Written by / Long Shihui
Edited / Kilig
Design / Zoi.
Inscription: Stepping into 2022, big coffee including Li Bin predicted that this year will be an important year for car companies to cultivate their internal strength and lay out in advance to meet the full electrification in 2025. But for which brands, this year is really at the crossroads of fate? This special edition will take you to analyze the car companies in the turning point of new energy.
The night before the 2019 Guangzhou Auto Show, at the third anniversary of WEY brand night, Wei Jianjun, who had just fulfilled the performance of becoming the chairman of Weipai Company, had not yet had time to be crowned with on-site applause, and Wei Zong showed on the stage that he invested more energy in the construction of WEY, and bet on "more time and everything in the future", and the huge screen showed a brief and powerful confidence: "Luxury brand, we are on the bar." ”
At that time, Wei Zong's testimonials infected everyone present, naturally including me sitting under the stage, because 2018 was a turning point for WEY, before, riding on the dividends of brand establishment, VV5 and VV7 peak sales exceeded 10,000; later, due to fuel consumption, quality and other issues, the market reputation plummeted, and WEY's sales fell into a slowly declining tug-of-war. And the deafening and deafening at the end of 2019 is more like a determination to know shame and then be brave.
Exactly 2 years on, is weY better off, or worse?
Compared with the official data released by the Great Wall, since 2018, the sales volume of WEY Wei brand has been 139,000 vehicles, 100,000 vehicles and 79,000 vehicles, and in 2021, it has ushered in a "four-year decline", with annual sales of 58,000 vehicles, which not only became the only brand under the Great Wall's five major brands that declined year-on-year, but also fell by up to 25.7%, with an average monthly sales of about 4,000 vehicles; more worryingly, Lynk & Co, which was also established in 2016, Last year's sales reached 221,000 vehicles, has become a "brother" of independent high-end brands, many people always like to compare the two, but after only 4 years, the two brands out of two diametrically opposed curves.
If you look at the dimension of sales, 2020-2021 is an awkward struggle period for WEY: the launch of tank 300 is hot, and the sales of the WEY brand quickly pick up, but soon the tank is independently formed into a sub-brand, bringing obvious diversion and impact to WEY; the "VV" series withdrew, the first model of the coffee series with high hopes, mocha, failed to go up, and the lemon hybrid DHT was in an upward period...
Undoubtedly, WEY has a rush to catch up and more eager to succeed than other brands, will its turning point come in 2022?
WEY hits are hard to find
All along, the Great Wall is the most capable of creating explosive models of its own brand.
From the success of the Haval H6 in the early years, which opened the rhythm of the domestic god car, to the Euler black cat and the good cat, the success of the niche female electric vehicle market into the mainstream, and then to the haval big dog and tank 300 out of the circle in the past one or two years, with the competitive advantage of product strength and unique marketing means, there are good gains in the market.
It is true that after enjoying the dividends of Internet celebrities, the sub-brands of the Great Wall will inevitably be trapped by the low market attention of other models, for example, for a long time, people only know that Haval has H6, has a big dog, and does not know that there is an H5, H7 or F series model, the sales of the first two are several times, and the Euler brand is concentrated on good cats.
This may be a good thing for the Great Wall, which is good at building brands by categories, especially when a major model stands in the market with unique products, its competitive advantage can be quickly established, and its sales and word-of-mouth rise together to consolidate its advantages in the market segment. Of course, the premise is that these individual products have a unique product charm, on the contrary, relying on brand influence to pull the model will be limited to passive, WEY "VV" series loss is on this point.
In the five brands of the Great Wall, pickup trucks, Haval, Euler, including tanks, are emphasizing different tones, different target groups, different scenes and different ways of playing, but the label of WEY is the most ambiguous, the VV series at the beginning of the "Chinese luxury", "domestic independent brand in the luxury model and symbol" self-positioning, is a very abstract concept, we all know that WEY's positioning is higher than Haval, but the VV series does not reflect WEY's interpretation of "luxury" itself, On the contrary, it can not get rid of the shadow of Haval, so the potential users who bought WEY at that time had a high probability of buying Haval users' conversions, and the Lynk & Co side of the main sport was clear, which could attract users other than Geely and Volvo.
Luxury brands are different from other blockbusters, its difficulty in creating lies in the difference in the value of "luxury" per person, can not rely on stacking and marketing "quantification", but consumers directly perceive and precipitate over the years, which is exactly the gene that WEY lacks the most. As a result, WEY was labeled by the market as "hardcover Haval", and Haval generated internal consumption, quality control and fuel consumption has not been too good reputation in the terminal, coupled with fewer models, before the WEY transformation in 2021, the presence of the market is getting lower and lower.
From 2021 onwards, the Great Wall will position the luxury brand to the salon, and the label of WEY is placed on the intelligent and PHEV ultra-long endurance, WEY CMO Qiao Xinyu has publicly stated that WEY will turn to long-endurance PHEV. "Coffee Intelligence" and "Smart DHT" two major technology brands instead of the previous "Chinese luxury", appeared in last year's consecutive listing of the coffee series, WEY's "brand renewal" intention is very clear.
