【Tidal Business Review/Text】
John finally returned home for the New Year, and he hadn't seen his parents for two years under the epidemic. For an only-child family in a fourth-tier city like him, a reunion of a family of three can be said to be better than ten million gold. In John's eyes, the two old spots were white with two sideburns. In the eyes of his father and mother, his son has also become much heavier.
They were right, because John had an idea: he wanted to change the car for the second old. The current car was bought by his parents after he graduated from college in 2011 and found a job, it was a Haval H6, when he saw this car, his father also told him: "This car looks grand, the price is much lower than foreign brands." ”
After a decade of ups and downs, Haval at home drove less strongly, john took his parents to various 4S stores to start looking for a car to replace the old guy. They went to the German brand shop, parents said that the car there in the county town is too eye-catching, but also to the American brand of the store, parents said that the oil money can save a little is a little, and went to the Japanese brand of the shop, the second old shook his head, the car is good, but unfortunately the heart always feels uncomfortable.
Photo/ Great Wall Motor official micro
John took his parents to the store on the Great Wall, and his father immediately saw his eyes, he felt as if he had seen his car again, but the one in the store was bigger and more magnificent. He felt that it was not too real: "Son, is this car still selling?" ”
John went to the sales and asked for confirmation that it was the latest model on the Haval H6 market. The father asked the price, turned his head and discussed with his son: "I heard that it is still quite skinny, and the price is not expensive, or should we still choose it?" Also saved the run-in. ”
The test of a car through time is something that can be encountered, but for car companies, it is a little unfortunate. The embarrassment of the lack of family car fist products has plagued the Great Wall for a long time, and the most unfortunate thing is that during this time, the automotive technology and the market have undergone earth-shaking changes, and the low-key Great Wall has relied on Haval to survive the hustle and bustle of the day, but when it fights the car jianghu again, it suddenly finds that the flag bearer of the independent car does not seem to be so good.
01 The Haval Dilemma: A Painful Stripping of Glory
If there is any car in the history of domestic automobile development that has left an imprint, then the Haval series of the Great Wall is definitely one of the most important. Since 2011, the market performance of the Haval brand can be described as a miracle: in 2012, H4/H6 showed a two-sided position in the SUV market, with 280,000 units of annual sales and a year-on-year increase of 90%, which made Haval the focus of attention.
Moreover, in this year, Great Wall Motors also broke through the sales mark of 620,000 units, an increase of 34.3% year-on-year, which is also eye-catching among many car companies.
In fact, the start of the Great Wall is also from The Haval dominates the SUV market, in 2013, the Haval series sold 420,000 units throughout the year, an increase of 50% year-on-year, driving the total sales volume to increase by 24% year-on-year, and in 2016, Haval sold 938,000 units, 87.3% of the total sales, of which the H6 sold 581,000 units.
However, on the other side of Haval's blockbuster, there is the hidden worry of the Great Wall. In the domestic car market, under the good situation of the industry, the sales growth of the Great Wall was only 3.1%, and it should be known that the domestic passenger car production and sales in that year were 18.0852 million units and 17.9289 million units, an increase of 16.50% and 15.71% year-on-year, even if the contribution rate of SUV models in the automobile market is close to 37%, the performance of the Great Wall's passenger cars is still far behind the market.
It can be said that it is precisely by relying on the haval H6 that the Great Wall has earned a lot of money, and also saved the Great Wall from falling into an embarrassing market role.
According to statistics, in 2017 and 2018, haval H6 sales declined for two consecutive years, the market results were 506,000 units and 453,000 units, respectively, has shown some fatigue, but in 2019, stimulated by the new model on the market, H6 sales climbed to a historical high, and the gratifying performance covered up many problems in the great wall's strategic choice.
In fact, since the acceleration of the automotive new energy strategy, the environment facing the Great Wall has become more and more complex. On the one hand, the Haval H6 continues to be updated, the heat in the field of SUVs has never decreased, and the myth of occupying the top of the SUV model sales list for 99 consecutive months has made other friends can only look back. On the other hand, since the implementation of the double integral, the direction of the Fuel Vehicle of the Haval series has encountered the apocalyptic timing, the new energy replacement cycle is imminent, and the Great Wall wants to break the wrist of the hero and want to get both the fish palm, I am afraid it is not so easy to do.
