Just after the new car-making forces and BYD have released the sales data for January 2022, Geely Automobile's January sales report card has also arrived as promised.
Geely Automobile's total sales in January 2022 were about 146,400 units, down about 6% from the same period last year, and thankfully, the pure electric model increased by about 641% year-on-year to 15,442 units, a record high.
Among them, Geely's new energy models (including Geely, Krypton, Geometry, and Ruilan) sold 17,928 units in January, of which 15,442 pure electric models, a year-on-year surge of about 641%, a record high; plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) sold 2,407 units, an increase of 229% year-on-year; and gasoline-electric hybrid models (HEVs) sales were 79 units.
It can be seen that Geely Automobile's new energy road still mainly relies on pure electric models, plug-in hybrid, oil-electric hybrid is a supporting role, such a strategic idea is consistent with BYD, the Great Wall, in line with the current new energy vehicles to pure electricity-based general direction.
01 The geometry after the turnover
Geely's current pure electricity layout has three major brands - geometric brand, extreme krypton, and ruilan.
Specifically, the geometric brand sold 10,229 vehicles in January, a sharp increase of 391% year-on-year; Extreme Kr Intelligent Technology delivered 3,530 vehicles in January; and Geely Automobile's new generation of power-changing models, Ruilan Automobile, sold 1,683 vehicles.
Geely has proposed the "Blue Geely Action Plan" that accounts for 90% of new energy vehicle sales in 2020. However, in 2020, the sales of geometric automobiles, Lynk & Co, and Geely brand new energy vehicles totaled only 68,000 units, accounting for 5.2% of Geely's total sales that year, Geely's pure electric models could not open the market, and after the defeat of the "Blue Action Plan", Geely founder Li Shufu actively changed the pace of new energy transformation.
The geometry brand is a new brand launched by Geely Automobile in 2019 to position the mid-to-high-end pure electric, of which the geometric A is positioned as a car and the geometric C is positioned as an SUV. The first car, geometry A, had high hopes, but unfortunately the car performed mediocrely when it appeared.
The data shows that the cumulative sales of Geometry A for the whole year of 2019 were 12,000 units, lower than the expected sales of 35,000 units. In 2020, the cumulative sales of geometric cars for the whole year were 5,051 units, which declined again. The depressed sales data has made geometric cars add a thick fog of doubt to the transformation and development of the entire Geely new energy.
Where is the road?
Some people believe that the initial brand positioning of geometric automobiles is not clear, and the price of its products is high, so it lacks competitiveness in the market. Later, geometric cars tried to make some changes. For example, at the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, the price of geometry A's redesigned model geometry A Pro has been lowered, and the lowest price after comprehensive subsidies is 118,700 yuan, which is much lower than the previous price of 150,000 yuan for geometry A.
Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue said, "The geometric brand will focus on the popular electric vehicle market, focus on creating products with high product price ratio, form a differentiated synergy with the high-end brand of Extreme Kr, and fully develop the Chinese electric vehicle market." ”
By 2021, geometry cars have a new look, and the annual total sales data shows that the cumulative sales of geometry A in 2021 are 14602 vehicles; the cumulative sales of geometry C in 2021 are 9664 vehicles.
After the change of strategic thinking, the monthly sales performance of Geometry A was multiplied higher than that of the same period last year.
According to the next step of the geometric brand's planning, it will exert efforts to the A00-class small electric vehicle market, and will benchmark Hongguang MINI, Chery Ant, Changan Benben and so on.
02 Can extreme krypton turn the tide
Nowadays, Geely Automobile has formed the troika of geometric automobile + Ruilan automobile + extreme krypton brand as a powerful weapon for the company to enter new energy. These three brands include two major product sequences of pure electricity + power exchange, and the pattern of Geely Automobile in the electrification market is also clear.
