Bun/Korichi-sensei
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When you think of Dongfeng Honda, what car does you think of?
Is it the Civic, which is imbued with track passion, or the CR-V, the overlord of compact SUVs? In the world of Dongben, it seems that no car has ever been unsalable, and almost every one of them is a hit, which is the evaluation of Dongben by the outside world.
With the ringing of the 2022 New Year bell, Dongfeng Honda also bid farewell to a more memorable year. In the past few days, Dongfeng Honda has announced its latest 2021 sales results.
In 2021, Dongfeng Honda's cumulative terminal sales for the whole year were 793,000 units. Specifically, the CR-V sold 222,000 units in the whole year, becoming the 2021 joint venture SUV sales champion and contributing 28% of Dongfeng Honda's sales.
At the same time, Dongfeng Honda's electrification transformation is also accelerating, and the electrification family, including "Sharp Hybrid", sold 137341 vehicles in the whole year, an increase of 47% year-on-year.
In such a difficult situation, sales are still close to 800,000 vehicles, which is a welcome achievement. In particular, the listing of The Inspi models has ranked among the ranks of medium-sized cars with monthly sales of more than 10,000.
With the continuous acceleration of electrification and the continuous introduction of electric models, Dongfeng Honda has begun the second half of the track. In the first half, Dongfeng Honda won the support of many fans with its benchmarks of home and sports. At the moment of continuous electrification transformation, what are the highlights of Dongfeng Honda's 2021 sales performance? What are the deficiencies? What opportunities are hidden?
▌Overall sales fell by 4% year-on-year, how big is the impact of missing cores?
From the terminal data, Dongfeng Honda will retail 793,000 vehicles in 2021. In fact, such results are already very good, in any car company, 793,000 vehicles are excellent.
However, in 2020, Dongfeng Honda sold 820,000 vehicles, setting a record for annual sales. In the front, there will be a 4% decline in the year-on-year data.
To be honest, Dongfeng Honda has been quite difficult in the past year.
First affected by the epidemic, then affected by the lack of cores and anxiety about the supply of parts. In March 2021, a serious fire broke out in Japan's Renesas Electronics, the world's leading supplier of automotive-grade chips, which made the already stretched chip supply even tighter, with many Japanese car companies such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda bearing the brunt.
After this, the impact of the lack of cores began to be more pronounced. From May to August 2021, Dongfeng Honda's sales volume is difficult to exceed 50,000 vehicles, and the monthly sales data has declined by 30% or even 40% year-on-year. Obviously, Dongfeng Honda's sales have declined, and the lack of core is a major incentive.
Let's look at the specific models.
As Dongfeng Honda's "blockbuster" SUV, CR-V sold a total of 222325 new cars in 2021. Although it has declined compared to the 249983 units sold in 2020, the CR-V is still Honda's best-selling model in China.
CR-V sales declined, except for the lack of cores, or affected by Haoying. The power, configuration, etc. of the two cars are almost the same, but the appearance shows a different style. Therefore, to a certain extent, Haoying diverted the sales of CR-V. In 2021, GUANGC Honda Haoying sold a total of 162,900 new cars, achieving year-on-year growth.
The XR-V is the second best-selling model in the Dongfeng Honda SUV camp, with a total of 191417 units sold in 2021, compared with the cumulative sales of 168272 units in 2020, an increase of 13.8% year-on-year.
Although it is the end of the generation, XR-V's sales momentum in 2021 is still very strong. Behind the hot sales, it is inseparable from the blessing of Honda's brand power; at the same time, XR-V generally offers 10,000 yuan in the terminal, which also boosts the sales of this car to a new level. After the XR-V generation, I believe that sales can be further upgraded.
In contrast, in the "troika" of Dongfeng Honda's sales, the performance of the Civic is not so optimistic.
According to the data of the Association, the Civic sold a total of 166,000 vehicles in 2021, down 30% year-on-year, and barely squeezed into the top 15 of the car retail sales list. In May 2021, the Civic even sold more than 4,000 vehicles, a year-on-year decline of more than 80%. In the past, Civic had broken hands with Corolla, Sagittarius, and so on. In 2020, the Civic is also a frequent flyer in the top ten of the sedan rankings.
What's the problem?
Missing cores.
Consistent with the reason for the decline in sales of other models of Dongfeng Honda, the decline in sales does not have much to do with the model itself, which can be seen from the preferential margin. As a veteran who has been in the market for 5 years, the current discount of the Ten Generations Civic is only about 5,000 yuan, but it can still achieve good sales, and it has to be said that the product force is indeed very strong.
After the eleventh generation of Civic is new, in addition to the great improvement in the design, the new car has also been greatly improved in terms of vehicle size, and the space inside the car has been significantly improved and more practical. If Dongfeng Honda can get out of the lack of cores, the eleventh generation Civic should have a lot of promise in 2022.
In addition to the above three models, Yingshipai, which was re-launched in November 2021, has also achieved sales of more than 10,000 vehicles and achieved a good start. But in the mid-size car market, whether Yingshipai can become a qualified "spoiler" depends on the later performance.
In addition, in 2021, the Alexand model has also ushered in an upgrade. However, the updated Alishen was only listed on December 30, and the sales volume has not yet had time to exert force, and the sales in 2021 are all contributed by the original Alishen.
In 2021, The total sales volume of Alexand was 52,214 vehicles, ranking fifth in the MPV sales list, achieving a year-on-year increase of 20%. This is invaluable. This is enough to prove that AliShen has eaten the hot dividend of MPV in 2021 and played his own name.