Looking back at the entrepreneurial process of the Great Wall in the past thirty years, there were pickup trucks dominating the market, so that they could stand on the market with a small body; after the advent of Haval, it helped the Great Wall carry the banner of independent car manufacturing.
However, at the moment when the transformation of new energy is urgently needed, does Great Wall Motors really have enough preparation to meet its moment of great change?
02 Repay the favor with peach, the new trend of independent car-making forces
The New Energy Road of the Great Wall is not premature, but if you carefully check the timeline, you may have a different feeling.
As early as 2012, Great Wall Motor Power Battery Division (the predecessor of Honeycomb Energy) began to pre-research new energy power, and the main areas were concentrated in the direction of power. In July 2015, Great Wall Motor announced a non-public offering of A-share shares, planning to raise 16.8 billion yuan, mainly invested in new energy vehicle research and development projects, 500,000 new energy intelligent transmission projects, 500,000 sets of new energy vehicle motors and motor controllers per year, 1 million sets of new energy vehicle power battery system projects and intelligent vehicle research and development projects.
However, under the policy has not yet been perfected, the phenomenon of fraud has begun to run rampant among car companies. The chaotic environment makes the head of the Great Wall feel that the direction of new energy vehicles can not be too involved for the time being, in the public channel, the company announced to the outside world that "the Great Wall only does followers of the new energy industry." ”
This strategic positioning, which has the meaning of being unique, makes great wall's next new energy research and development steps relatively cautious, and has not achieved the technology that leads the trend of car companies.
However, the same as the ranks of independent car manufacturing friends BYD's pace of progress is a lot of heroic, with technology-driven pragmatic route, BYD has overcome technical difficulties in power batteries, material equipment, three-electric architecture design, etc., and step on the rhythm of the policy, continue to launch new products in the market of new energy vehicles, such as the Dynasty series of many explosive models let BYD occupy a large number of shares in the energy-saving car market, more importantly, BYD is the only car company to achieve from 80,000 to 300,000 price points to cover the market.
In other words, from the perspective of volume, capital structure, business strategy and other dimensions, in the current chaotic battle in the field of new energy, BYD is the most worthy of learning friends of the Great Wall.
Learning new energy experience is obviously a long-term process, but in reality, the two pioneer car companies that make their own cars show more frequent interaction.
As early as last year, BYD transferred the registered trademark "Wei" to the Great Wall. Among the Great Wall sub-brands, WEY has always been positioned as a high-end SUV model, and it is also named after the surname of founder Wei Jianjun, which can be described as the top priority in the great wall's multi-brand strategy. Unfortunately, due to the inability to use the trademark "Wei", WEY's Chinese brand has been replaced by "Wei Pai", and there has been no large-scale promotion.
In the models of the BYD Dynasty series, as an early planning but far from the concept of practical operation, the "Wei" in the bydir Dynasty series has been launched and listed, obviously does not have much commercial reserve value, and the transfer of adult beauty shows BYD's generosity and understanding.
In return for the favor, Great Wall Motor's application to transfer the registered trademark "Landing Ship" to its partner BYD Automobile has been approved and publicized.
In November last year, BYD just officially unveiled a new product at the Guangzhou Auto Show, in which the warship series, Destroyer 05 has been released, and Destroyer 07 is scheduled to be listed in 2022. Under such a tight rhythm, the trademark of "landing ship" is obviously closer to the commercial concept of the BYD warship series, and the transfer of the trademark by the Great Wall can be described as a charcoal in the snow.
The two major car companies that independently build cars work so closely together, it can be said that they have opened a precedent for new energy car manufacturing in the commercial atmosphere, and at the practical level, the Great Wall has long laid out fuel vehicles, relying on pickup trucks and SUVs to bring economic benefits under the current trend of carbon neutrality, it seems out of place, a road to walk inevitably stumbles, not to mention to face the annual assessment of double points, on the one hand, to stabilize the only remaining basic disk of fuel vehicles, on the one hand, to find car companies to buy new energy points has become a contradiction that the Great Wall has to maintain. As a large number of new energy points, whether active or passive, BYD has been inspired by the feelings accumulated by the independent car-making camp for a long time, and "pulling a brother" has become the most simple choice for both sides.
However, under the inspiration of the banner of independent car building, how far they can go is far from being solved by the mutual help between friends and businessmen, and the key moment depends on the cultivation of internal skills.
