Some time ago, Dongfeng Motor announced that Dongfeng Infiniti will be included in dongfeng Nissan's management system as an independent business unit, and Infiniti will become the third brand of Dongfeng Nissan together with Nissan and Venucia. This means that Dongfeng Infiniti will no longer be an independent division of Dongfeng Motor and has been downgraded within the company. Another joint venture has the same situation. In December last year, Dongfeng Motor transferred 25% of the equity of Dongfeng Yueda Kia for only 297 million yuan, and can't wait to get rid of it. Judging from various performances, Dongfeng Motor has obviously begun a major business adjustment.
The adjustment of this business line is mainly for the joint venture segment. Take Dongfeng Yueda Kia, once Dongfeng Motor successfully transfers this 25% equity, then Dongfeng Motor and Dongfeng Yueda Kia will no longer have any relationship. Of course, Dongfeng Yueda Kia is currently a full drag oil bottle, since 2017, Dongfeng Yueda Kia's sales are declining, and this year's sales are expected to be only about 150,000 units, far less than the 359,500 units in 2017.
At a time of declining sales, Dongfeng Yueda Kia's financial performance was also bad. From January to November 2021, Dongfeng Yueda Kia achieved revenue of 12.48 billion yuan and net loss of 2.612 billion yuan. In 2020, although the revenue is 21.94 billion, the loss is also as high as 4.75 billion yuan. From this point of view, although the price of Dongfeng Motor's transfer is very low, it is difficult for a car company to dare to take over such a company that continues to bleed.
Although sales of another joint venture, Dongfeng Nissan, remained stable, Infiniti, a mid-to-high-end brand, was underperforming. Even with the assistance of the Wang Lihong incident, Infiniti is afraid that it is still difficult to "support", so Dongfeng Motor chose to relegate Infiniti.
Judging from the recent measures of Dongfeng Motor, Dongfeng's attitude towards the joint venture sector has quietly changed, which is quite a bit like the situation in which Changan Automobile gradually withdrew from Changan Suzuki. Combined with Changan Automobile's subsequent transformation measures, Dongfeng Motor should continue to divest the unprofitable joint venture plate business in the next step, and at the same time pour more resources into the autonomous sector.
For Dongfeng Motor, the current focus is on the high-end pure electric brand Lantu. In December last year, Landu Automobile delivered 3,330 Landu FREE vehicles in December, an increase of 192% month-on-month. Since its delivery began in August last year, Lando has achieved growth for five consecutive months, with a total of 6,791 units delivered, with an average transaction price of 338,000 yuan. In addition to the first model, Lantu FREE, as a major attempt by Dongfeng to impact the mid-to-high-end market, the blueprint will form a three-category matrix spanning SUVs, MPVs and cars in the next three years.
In addition, the performance of the original Dongfeng Fengxing brand can also be remarkable. In 2021, Dongfeng Fengxing achieved sales of 134138 vehicles, an increase of 47% year-on-year. In order to better be close to young consumers, Dongfeng Fengxing carried out logo replacement in 2021, and at the same time became more aggressive in the launch of new models, successively launching a number of blockbuster models such as Fengxing T5 EVO, Fengxing T5 Shengshi, Lingzhi PLUS, and Fengxing T5 Shengshi.
Indeed, in today's era when domestic products are self-reliant, the once cheap synonyms Hongxing Erke and Anta have now become the light of domestic products. Blindly relying on foreign capital eventually buried the future of Brilliance Auto. On the contrary, Changan Automobile and Great Wall Motors, which bet on the autonomous sector, have taken off. For Dongfeng Motor, it has a huge and complex product line and profound technology research and development capabilities, so why does Dongfeng rely on the joint venture plate? Obviously, Dongfeng Motor's transformation is on the right path, and Dongfeng Fengxing and Lantu Automobile are bound to create a new sales myth in the future.