Written | Cold Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
As one of the first-line independent brands in China, Great Wall has laid down most of the country with SUVs.
By the end of last year, the cumulative global sales of the Great Wall Haval series had exceeded 7 million units, of which the best-selling H6 sold 370,000 units last year, and won the annual sales of SUV in the ninth year.
The Great Wall has created the H6 that has dominated the list of fuel vehicles for many years, and the ideal of the new energy track on the other side has also won the subdivision track championship with the sales of more than 90,000 yuan of the ideal ONE.
The Great Wall that has created two explosive models actually has a lot of similarities with the ideal, and we all know that the ideal ONE is often compared with the Highlander, and as early as 2012, the first product of the Great Wall to hit the high-end Haval H8 is also a Highlander.
Ideal brand homophony its founder Li Xiang, Great Wall's mid-to-high-end brand WEY is taken from the surname of Wei Jianjun, chairman of the Great Wall. Even the two people are a bit stubborn, Li wants to cling to the development of the extender, Wei Jianjun plunged into the SUV and never came out.
The year before, Li wanted to use several "TMDs" in a row to refute Feng Sihan, and wei Jianjun recently made similar remarks at the media dinner, in response to the view that "the ideal ONE will certainly not sell so much for a traditional brand", a sentence of "they understand a fart", it seems to be in contact with Li Want.
Although the two brands were born in different eras, they have the same magic in some places, and two similar stubborns standing in different camps will inevitably rub a fierce spark.
Li wanted to be anxious to burst out in order to prevent the program auger technology from being "stigmatized", so what was Wei Jianjun anxious about?
Surrounding "Wei" does not save the Great Wall
In the domestic automobile brand, there is a similar point of view to the Internet "woman, man and dog" theory for a long time, that is, "import > joint venture > autonomy", of which the joint venture brand in the middle reaches occupies the vast majority of the domestic high-end market, and the independent brand has to fight below the 100,000 yuan range for a long time, and even the "seal" of the 100,000-200,000 range has gradually loosened in recent years.
Due to the weakness of the early domestic automobile industry technology, after the reform and opening up, they have successively started by "imitation", of course, this is not to blame, it is impossible to deny the support of "imitation" for independent brands, if there is no Toyota Corolla and Honda CR-V, there may be no BYD F3 and Great Wall Haval H6, but the negative impact is that the brand image is difficult to break through. And the traditional independent brands have also begun a long-term tortuous brand exploration road.
However, in the three or five years since the emergence of new car-making forces, this "unspoken rule" has been broken.
Weilai sold the car to a price range of 300,000-500,000 yuan; although the starting price of Xiaopeng's first G3 was not high, the second P7 also successfully stood on the 200,000 yuan step, and the fourth G9 that followed still had an upward trend; even the ideal ONE that was considered to be the benchmark Highlander, which should be a plug-in model in the field of traditional car companies, also sold for more than 300,000 yuan.
Although the overall sales volume is still a big deal compared with traditional car companies, it has really taken the first step towards the high-end of its own brands. Therefore, the traditional car companies that have long been suppressed by the joint venture brand will inevitably have some emotions that need to be released, and didn't Li Shufu, who is also in the same camp, also express his dissatisfaction with Internet car manufacturing in 2018?
However, Geely and the Great Wall have their own challenges, geely blue plan failed to need a model based on new energy, and the Great Wall high-end brand has been difficult to improve.
In 2016, Geely and Great Wall have tacit understanding and have successively launched their own brands that have entered the high-end - Lynk & Co and WEY. The two independent high-end brands that started at the same time are inevitably often compared.
The WEY brand also continues the consistent style of the Great Wall, and is still a pure SUV, which is also Wei Jianjun's best play. In order to create a luxury concept, Yan Si, who has been with Audi for more than 30 years, was invited to serve as the CEO of the WEY brand, and Pierre Leclerc, the former design director of BMW's M series, personally handled the VV7 and VV5.
Due to the foundation laid by the Haval H6's reputation for SUV reputation, weY sales backed by the Great Wall grew rapidly, and the total sales of the two models exceeded 86,000 units in only 8 months and 4 months in the first year.
However, shortly after the VV7 and VV5 models were launched, the WEY brand ushered in an internal change, and design director Pierre Leclerc announced his departure. Not only that, in the following two years, the WEY brand was "three changes to its master", and the two general managers Yan Si and Liu Yan left successively, and finally Wei Jianjun personally took charge of WEY.
The internal management turmoil reflects the chaos of the product launch rhythm on the outside, from 2017 to 2018, WEY has successively launched VV7, VV5, VV6 and P8, and there has been no major action in the following two years, which makes people feel that the early stage is too strong and the late stage is weak.
On the contrary, Lynk & Co is more rhythmic, launching six models from 01-09 one after another, and building a product line from compact SUVs to medium and large SUVs + cars + new energy.
Although both pin their hopes on the upward movement of their own brands, they are somewhat different in the core, WEY is more like the product of the great wall technology upgrade, and Lynk & Co is the bridge for Geely to undertake Volvo technology.
From the CMA architecture to the SPA architecture, Lynk & Co, which undertakes Volvo technology, is more thoroughly cut with Geely's brand, and through Lynk & Co, Volvo technology is further decentralized into Geely's automotive products, such as in 2019, Lynk & Co passed the CMA basic modular architecture to Geely, creating a number of models such as Xingyue, Xingyue L, Xingrui, and Borui.
In the past 2021, Geely's three models of the China Star series built based on the CMA structure have sold a total of 210,000 vehicles, which has caught up with the sales of all Lynk & Co. Geely has won the sales crown for five consecutive years, for a certain reason.
