To say which country's car is the most popular in the Chinese market, we often argue between Japanese cars and German cars, and the fact is that although German cars came to the Chinese market first, they still can't resist the high recognition of Japanese brands by Chinese consumers in the past 30 years.
Take the past 2021, Japanese cars successfully surpassed German cars (22.3%) with a market share of 22.6%. The following figure is the change in the national market share of the domestic car market in 2021 announced by the Association of Passenger Vehicles, from which it is not difficult to find that Japanese brands occupy almost 1/4 of the domestic market, and in our real life, the Xuanyi, Civic, and Corolla that can be seen everywhere are also proving the current situation of Japanese cars "walking horizontally" in China.
So are Japanese brands really so unstoppable? No, let's look at the growth rate, sales and share data of different models released by the Association of Passengers, it can be clearly seen that in 2021, whether it is in the SUV or the field of cars, there have been different degrees of sales decline, of which the sales growth rate of Japanese SUVs is -0.3%, and the sales growth rate of Japanese cars is -3.4%, so the situation of going hand in hand can be said to be very rare for Japanese brands, and then compare the rapid development of independent brand models. The performance of Japanese cars is obviously not satisfactory.
Toyota, a Japanese brother, sold 1.944 million vehicles in China in 2021, an increase of 8.2% over the previous year, but its owner Huadan Corolla sold 310,000 vehicles last year, down 13.8% year-on-year, which is a dangerous signal for Toyota. As a high-end brand under Toyota, Lexus's sales in 21 years fell by 6.92% year-on-year, and the prospects are very worrying.
The second brother of the Japanese honda can not laugh, its total sales in 2021 fell by 2.48% year-on-year. Some people say that the 2.48% decline looks OK, but don't forget that Honda also has a high-end brand - Acura, which only delivered 5762 vehicles last year, and the average monthly sales did not even reach 500 units, which is a precarious sales volume that makes many French brands happy.
The most tragic thing is that Nissan, only one model of Xuanyi is trying to support the façade, occupying the first position in the sales of A-class cars for a long time, but despite this, the sales volume of Xuanyi last year is still less than 2020, and the proportion of Sales of Dongfeng Nissan occupied by Xuanyi does not fall but rises, which is not a good phenomenon, after all, such a large manufacturer cannot rely on only one model to feed. The new generation of Qijun, which was originally pinned high hopes, was not recognized by consumers because of Nissan's "riot operation", and became an online joke, and the old Qijun that was forced to resume production also had no sincerity at all, which made people sigh.
For Nissan is more inflammatory is its high-end brand Infiniti, last year's sales were only one-third of 2020, its sense of existence is so low that if it is not a big star spokesperson who signed a contract last year, Infiniti has terminated the partnership overnight and a wave of hot searches, it is estimated that no one remembers this brand.
So in the context of the overall recovery of the domestic market, what led to such a situation? Putting aside the problem of chip shortage, Xiaobian believes that the most important reason why Japanese brands encounter Waterloo in the domestic market can be attributed to two words - arrogance.
Why say so, let's review the performance of Japanese brands in the past two years, low with high prices in terms of products, no enterprising at the technical level, saving on configuration, very arrogant in service, not to mention that some models still have a series of quality problems such as oil leakage, gearbox setbacks, and interior noise, making the complaint rate of Japanese brands remain high. But even so, few of these problems can really be solved, just with the arrogant attitude of Japanese cars, the decline in sales is also reasonable.
However, this also shows one thing on the side, Chinese consumers have become more rational, if Japanese, Ashkenazi and other joint venture brands still want to lie down and make Chinese money, aggressive independent brands will soon be able to teach them a lesson.