Korean car companies that once mixed in the Chinese market are now not only sluggish in sales for many years, but also have declined in revenue, and even gradually lost the Chinese market, forced to stop work and production.
Recently, it was reported on the Internet that Beijing Hyundai's factory in Chongqing has been in a state of suspension. According to insiders, as early as December last year, the Chongqing Hyundai factory had stopped production. In response to this rumor, Beijing Hyundai officials responded that they have not received internal documents for the factory to stop production.
Recalling the former Beijing Hyundai, it entered the Chinese market from the beginning of the twentieth century and successively established three vehicle manufacturing enterprises of Beijing Hyundai, Dongfeng Yueda Kia and Hyundai Commercial Vehicles. With high cost performance and high value products, a "Korean Wave" has blown up in the domestic automobile market. According to the data, in the past few years from 2013 to 2016, the annual sales of Korean cars in China have exceeded one million, and in 16 years, they reached a historical peak of 1.14 million units, which was also one of the joint venture car brands with a great sense of existence at that time.
In the years of Beijing Hyundai's rapid development, out of optimism about the automobile market, Beijing Hyundai began to expand production capacity. At that time, Beijing Hyundai had the first, second and third factories in Beijing Shunyi, in addition to the three factories in Beijing, Beijing Hyundai also established two factories in Cangzhou, Hebei and Chongqing, and the annual output of the five major passenger car production bases could reach 1.65 million units. Among them, the Chongqing factory was completed in 2017, and it was in this year that the sales volume of Beijing Hyundai began to decline.
Since 2017, Beijing Hyundai has suffered a waterloo in sales, with annual sales falling out of a million units for the first time, showing a year-on-year decline. The follow-up decline has still not been reversed, sales have fallen sharply for several consecutive years, and Korean brands have long disappeared from the major sales lists.
Just this past 2021, although Beijing Hyundai is still full of efforts to get out of the predicament, has launched a number of new products represented by the fifth generation of Tucson L, the new ix35 and MPV Kustu, but these products have been flat after the listing, and sales have still not improved. According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in January this year, the market share of Korean passenger cars in China was only 1.7%, which is a sad number.
Beijing Hyundai once owned five major factories, but now the transfer of transfers, the suspension of work. Last year, Beijing Hyundai resold its first plant in Beijing's Shunyi area to Ideal Cars. But even after the sale of a factory in Shunyi, Beijing Hyundai has not been alleviated due to years of sluggish sales, resulting in serious overcapacity, so the News that Hyundai Motor will sell other factories on the Internet, including the Second Factory in Beijing, according to insiders, Beijing Hyundai is beginning to negotiate with a number of new energy vehicle companies about the takeover of the second factory, including the newly established Xiaomi Automobile.
As for the Chongqing plant, in fact, Beijing Hyundai's new Rena, Onsino, Festa and ix25 models are all produced by the Chongqing plant, although there are many types of models, but in terms of sales of these products, they are in a state of sliding on the ground all year round. For example, Onsino, the sum of monthly sales is only double digits; not to mention The New Rena, which is itself the lowest-end product in Beijing, is almost unattended.
In other words, these models produced at the Chongqing plant are not selling well, and there is no need to manufacture them without order sales, which is the main reason why the plant stopped production. In contrast, the news that other joint venture car companies have stopped work and production is caused by the epidemic, lack of core or insufficient supply of raw materials, etc., compared with the situation of Beijing Hyundai.
Whether it is the sale of the factory or the suspension of the Chongqing factory, it is a direct reflection of the declining position of Beijing Hyundai in the Chinese market. Perhaps Korean cars still have a battle in the global market, but as far as the overall performance of the Chinese market is concerned, it is indeed too tired, and the living space is getting smaller and narrower, and I don't know how long the Korean brand can last.