(Text/Yu Waijun Editor/Lou Bing) In 2021, GAC Group ended with annual sales of 2.1417 million vehicles, an increase of 4.97%. This growth momentum also continued into 2022, and the growth rate was further expanded.
Recently, the production and sales data released by GAC Group showed that GAC Group's sales in January this year were 237,200 units, an increase of 9.16% over the same period last year. Behind the rapid growth of GAC Group is the joint efforts of its joint venture business and its independent passenger car segment, especially GAC Aegon, which doubled its sales in January year-on-year.
The joint venture sector is polarized
The joint venture business occupies a pivotal position in the GAC Group, especially the two major brands of GAC Honda and GAC Toyota. In January this year, GAC Honda and GAC Toyota jointly contributed 178,400 units, accounting for 75.21% of the total sales of the GAC Group.
Thanks to the solid performance of the main sales models such as Accord, Binzhi and Haoying, Guangqi Honda remained solid and showed slight growth in January this year. According to the data, Guangqi Honda sold 78,489 units in January, an increase of 1.11% year-on-year.
In terms of specific products, as the main support of GUANGQI Honda in the car market, Accord's performance in January remained strong, with sales reaching 17,601 units, occupying an important position in the B-class sedan market. In addition to Accord, Binzhi and Haoying also achieved sales of 10,000 vehicles in January, with 18,395 units and 11,579 vehicles respectively.
In addition, the Completed Fit and the newly launched model also delivered good answers in January. Among them, Fit sold 8,937 vehicles last month, an increase of 105.3% year-on-year; model sales of 9,215 units, becoming a new growth point for Guangqi Honda in the car market. In terms of new vehicles, GUANGC Honda will also launch a pure electric SUV Honda e:NP1 this year.
Compared with the solid performance of GAC Honda, GAC Toyota performed very strongly in the first month of this year, with an increase of more than 10% and a new monthly sales record. According to the data, GAC Toyota's january sales approached the 100,000 mark to 99,900 units, an increase of 11.25% year-on-year. Among them, the main sales models such as camry and Highlander continued the previous hot sales momentum, with sales of 28,023 units and 13,189 units in January, respectively, up 39.9% and 14.7% year-on-year.
In addition to the better performance of the above flagship models, Ralink and Veranda also played a stable role in January, with sales of 19,581 units and 17,483 units respectively, of which The Willanda increased by 42.5% year-on-year. In addition, the recently listed Syna also achieved a good market performance in January, with sales reaching 5,399 units in January, of which the top model accounted for 40%.
It is worth mentioning that GAC Toyota will further enrich its product matrix this year, including models such as Fenglanda, Weisa and pure electric SUV bZ4X. At that time, they are expected to promote GAC Toyota to make new breakthroughs in sales, and even impact annual sales of millions of vehicles.
Unlike the strong performance of GAC Toyota and GAC Honda, gac fcagolf and GAC Mitsubishi, two other joint venture brands under the GAC Group, did not perform as well. The latter two were not only inferior in size to the two fields, but also experienced a sharp decline in sales in January. According to the data, GAC FCA and GAC Mitsubishi sold 1725 and 3805 vehicles last month, down 31.06% and 29.54% year-on-year, respectively.
Among them, GAC FCA's poor performance in the Chinese market is inseparable from the slow pace of product introduction. The sluggish sales performance has gradually marginalized the situation of GAC FCA in the Chinese market.
In January, Stellantis Group officially announced that it would increase its stake in the joint venture GAC FCA from the current 50% to 75%. Although GAC Group subsequently issued an announcement denying this news, saying that the shareholders of the joint venture company have not yet signed an agreement on the equity adjustment of GAC FCA, industry insiders believe that the adjustment of GAC FCA's share ratio is a high probability event.
Autonomous business picks up
In terms of independent sectors, GAC Trumpchi and GAC Aean both achieved positive growth, boosting the proportion of sales of independent brands in GAC Group. Among them, GAC Aeon's sales in January reached 16,031 units, an increase of 117.93% over last year, creating a new single-month sales record.
Among them, AION Y and AION S PLUS, as the main sales models of GAC Aeon, performed very steadily, with monthly sales basically maintaining more than 6,000 units. At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, the above two models launched new Models of the Year respectively, and the product strength and competitiveness were further improved, which is expected to bring more sales to GAC Aeon this year.
In addition, GAC AE launched the AION LX PLUS, an upgrade to its flagship AION LX, in January this year. Thanks to GAC's self-developed sponge silicon anode chip battery technology, the AION LX PLUS has a maximum cruising range of 1008km, and its product strength has been greatly improved. With the arrival of AION LX PLUS, it will not only improve gac Aeon's product matrix, but also bring more sales contributions to it.
Given the eye-catching performance of 123,600 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 119% year-on-year, GAC Aeon has higher expectations for 2022. In terms of production capacity, GAC Aeon has increased the production capacity of its existing plant from 100,000 units per year to 200,000 units per year. In addition, GAC Aeon also started a second plant capacity construction project, with a planned production capacity of 200,000 units, and the new plant is expected to be completed and put into operation in December 2022, when Aeon will have a production capacity of 400,000 units.
At the same time, another brand under the independent plate, GAC Trumpchi, also showed a steady growth trend. According to the data, GAC Trumpchi sold 36,564 units in January, an increase of 6.29% year-on-year. The continuous recovery of GAC Trumpchi's sales is mainly due to the fact that it has successively launched new or replaced or medium-modified models such as Shadow Leopard, GS4 PLUS and second-generation GS8 in the second half of last year, and the effect of new cars has gradually emerged. Among them, GAC Trumpchi GS4 series sales exceeded 10,000 units in January, reaching 13,523 units.
In the face of 2022, GAC Group has set a target of 15% increase in annual production and sales compared with 2021, which means that GAC Group's sales need to reach 2.43 million vehicles. In order to achieve this goal, in addition to the joint efforts of GAC Honda and GAC Toyota, GAC Aean and GAC Trumpchi are also under a lot of pressure. However, judging from the sales performance in January this year, the above four major brands have brought a good start to GAC Group.
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