03 Stumbling into the market, but choosing a path that no one has taken?
Under the trend of new energy, the pace of entry into the Great Wall has obviously accelerated a lot. This time, the vanguard was spearheaded by its sub-brand Euler.
In 2018, the first new energy product Euler iQ was released. Although it has high hopes by the Great Wall, it is priced at 104,800 yuan, positioning itself as the first pure tram of the urban cross-border electric SUV due to the lack of obvious characteristics of the product and the reality that the product is not polished, and it can be said that it has not achieved the expected results in the market performance.
This defeat made the Great Wall, which has been working on straight men's models, realize that it should drastically change its marketing thinking and reposition the reality of customer groups. After continuing the new market thinking, the main model R1 launched subsequently began to focus on the young fashion route, closely followed the trend of "her economy", started from the fission of female user groups, and completed the product breakthrough and penetration of many circles.
After being put on the market, the performance of Euler R1 was remarkable, and the Great Wall hit the iron while it was hot, and the product name was changed to "cat series". For example, Euler R1 was changed to Euler Black Cat, R2 was changed to Euler White Cat, and not long ago, lightning cat, ballet cat and other models were launched.
The wonderful combination of cats and beauties has hit the car buying psychology of many female users, and in 2021, euler's market sales reached 135,000 units, with an annual increase of 140%!
In terms of measures to win female customers, the Great Wall can be described as dedicated, but the user reputation that has been accumulated so hard has almost been destroyed because of short-sighted behavior.
Last year, Euler's publicity promised that "the whole vehicle uses a high-speed car on-board chip", which was purchased by many customers and found that the chip was not right! A stone stirred up a thousand waves, and under the anger of the crowd, the Great Wall had to apologize and compensate, in order to calm the situation.
The new energy road of the Great Wall has stumbled at the beginning, and it may even be psychologically prepared for the Great Wall itself. But Wei Jianjun chose another more difficult energy-saving route, I am afraid that people will find it difficult to understand.
Hydrogen energy, as another major technical direction in clean energy, has always been the field where the Great Wall pursues breakthroughs.
According to public reports, Great Wall Motors has invested a total of 2 billion yuan in research and development expenses; and in the next three years, Great Wall Motors will continue to invest more than 3 billion yuan in research and development expenses, determined to become a leading enterprise in the domestic hydrogen energy industry. Previously, Great Wall Motors had established five R&D centers in Shanghai, Baoding, Canada, Japan and Germany, and worked closely with air liquide group, Linde Group, Gore, BOSCH, Tsinghua University, Tongji University and other top institutions and institutes in the world to promote the development of the hydrogen energy industry.
The great wall in the advanced layout of hydrogen energy, so that itself in the competition to open up the technical achievements at the same time, in the product research and development, is full of dreams.
The Great Wall has announced that it will launch the first full-size hydrogen fuel cell car in 2023 and achieve the domestic leading number of core power components; at the same time, through energy structure adjustment and low-carbon process application, the first "zero carbon factory" will be realized; to achieve the top three global hydrogen energy market share by 2025, strong technical reserves are its "mouth crazy" capital. Prior to this, great wall has achieved the full autonomy of the six core technologies and product intellectual property rights of "stack and core components, fuel cell engines and components, four-type hydrogen storage cylinders, high-pressure hydrogen storage valves, hydrogen safety assessment, and liquid hydrogen process".
These loud slogans are really exciting, but it should be noted that the Great Wall has also preset the goal of "launching the world's first C-class hydrogen fuel cell SUV in 2021 and taking the lead in completing the application project of 100 49-ton hydrogen energy heavy trucks in the world", unfortunately, after we enter 2022 together, this goal has been stamped by the impartial witness of time.
It is true that hydrogen energy has more attractive theoretical support than all current power energy, although it has many difficulties that have not yet been overcome or even discovered in many dimensions such as materials, energy conversion rate, safety, technical verification, commercial verification, etc., but as long as it looks beautiful, there are people who come forward and follow, and Wei Jianjun and his Great Wall are obviously the largest group of people in this group.
John pulled the second elder around and felt that Haval's fuel vehicles were still not quite up to date with the state's policies. "Dad, did you see that bigger car than Haval?" Tank 300, I heard that it is about to produce new energy models, I will do a good job this year, and when it is new, we will buy it. ”
"Okay, spend more money, and we will respond to the call of the state."