In "The Three-Body Problem", Liu Cixin used Luo Jizhi to expose the "most important secret of the universe" - "the law of the dark forest", and also made "dimensionality reduction attack" a commercial strategy and became popular.
What is a dimensionality reduction attack? The interpretation is to reduce the three-dimensional space to a two-dimensional space, thereby destroying the opponent's attack method. In the market competition, it is manifested as taking the initiative to reduce the competitiveness of a certain core dimension of competitors to zero, and competing with opponents in a more competitive advantage dimension, so as to achieve the result of commercial competition with small and broad, weak and strong.
However, as market competition enters a new dimension, the industry generally believes that the realization of "dimensionality reduction strike" requires more "dimensionality upgrading thinking". As far as the automobile industry is concerned, the current industry is facing unprecedented changes, the new four modernizations have become the key to the transformation of car companies, and the digital revolution is also constantly boosting the transformation of enterprises.
Under the new competitive landscape, industry competition has been transformed into competition of comprehensive strength, and GAC Toyota is well versed in this way. It is understood that as early as 2019, GAC Toyota proposed brand evolution, and brand sales with the change of thinking also achieved a leap from 580,000 to 840,000 vehicles, and the user base also increased to 6.18 million.
Today, in the new stage of the brand entering the 18-year-old coming-of-age ceremony, GAC Toyota also put forward the concept of brand upgrading, and is committed to achieving "quantity" and "quality" upgrading with high-value products, high-quality services and high-grade experience, and launching an impact on millions of sales in 2022. At the beginning of the new year, Buycar, a car buying network, also walked into GAC Toyota with the "Global Thought Exchange" activity to witness the power of brand upgrading.
Technical blessing, achievement pyramid layout
From 580,000 vehicles sold annually in 2018, to 680,000 vehicles in 2019, and then to 760,000 vehicles in 2020, GAC Toyota has been steadily moving forward with double-digit growth in the face of the automotive industry in the downward channel.
In the past 2021, in the face of unfavorable factors such as the chip crisis and rising raw material prices, GAC Toyota still maintained a good rhythm, with cumulative sales of more than 840,000 vehicles in the whole year, achieving an increase of 11% year-on-year. Among them, TNGA model sales accounted for 79%; Hybrid Family sales reached 182,000 units, an increase of 98% year-on-year.
In the view of Huang Yongqiang, deputy general manager of GAC Toyota, behind such achievements, it has benefited from the empowerment of the whole value chain system.
First of all, at the technical level, GAC Toyota introduced the Toyota TNGA architecture, which comprehensively covers many aspects such as research and development, production and sales, laying a solid foundation for the high-quality development of enterprises.
At the same time, through the continuous introduction of new technologies, GAC Toyota has taken the lead in mass production of naturally aspirated, turbocharged, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric power technologies. The data shows that in 2021, GAC Toyota hybrid model sales accounted for 21%.
Secondly, in terms of product structure, GAC Toyota has improved the full product coverage of the mainstream market of cars, SUVs and MPVs, and formed a full-engine layout including gasoline, HEV, PHEV and EV, bringing consumers more diversified product choices. In 2021, GAC Toyota introduced 10 new vehicles, further improving the coverage of the market segment.
Zhang Geng, head of the public relations department of GAC Toyota's marketing department, pointed out that through the continuous replacement of new products, the pyramid layout of GAC Toyota's entire products has been completed. Among them, Xena, Camry and Highlander form "three flagships" to lead the value improvement; Weisa, Willanda, Lingshang, etc. promote the growth of mainstream market segments; Leiling, C-HR, Zhixuan, etc. further consolidate the chassis.
Under the all-round force, GAC Toyota has also achieved the advancement of the brand. As Huang Yongqiang said, from the evolution of the former brand to the current brand upgrade, GAC Toyota's goal is to achieve the common upgrade of "quantity and quality", and to complete the upgrading of GAC Toyota's system capabilities, "from quality touching the world" to "taste leading the trend", every layout of GAC Toyota is trying to change the development ideas of joint venture car companies in the Chinese market.
The three major strategies to promote the "million system" to achieve
If 2021 is the year of GAC Toyota's comprehensive advancement, then 2022 will be a year for GAC Toyota to jump to the "brand upgrade", and GAC Toyota has also set the goal of producing and selling 1 million vehicles a year and moving towards the head camp of joint venture car companies.
In order to achieve this goal, GAC Toyota has also deployed three major battles of comprehensive high-end, all-round electrification, and all-field technology, and went all out to "mass-produce happiness for users".
Specifically, in terms of the comprehensive high-end strategy, with the completion of the three flagships of Camry, Highlander and Xena, they have built a complete product camp composed of cars, SUVs and MPVs at the price of 200,000, 300,000 and 400,000 respectively.
Taking Camry as an example, its cumulative sales in 2021 have reached a level of 200,000 vehicles, ranking first in the sales volume of the mid-to-high-end sedan market with a year-on-year growth of 17%. Among them, the sales volume of products above 200,000 yuan accounted for 57%, and the sales volume of 2.5L hybrid models also accounted for more than 50%, leading the high-value growth of the market segment.
In GAC Toyota's latest plan, from 2022, the sales volume of the three flagships will account for more than 40%, thus enabling GAC Toyota to establish a more high-end brand image in mainstream joint ventures.
In addition to high-end, in the face of the wave of new energy, GAC Toyota will also take the dual-engine hybrid as the core to accelerate electrification in an all-round way. Zheng Yun, senior partner of Roland Berger and vice president of Greater China, believes that the penetration rate of China's new energy vehicles will reach 25% in 2022 and 27% in 2023, and by the mid-term target of 2030, pure electricity and hybrid will become the main force in the market.
In the face of the new energy vehicle market dividend, GAC Toyota will also accelerate its layout. As one of the few enterprises in the industry with a hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and pure electric all-engine layout, GAC Toyota plans to account for nearly 60% of the sales of electrified models by 2025 and reach 100% by 2035; the sales of hybrid models account for more than 50%, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 36%, and the cumulative sales volume will reach 2.3 million.
In addition to focusing on the product level with comprehensive high-end and all-round electrification, GAC Toyota will also promote innovation with all-field technology and user demand, and actively embrace new technologies and new changes.
According to the plan, next, GAC Toyota's full range of models will support OTA functions, 100% equipped with Toyota's latest Vehicle Networking; accelerate the digital construction of enterprises, promote marketing precision, production lean, R&D agility, intelligent management, cross-field collaboration 57 projects in 5 major areas, and achieve comprehensive digitization of company operations during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period and empower high-quality development.
Overall, 2022 is the 18-year-old coming-of-age ceremony of GAC Toyota, and it is also a key year for GAC Toyota to impact annual production and sales of 1 million vehicles and move towards the head camp of joint venture car companies. As Huang Yongqiang said, from "brand evolution" to "brand upgrading", it is the common upgrading of quantity and quality, the upgrading of system capabilities, and the upgrading of GAC Toyota from "quality touching the world" to "taste leading the trend", GAC Toyota will continue to promote the upgrading of services with high-value products, high-quality services and high-grade experience.
As a senior expert in the industry, Wu Yingqiu, chairman and CEO of Huanqiu Automobile Group, also pointed out that high-end, electrification and technology are the three core grasps of GAC Toyota's next development, that is, to grasp it correctly, grasp it in a timely manner and grasp it accurately, GAC Toyota's upgrading is sufficiently forward-looking, more operable, and it is also a rare joint venture with healthy development and growth in the market. China's joint venture cooperation has entered the "post-joint venture era", and GAC Toyota is defining a new model for the development of joint venture enterprises in the post-joint venture era.