Admittedly, not to mention the luxury walk hybrid long endurance, intelligent driving assistance, does it mean that the road is better? Taking the top pre-price of mocha DHT-PHEV as an example, the pure electric endurance of this plug-in hybrid reaches 200km, which is about 100km more than the NEDC of most PHEV models on the market; in terms of intelligence, the L2+ driver assistance "family barrel" and the recently hyped smart cockpit are arranged; and on the slightly lower price latte, Macchiato, the DHT hybrid technology equipped with honda i-MMD hybrid is also similar, and the latte DHT is measured at 6.9-7.1L/ 100km, greatly reducing the average fuel consumption of VV6 9.7L/100km, the price is the same as the latter and can be energy-saving in Guangzhou and Tianjin.
Judging from the sales volume in December last year, the Mocha (4845), latte DHT (2707) and Macchiato DHT (2513) ranked 75th, 109th and 114th among all SUVs respectively. But it is worth mentioning that the latte DHT, which was only listed in mid-December, got nearly 3,000 sales in half a month, and the driving feeling is not inferior to the hybrid of Shuangtian, and even in the high-speed fuel consumption performance is slightly ahead, a new technology of an independent brand can be compared with many years of mature technology, and this set of lemon hybrid DHT can indeed be taken.
However, Che Lizi believes that the hybrid jianghu is doomed to be difficult to walk, and how to get out of their own subversive value with too many strong hands is the most core problem facing WEY transformation. DHT is good, heV field also has Toyota Honda fame in front; DHT-PHEV technology is advanced, and encountered BYD DM-i and Changan iDD tiger eye, and Haval H6 PHEV is also on the way, whether the future will form internal friction or unknown.
In addition, THE LONG ENDURANCE OF PHEV IS ORIGINALLY THE TREND, AND WEY WALKS IN THE FRONT OF THE INDUSTRY TO PLAY THE "0 ANXIETY" CARD OF THE WHOLE SCENE, WHICH IS INDEED A SELLING POINT. But in the current consumption scenario, like driving assistance, it has not yet become a core competitiveness; on the contrary, excessive redundancy brings an increase in costs, you know, the top model of Mocha DHT-PHEV has entered 315,000 yuan, which is enough to be comparable to any joint venture compact PHEV or fuel medium SUV.
It can be said that WEY's "brand replacement" this time has picked the most difficult road, and the success or failure lies in the speed of the spread of the hybrid and the market reputation.
The curtain of new energy has only opened, and "focusing" cannot be delayed
Although BYD and Shuangtian's hybrid vehicles have sold well, Tesla and Hongguang MINI have spread all over the country, and the market penetration rate of new energy has greatly increased by 20%. However, Great Wall Motors' attitude towards new energy has not been slow, although there is a pure electric brand such as Euler, but the core Haval and Great Wall pickup trucks have been "unplugged".
It is rumored that in the early years, Wei Jianjun had seen the main trend of the development of new energy vehicles in China, but at that time, the industry cheated too much, and he also said: "When there is no subsidy for random thinking, I will go to do it well." "In the middle of last year, Great Wall Motors announced its strategic goal for 2025, achieving annual sales of 4 million vehicles and achieving operating income of more than 600 billion yuan, of which new energy vehicles accounted for 80%. The new energy strategy was put forward in a high profile, and the Great Wall began to enter the rhythm of new energy.
Admittedly, the industry is saying that this big game under the Great Wall is not easy, and even the goal is high to the sky. However, in mid-2020, the stock price of Great Wall Motors was only about 8 yuan, but in 2021, it experienced a high of 60 yuan, and then fell back to about 40 yuan now, and the market value increased by at least 5 times.
It can be seen that the Great Wall has enough confidence to vigorously develop new energy vehicles, after all, it is one of the few vehicle companies in the world that has mastered the technology of three electrics, and the mass-produced lemon-blended DHT hybrid architecture, endurance and life can represent the future trend of cobalt-free laminated batteries, new energy motor-grade motor controllers covering A00 to D-class passenger cars and pickup trucks, and high-end driving assistance of The End zhixing... More like a technical "pool".
Therefore, what WEY has to do is to focus on resources, and to be open enough, many intelligent electrification technologies incubated by the Great Wall can be used by WEY for its own use, as long as it is focused enough, WEY can lighten up and catch up with the speed of opponents. At present, WEY's positioning as "a new generation of intelligent cars, committed to providing users with an intelligent car control experience", more like the role of pioneer popularizers, the current core technologies including DHT-PHEV, NOH driving assistance, etc., have been applied to WEY's coffee car series.
Of course, this road is doomed to be difficult to go, and even from the perspective of sales and word of mouth, the "coffee series" has a gradual rise in one or two years: the reputation of the joint venture brand mix is outside, and there are more independent high-end plug-in and mixing opponents. Of course, if WEY is focused enough, it will carry a martial art to create a differentiated selling point that is enough to dominate the segment, and it is not impossible to become an Internet celebrity car overnight, WEY's explosive genes are better than others from beginning to end.
Write at the end
In 2020, Wei Jianjun said in the thirty years of the Great Wall car manufacturing: If we can't see subversive changes, then it must be us who are subverted.
Now it seems that it is very correct to use IT on WEY.
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