On the first working day of the new year, Kia and Yueda announced their intention to form a joint venture company, expand investment, open a new era of joint ventures, and will release a new company name in April.
Speaking of Dongfeng Yueda Kia, I have to mention my feelings about this brand. At the end of 2019, I went to Xining, the largest city on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, to do sales training for the Kia 4S store in Xining.
At that time, Dongfeng Yueda Kia has begun to fall into a sales crisis, under the influence of independent brands with continuous improvement of product strength and joint venture brands with continuous upgrading of brand influence, Dongfeng Yueda Kia has long been reduced to a third-rate automobile brand in the eyes of consumers, and the same source of Hyundai has long been incomparable, and can only rely on holding promotional activities to increase sales.
In the Dongfeng Yueda Kia group buying activity in the Xining area that I participated in, although the manufacturer gave a high range of cash discounts, after spending a week, the final real transaction of the 4 Dongfeng Yueda Kia 4S stores in Xining was not much, and the age of the consumers who bought the car was basically more than the age of the standing, which also showed that the young consumers at that time were less and less interested in Kia, and Kia's customer base was gradually decreasing, which was a completely different contrast with the Dongfeng Yueda Kia more than a decade ago.
According to the data, in 2009, the cumulative sales of Dongfeng Yueda Kia reached 240,000 vehicles, an increase of 70% year-on-year, and the sales volume in December of the same year exceeded 30,000 units, an increase of 102% year-on-year, and the monthly sales continued until 2016, when the annual sales of Dongfeng Yueda Kia even reached 650,000 vehicles, ranking 11th in China, and after that, Dongfeng Yueda Kia began to go downhill, K2, K3 and other major models sales fell successively, and funds lost money year after year.
Image from the Multiplication Association
Since 2017, Dongfeng Yueda Kia's operating income has also declined continuously, in less than 5 years, a total loss of 9.035 billion yuan, net assets have also plunged sharply, which makes Dongfeng Yueda Kia, a three-party joint venture between Kia Motors, Dongfeng Motor and Yueda Group, even broken, at the end of 2021, Dongfeng Motors completely withdrew from Dongfeng Yueda Kia and sold 25% of the shares it held in Dongfeng Yueda Kia. Since then, the former Dongfeng Yueda Kia Automobile has changed from a tripartite joint venture to a joint venture between Yueda and Kia, and there has been an initial announcement of the proposed establishment of a joint venture company, expanding investment and opening a new era of joint venture.
In addition, Yueda Kia will also focus on promoting the introduction of global strategic models and new energy vehicles, and will successively launch 6 new electric vehicles to promote the introduction of global strategic models and new energy vehicles by 2027, and will successively launch 6 new electric vehicles by 2027, and will integrate global resources to better feed the Chinese market and provide Chinese consumers with more products and services worth looking forward to
In recent years, Kia has indeed been in two different situations in the Chinese market and the global market, kia's global sales in 2021 were 2,777,056 units, an increase of 6.5% compared with 2020, while sales in the Chinese market have been hidden because they are too low.
Kia can get more than 2.7 million sales in the global market can fully show that Kia has a strong car-making strength, its products can also be recognized in the global market, but only in the Chinese market, Kia did not give too much attention, obviously the overseas version of the product force is more excellent but delayed in introducing domestic, resulting in Kia lost the opportunity to grasp the market rhythm, whether it is brand awareness or product strength is getting lower and lower.
If Kia could have introduced overseas models to China as well-known joint venture car companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Toyota, and even made some optimizations for Chinese consumers, Kia would not be as sad as it is today. Today's Yueda Kia announced that it will focus on promoting global strategic models in the future, and believes that with the introduction of global vehicles, Kia can regain control of the market rhythm in the environment surrounded by strong enemies in China.