Compared with the old model, the replacement of the Alexander style has been upgraded to a certain extent, and the blackened matrix net on the front face is more tense, which can better capture the appetite of more young people. Judging from the evaluation of netizens, the prospect of replacing Ai Lishen is also more optimistic.
Of course, the competition in the MPV market is becoming more and more fierce, and Ai Lishen's opponents have not stopped for a moment. In China, the Toyota Syna, which went on sale at the end of October 2021, became the hottest model at that time. As a medium and large MPV for the North American market, this car has been introduced into domestic sales through parallel imports. After GAC Toyota made it domestic, it was in short supply for a while, and there was even a state of price increase. In 2022, the contest between the new Alexand and Xena may continue to heat up. What kind of tricks Higashimoto will use is worth looking forward to.
▌ Electrification family grows by 47% The first pure electric model is coming soon
In terms of electrification, Dongfeng Honda announced that the annual sales of the electric family will 137341 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 47% year-on-year.
Perhaps Dongfeng Honda's understanding of the electric family is different from that of other car companies. Dongfeng Honda's electrification family is mostly light hybrid cars, rather than plug-in hybrid or pure electric.
In the past few years, Japanese brands such as Toyota and Honda have focused their skills on light mixing, ignoring the development of plug-in mixing and pure electric routes. Until some independent brands took the lead in "plugging in and mixing fuel consumption" to achieve the level of light mixing, Japanese brands began to develop other routes step by step.
At present, Dongfeng Honda has not yet launched a pure electric model, which has caused it to lose a relatively large market. In 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, and the growth rate reached the highest level since 2016.
Higashimoto obviously couldn't sit still.
On October 21, 2021, Dongfeng Honda released its first model based on the pure electric platform e:NS1, and the new pure electric concept car e:N Coupe Concept, and also unveiled the all-field electrification family matrix.
E:NS1 this car is very interesting, as Honda's first pure electric model in China, and Honda's world's first pure electric SUV, e:NS1 equipped with Honda pure electric architecture "e: N Architecture", high-power drive motor, large-capacity high-density battery, pure electric vehicle exclusive frame and chassis platform as many.
More importantly, in terms of appearance, e:NS1 adopts a new design language "e:N Design", the shape is simple and sharp, and uses the symbolic new car logo of the e:N series.
Renewed from the inside out, this is Dongfeng Honda's first card in the era of pure electric. Right behind, Dongfeng Honda has more cards to play. In the field of pure electric vehicles, Dongfeng Honda plans to launch a number of e:N models in a row in the next five years. Officials said that with the unveiling of the e:NS1 strategic model, Dongfeng Honda will open the prelude to a new journey of electrification.
Can Dongfeng Honda get a share of the domestic electric vehicle market? This question should be viewed dialectically.
Judging from the trend in some electrification fields, Dongfeng Honda and many joint venture vehicles are undoubtedly lagging behind. Taking September 2021 as an example, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 334,000 units this month, of which about 19,400 units of mainstream joint venture brand new energy vehicles were retailed, accounting for only 5.81%.
In the face of the trend of electrification, it is common for joint venture car companies to "slow down the step". Take Volkswagen, the sales of the ID series still can't beat the new forces of car-making such as Wei Xiaoli, the key is that these traditional car companies still use the old idea of doing fuel vehicles before to do electric vehicles, so it is also appropriate to be hung by the new forces of car-making with the thinking of the Internet.
Volkswagen's ID series car machine still uses the most original operating system, and often crashes, while Weilai's operating system is very silky and smooth. This is only the appearance, and the deeper level is that the personnel structure of traditional car companies is not the same as the reaction speed when encountering new weather vanes.
To put it bluntly, the product is only the "effect" of these "causes".
Whether Dongfeng Honda can jump out of the thinking of traditional car companies remains to be tested. Previously, toyota released the Yize EV, the price is as high as more than 200,000, even only 100 yuan cheaper than the Tesla Model 3. How can such a car compete with Tesla? Some are confusing.
The CX-30 electric version launched by Mazda in China has made wrong improvements on the fuel vehicle platform, resulting in a very uncoordinated proportion of the whole vehicle and becoming a laughingstock.
Now we can only hope that Dongfeng Honda will not make the mistakes that other Japanese players have made.
On the other hand, Honda's product images are different from those of Mazda and Toyota. In China, Honda is the image of IKEA's sports, which can both harvest the family car market and stir up the storm in the sports market. It doesn't place more emphasis on home use like Toyota, nor does it overemphasize sports like Mazda, but strikes a good balance between the two.
This makes people curious about Honda's first pure electric car. Honda's first car is a pure electric platform, which is enough to see its determination to promote electrification.
In October 2021, Honda China announced the route of future electrification transformation at its electrification strategy conference: officially released the new brand of pure electricity "e: N", the world premiere of 3 concept cars, and will be mass-produced in the next 5 years. During this period, Honda intends to launch 10 pure electric vehicles to compete in the domestic market.
More importantly, after 2030, only pure electric vehicles and hybrid models will be promoted in the Chinese market, and fuel vehicles will completely withdraw from Honda's product matrix. I have to say that this determination is absolutely in place.
Judging from the electrification plans of several major Japanese brands, Honda has launched the most electric vehicle models in the next 5 years, and the pace of catching up with the era of electrification is more radical.
2021 has become a story of the past, in 2022, with the blessing of pure electric vehicles, with a series of new models of planning, what will Dongfeng Honda achieve? Worth looking forward to.
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