Since 2017, the pattern of China's independent car companies has not changed. Since then, Geely Automobile has always played the role of the top seller - sales reached 1.328 million units in 2021, exceeding one million for the fifth consecutive year.
The past 5 years, but also the 5 years of changes in the Chinese and even global automotive industry, which also put forward a new issue for Geely - the next 5 years, how to fight to continue to win?
The January 2022 sales figures may give some answers. On February 10, Geely Automobile officially announced the sales data for January 2022 - the sales volume reached 146,380 units in that month, of which Geely Automobile (including Geometry) sold 122833 vehicles and 18,334 Lynk & Co brands. The biggest highlight of this sales report card is that the sales of new energy models (including Geely, Geometry, Extreme Krypton, and Ruilan) reached 17,928 units, an increase of 318% year-on-year, of which pure electric models increased by about 641% year-on-year, setting a record high.
This heralds the code for the next 5 years of Auspicious victory.
January transcripts that come to "call"
In the new energy brand matrix, there are four major brands such as Extreme Kr, Geely, Geometry, and Ruilan.
As a high-end intelligent electric brand, Extreme Kr delivered 3530 vehicles in January, as a brand that has been released less than a year ago and has been officially opened for delivery for more than 3 months, this achievement has reached expectations, and with the continuous fermentation of word-of-mouth effect and the ramping of production capacity, I believe that Extreme Kr will go up another level in terms of sales.
Geometry cars sold 10,229 vehicles, accounting for more than 57% of all new energy models, as a brand specializing in new energy, it has become Geely's sales responsibility for new energy.
The steady development of geometric sales is obviously of great benefit to Geely's optimization of its own sales matrix - the brand's positioning is to bring users a very cost-effective pure electric selection, which is also the key to achieving scale effects.
It is foreseeable that one day Geely will fully realize its two "Blue Geely Actions" and achieve transformation and upgrading, in the process geometry will gradually highlight its important role.
It is also worth mentioning The Blue. From the perspective of sales, Ruilan's sales in January were 1683 vehicles, but as a new brand dedicated to the intelligent power exchange ecology, and it was officially announced at the end of January, this data fully reflects Geely Automobile's strong resource synergy and market appeal.
The reason why Geely Automobile's new energy sector can be brilliant is mainly based on the forward-looking judgment of the development trend of China's automobile market, and also combined with the century-old changes that the automotive industry is experiencing, it can make the right choice at this crossroads related to the prospects of the industry, and adopt a technology-first, pragmatic-oriented strategy, thus achieving the outbreak of market sales.
Intelligent Architecture "Hard Technology"
In the global automotive industry, the technological competition between top car companies is often the competition between "architecture".
With more than 30 years of car manufacturing accumulation and the technical support of world-class luxury brands such as Volvo Cars, Geely Car has formed four top intelligent architectures of SPA, CMA, BMA and SEA.
Different from the architecture of other car companies around the world, Geely Automobile also empowers world-class intelligent architecture with GEEA 2.0 electronic and electrical architecture, so that Geely's current intelligent architecture not only has the advantages of full compatibility with diversified energy sources, leading modularity and high research and development efficiency, but also has a smart "brain" and a high-speed and developed neural network.
This allows Geely Automobile to have a smart label in the intelligent era, and thus form an intelligent change in product strength.
For example, THE "Vast" intelligent architecture of SEA allows the Extreme Krypton brand to take less than half a year from brand release to product delivery, completely breaking the 48-month research and development cycle limit of the traditional automobile era. This speed advantage also allowed the first model of the Krypton brand, the Krypton 001, to break through the delivery milestone of 10,000 vehicles in only 110 days.
In addition, the geometry brand and the Ruilan brand mentioned above can quickly make a sound in the market, which is also derived from the excellent genes from the CMA architecture. At the same time, after having enough intelligent advantages, Geely Automobile did not stand still, but chose the open strategy, and cooperated with high-tech enterprises including Baidu and Mobileye to jointly develop the smart car market in the era of the new four modernizations.
In particular, the cooperation with Baidu is based on the "SEA Vast" architecture to develop future-oriented intelligent products. This advantage based on hard technology also allows Geely Automobile to continue to promote the brand upward engineering through the "China Star" series (Xingyue L, Xingrui, Xingyue S) based on the CMA architecture after building the Lynk & Co brand. In January 2022, China Star's January sales reached 25,077 vehicles, forming a two-wheel drive situation with the Lynk & Co brand.
Growth space for the next five years
The advantages of intelligence and the continuous brand upward mobility provide a strong expected effect for Geely Automobile's competition in the next five years. As a representative of China's independent car companies in the past five years, Geely Automobile will point out a roadmap for Geely's development in the next five years or even longer based on its intelligent transformation and upgrading under the background of the century-long-term changes in the global automotive industry, as well as the brand upwards represented by "China Star".
Another important factor is that China is not only the world's largest automobile market, but also the world's largest new energy vehicle market for 7 consecutive years, and a series of independent brands represented by Geely have gradually replaced the strong position of joint ventures/foreign car companies in the minds of the Chinese people in the past century by virtue of the underlying technology and supply chain support, rapid R&D response and flexible incentive mechanism, and the business model of consumer goods.
Especially in the field of new energy, domestic independent car companies frequently achieve curve overtaking. In 2021, China's passenger car sales were 21.43 million units, of which new energy vehicle sales reached 3.521 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year.
The industry generally expects that China's new energy vehicle sales will reach 5 million in 2022, achieving the goal of 20% of all vehicle sales in new energy vehicle sales three years ahead of schedule.
It is worth mentioning that Geely's models in the field of new energy have formed a new pattern of "pure electric and Thor power-driven hybrid" with extreme krypton + geometric drive; in the field of traditional fuel vehicles, flagship products based on advantageous architecture continue to lead the brand upwards.
From a medium- and long-term perspective, China's car ownership is about 200, which is only about one-third of Japan's (591 vehicles), which shows that there is a lot of room for upward breakthrough in China's auto market. In the context of consumption upgrading, the demand for exchange in the future will replace the demand for first purchase and become the main driving force for the growth of the industry.
In such a macro environment, the development prospects of domestic independent car companies are particularly promising. For Geely Automobile, with the formation of the expected effect in the next 5 years or more, it will continue to maintain the current position of the first place in China's independent brand sales.
The people evaluate the car
After becoming an independent brother of Chinese auto brands for five consecutive years, the next stage of market competition just hit the big change in the global auto industry. This is both a challenge and an unprecedented opportunity for Geely Automobile. The challenge mainly focuses on Geely Automobile's need to promote the electrification of the entire group in the shortest possible time, and the outbreak of new energy sales in January 2022 means that Geely Automobile is getting closer and closer to achieving this goal. The opportunity lies in the fact that Geely Automobile can form a new product force and brand power through this wave of intelligence, and seize the commanding heights of a new round of technological innovation, thus laying the foundation for the next 5 years and even medium- and long-term sales dominance.