it goes public. Therefore, you will find that the actual delivery time of highlander is also after the official announcement of the crown land release.
When it came to the domestic race, the official trick was repeated. GAC Toyota announced the launch of the domestic Syna in November, and according to the previous plan, the faw Toyota version will not be available until the first quarter of 2022. Release price, official announcement of the listing, but I am afraid that the production line has not yet been officially scheduled, so you may also find that The Sai Na has been listed for so long, why can't you see a single one on the road? In fact, don't talk about you, even our review editor, the borrowed test drive has gone through several twists and turns, and almost been "cut off halfway" by the peer media.
Control the source of goods, dealers have gray operation space, anyway, everyone does not have a car, I said add tens of thousands of dollars or add tens of thousands? This is also the fundamental reason for the rumored price increase of 70,000 or even more than 100,000 yuan in the early stage of Xena's listing. Sai Na is afraid that to this day there is no scheduling, but the dealer is holding a large deposit in the hands of many buyers, first take it for three or four months to make a profit, and then refund the principal to you (the interest is mine)!
However, I am afraid that this situation will be solved with the launch of the FAW Toyota version. If you have already booked a car, don't worry, you just think that the car is not currently on the market.
2022 New Product Planning: Full delivery of Xena, launch of electric vehicles/high-performance niche vehicles
At the beginning of 2022, the most important thing is probably the listing of the previously mentioned FAW Toyota version of "Sai Na", which will be listed like the Crown Lufang, completely ending the premium sales of Xena and putting the market back on track. In terms of new product planning, the most important thing about the Toyota brand in China is probably the listing of the first pure electric vehicle, the bZ4X.
Toyota bZ pure electric exclusive series, it is based on this concept to create. In order to meet the demand for BEV products in China, Japan, the United States, Europe and other markets, and to win the trust of consumers in areas with abundant renewable energy power supply, Toyota plans to sell seven models of this series globally by 2025, and the Chinese market will become the market with the largest introduction of this series of products, and it is expected to introduce five of them. Using the exclusive BEV platform based on e-TNGA (Toyota's first), which realizes an extraordinary driving experience with low center of gravity and high rigidity, this exclusive platform was jointly developed with SUBARU. The bZ4X launched in the Chinese market is equipped with battery packs jointly developed with CATL CATL and produced in Toyota's exclusive production line. The time to market will be in mid-2022.
Toyota naturally did not forget to bring niche performance cars to domestic fans, and the GR86 will also announce the price in 2022 and "return" to the Chinese market. Compared with subaru's new BRZ's "National SIX B No Talk", whether GR86 can give a good explanation to domestic car fans has become the biggest attraction in 2022. Whether the GR86 can be successfully introduced is also related to another small steel gun - GR YARiS.
Full text summary:
Toyota's 2021 can be said to be a fruitful harvest, whether it is sales or word of mouth, on the one hand, it has taken advantage of policy opportunities, on the other hand, it has also seized the trend of market demand and launched products that meet the needs of current consumers (even in North America, it has overturned the former land snake by selling pickup trucks). In China, Toyota's development is also in a booming situation, which has a sense of déjà vu of the Volkswagen brand ten years ago. At that time, Volkswagen faced the market with arrogance and was subsequently pulled off the altar; will Toyota repeat the mistakes of the past? We need to look further.