Several models of the WEY brand have never escaped the shadow of Haval, and the similarity of the powertrain and chassis makes many users call it a "shell car", and it is also very easy to appear left and right, such as VV5 and Haval H6, VV7 and Haval H7.
Looking at the sales volume of the Great Wall in recent years, the total number of Great Wall Motors has not increased significantly after the launch of the WEY brand in 2016, and even declined for several consecutive years.
On the marketing side, Lynk & Co is very flattering to cut into the young market, while WEY chooses to use luxury and safety as a publicity to face the joint venture brand. If it is based on Internet marketing thinking, it is necessary to make a choice among male users, and it is obvious that young people's desire to consume and their acceptance of new things are much higher than those of middle-aged users.
De-"Havalization" is imminent, and at the beginning of 2021, WEY opened a brand renewal, transforming from the previous luxury and security positioning to intelligence. The naming rules of the car series were also changed to coffee series, and mocha, macchiato, and latte were listed one after another, but this also made WEY, a brand born less than 5 years old, lack of continuity and iteration, and only 58,000 units were sold in the whole year, or even less than the sales in the first year.
New energy partial science
Although WEY is the thorn in the heart of the Great Wall, the total sales of the Great Wall in 2021 achieved a positive and substantial increase, reaching 1.28 million units, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year, and about 165,000 more units than the previous year.
In fact, half of this extra part is Euler's contribution. By positioning the female brand, Euler has successfully achieved a path in the subdivision track, selling 135,000 vehicles in 2021, achieving a year-on-year increase of 140%.
However, the transformation of zero-run and the low gross profit of SAIC-GM-Wuling have proved that mini cars are not a long-term solution, and in recent years, the proportion of female users buying cars has continued to increase, but they are usually limited to the mini car market, which also means that Euler's ceiling is limited. In particular, the recent Euler core change incident has made this brand just improve, but it has been overshadowed.
The high-end attempt in the field of new energy was handed over to the sixth sub-brand of the Great Wall, Sharon.
Last year's Guangzhou Auto Show Salon Mech Dragon was officially unveiled, with its unusual appearance and high-configuration hardware, it caused a lot of discussion as soon as it appeared. However, how to support the price of nearly 500,000 yuan, there are still many questions to be solved.
Whether it is from the initial entry into the pickup truck, SUV market, or the creation of haval H6, Euler good cat, tank 300, Great Wall cannon, mecha dragon, Wei Jianjun's ability to create explosive models and market insight can be said to be comparable to Li Xiang, and even in terms of experience and absolute quantity, it has exceeded Li Xiang, but it has never been a high-end essential.
From an absolute number, H6 is 4 times that of the ideal ONE, but according to the data of the Association of Automobile Associations, the overall volume of fuel vehicles in 2021 is 5-6 times that of new energy vehicles, and the price of ideal ONE bicycles is more than 300,000, which is much higher than the price range of 110,000-160,000 in the H6 series. Coupled with the decline in H6 sales year by year, the absolute competitiveness may have long been different.
I don't know if H6 has been criticized for "imitating" Honda CR-V, or the first high-end product H8 to jump tickets three times due to transmission purchase, Wei Jianjun is very obsessed with technology research and development, from self-research and development motivation and gearbox, to invest 5 billion yuan to build the Great Wall Technology Center, the Great Wall has invested a lot in the traditional three major pieces, which is worth affirming.
At last year's Shanghai Auto Show, Great Wall Motors unveiled the first domestic high-end powertrain 3.0T+9AT/9HAT, which is composed of a 6Z30 engine independently developed by Great Wall and a 9-speed hydraulic automatic transmission/P2 hybrid 9-speed hydraulic automatic transmission. In this way, the voice of great wall's high-torque models is strengthened.
However, with the continuous rise of new energy penetration, the Great Wall is still launching large-displacement products, and the new energy field is currently more realized through hybridization, pure electric brands only do micro-cars of Euler and the salon that has not yet been delivered on a large scale.
Compared with BYD, new energy sales accounted for about 81.3% last year, and the sales of pure fuel vehicles accounted for only 5.3% in December, and bydir F3, a model similar to the Haval H6 that belongs to the brand's phenomenon, was officially discontinued in October last year.
On the other hand, although the proportion of new energy is also low, only 7.5%, there are many brands in the layout, such as Polar Star, Extreme Kr, Lotus, Volvo, Geometry, Remote, etc., involving B-end to C-end, hybrid to pure electricity in multiple directions.
epilogue
Wei Jianjun, like Li Xiang, is a person who thinks often and reflects in time.
Under the Baoding headquarters of the Great Wall, there is a stone stele of "Lessons from the Past", on which are engraved the mistakes made by the four Great Wall Motors.
From 2020 to Wei Jianjun's thirty years of car manufacturing, from the modification factory to the head of its own brand, the Great Wall is proud, but when he appeared in the short film "Can Great Wall Motors Survive Next Year?" In it, it goes against "common sense" and replaces celebration with reflection, hoping to arouse a sense of crisis up and down the Great Wall. In the film he says:
"If we think we have succeeded, every successful past may stumble on the future; if we do not see subversive changes, it must be us who are subverted; if we dare not break through the rules, then the rules will soon become a cage of creation." 」
According to an industry insider who has been in contact with Great Wall Motors for a long time, photon planet told Photon Planet that the Great Wall is very "wolf-like", and the goals and strategies of docking everyone with them are all unified.
What is the goal of the Great Wall at this stage? By 2025, global sales will be 4 million, new energy vehicles accounted for 80%, and operating income will exceed 600 billion yuan. At present, the sales volume of the Great Wall is 1.28 million units, and new energy accounts for nearly 10.7%. And we haven't seen the subversive changes that Wei Jianjun mentioned in the short film.
Will the Great Wall survive next year? The answer is obvious, survive, the question is can we survive the next era?