Korean cars that once had unlimited scenery now have almost no sense of existence, from the annual sales of millions of brilliant, to most models now only selling a few hundred units a month, is it time for Korean cars to withdraw from the Chinese market? What's going on here?
1. Only a few hundred units sold per month?
How beautiful it used to be, how lonely it is now, and it is most appropriate to describe a Korean car with this sentence. At the beginning of the Year of the Tiger, major car companies have released the results of 2021, but Beijing Hyundai does not even dare or be ashamed to announce its total sales. In the sales war report released by it, it deliberately hides a number of key data such as annual sales, and only highlights the achievements of several important models. In the past January, we found that in the field of cars, only one Elantra car sold more than 10,000 yuan, and Yuedong only had more than 2,000, while the other four cars only had a few hundred, which was simply a complete rout.
2. Is it time to exit the Chinese market?
Founded in 2002, Beijing Hyundai was once very brilliant, ranking fourth in the manufacturer sales list in 2012, and is the same level of existence as North and South Volkswagen and Shanghai GM. In 2013, Beijing Hyundai achieved annual sales of one million vehicles, and Beijing Hyundai became the joint venture car company with the shortest time to reach million sales, while North and South Volkswagen took 26 years and 20 years respectively. But the good times did not last long, in 2014, Beijing Hyundai's sales reached its peak of 1.16 million vehicles, followed by several years of standing still, and from 2017 onwards, sales "fell and fell". By 2021, sales have plummeted to only about 380,000 vehicles, which has been declining for five consecutive years.
In the plight of sales, Beijing Hyundai did not sit still, but launched a product offensive in an attempt to pull itself out of the mire through a rich product line, but unfortunately it failed. These new cars after the listing, in addition to the Elantra is still OK, the other one can not play, basically did not receive much attention from consumers. In desperation, Beijing Hyundai had to sell the overcapacity factory, sold the beijing first factory to the ideal car of the new car-making force, and there were rumors that the second factory would also be listed for sale. Is this the rhythm of South Korea Hyundai's preparation to exit the Chinese market?
3. What the hell is going on?
Big waves and survival of the fittest, this is the unchanging law of the market. There are three important reasons why Beijing has now plummeted. First of all, if you don't die, you won't die, and you can live if you do evil in heaven, but you can't live if you do your own sins. Around 2017, south Korea ignored the condemnation of international public opinion and the strong opposition of China and Russia, and did not hesitate to deploy THAAD with a low posture of US strategic annexation. This move caused great indignation among the Chinese people, and more and more people began to boycott South Korean cars. Therefore, the decline of beijing's modern era has a lot to do with the THAAD incident.
Secondly, the cost-effective advantages of Korean cars have disappeared and can no longer win the favor of domestic consumers. In the past, Korean cars were not looked up to by joint venture car companies such as Germany, Japan and the United States, and independent brands could not reach the market areas, and they became popular through the "cost-effective" strategy of high allocation and low price. However, in today's stock competitive market environment, German, Japanese and other joint venture car companies continue to explore the price and seize the market that was previously unwatched. For example, many models of Volkswagen are priced even within 100,000 yuan, and the prices of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are constantly declining. Under such circumstances, who would want to buy a Korean car?
Finally, the rapid progress of independent brands is the last straw that crushes Korean cars. In recent years, independent car companies have continuously upgraded their brands and become stronger and stronger, not only achieving the "cost-effective" strategy to the extreme, making the core competitiveness of Korean cars disappear, but also strongly entering the traditional sphere of influence and market areas of joint venture brands, such as BYD Dynasty series, Geely "China Star", Changan Blue Whale series models, Great Wall Haval and tanks. The iron also needs its own hard, and the leapfrog progress of independent brands has completely announced the decline of Korean cars.