Unfortunately, the development of this troika has not been balanced. Extreme Krypton Automobile is still in a tepid state, Extreme Kr 001 opened batch delivery on October 23, 2021, is still in the capacity climbing period, 3530 vehicles delivered in January, 4 months cumulative delivery of more than 10,000 vehicles, that is, the average monthly delivery of 2500 vehicles, the performance is average.
Geely Kr is a high-end electric vehicle brand built by Geely's superior resources, Which was established in September 2020 and jointly invested by Geely Automobile and Geely Holding Group, of which Geely Automobile holds 51% of the shares, Geely Holding Group holds 49% of the shares, Li Shufu is the chairman, and An Conghui is the CEO.
How important is Extreme Krypton Automobile to the strategic significance of Geely Group? First of all, Li Shufu personally handled the knife, which is enough to illustrate the importance of extreme krypton to Jili. In addition, from the perspective of organizational structure, Extreme Kr Automobile and Geely Automobile are actually parallel relationships (brother companies), both belong to geely holding group, for Li Shufu, Extreme Kr Automobile and Geely Automobile can be said to be its right and left hands, And Extreme Kr is an independently operated automobile brand juxtaposed with Geely, Volvo and PoleStar.
In addition, the positioning of Extreme Kr Automobile is a high-end brand model, and the official price is around 300,000 yuan, which is completely different from the geometric brand positioned in the popularity mentioned above, and the gross profit space between the two is also hugely different.
If Geely relies on geometric brands to quickly open the market in a short period of time and let people know Geely's new energy models, then the Extreme Krypton brand is the key to whether Geely can eat enough and go far on the road of new energy.
In December 2021, Geely Automobile announced that the acquisition of 220 million shares of Extreme Kr for about 5.6 billion yuan has been approved by the shareholders' general meeting, and the total shareholding of Geely Automobile Holdings Co., Ltd. in Extreme Kr will increase to 58.31% after the completion of the closing, which further consolidates Geely Automobile's position as the largest controlling shareholder of Extreme Kr.
According to the plan, Extreme Kr will launch six new models in the next three years, and aims to sell 650,000 vehicles by 2025, reaching the top three in the world in the market share of high-end electric vehicles.
It can be seen that Extreme Krypton has been entrusted with a heavy responsibility, and whether it can turn the tide in the future determines whether Geely Automobile's new energy road is smooth.
Can the replacement car be used as a new breakthrough? Geely did not give up any opportunity that could be seized.
On January 24, 2022, Geely Automobile and Lifan Technology jointly established a joint venture company, Ruilan Automobile, with a registered capital of 600 million yuan, and Geely and Lifan each contributed 300 million yuan, holding 50% of the shares. Ruilan Automobile is aiming at the new energy pure electric vehicle of the power exchange type.
Ruilan Automobile plans to launch a new power exchange brand and a variety of power form products in the future, and plans to build 5,000+ ultra-fast power stations in 2025, covering 100+ core cities. Based on self-developed power exchange technology, Ruilan Automobile is committed to creating an intelligent power exchange ecology and providing competitive power exchange products and services for the market.
One detail worth noting is that Lifan Technology sold 1902 vehicles in January, but included models produced by Zhejiang Geely Automobile Co., Ltd. and sold by the company to the outside world. That is to say, the performance of Lifan Technology Company is not fully included in Geely's umbrella, and Geely Automobile sales only include part of Lifan Technology's sales. After that, whether Lifan Technology will be fully incorporated, there is no accurate information.
Overseas exports can be said to be a small comfort for Geely.
Lynk & Co is also a masterpiece of Geely Automobile's high-end series and the main carrier for export overseas. In January, Lynk & Co sold 18,334 vehicles, down 28.1% year-on-year, perhaps related to the holidays.
In terms of overseas markets, Geely's export volume in January achieved a good start, up 38.5% year-on-year to 13,890 units. Whether Geely's overseas exports are all Lynk & Co models, there is no detailed information. Lynk & Co has continued to deepen the "European Plan" and the "Asia-Pacific Plan", and has achieved the normalization of exports to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
Author: Hui Ze Lee