Just after the Spring Festival in 2022, Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd. announced that Dongfeng Infiniti as an independent business headquarters into Dongfeng Nissan's management system means that Infiniti will no longer exist as an independent joint venture brand, the reason is also obvious, its sales are too bleak, sales in 2021 are even less than 10,000 vehicles, but even at its peak, Infiniti's annual sales are only about 48,000 vehicles.
In fact, Infiniti has not had a smooth life in the Chinese market. Nearly 10 years into the Chinese market, Infiniti's sales in China have not been able to break through the 50,000 mark, compared with Lexus, Cadillac and other brands, Infiniti is obviously "left behind". Infiniti's official website shows that it has a total of Q50L, Q60, Q70L, QX50, QX60 (imported), and a new generation of QX60 that has just announced the opening of pre-sale. However, the sales of domestic Q50L and QX50, which are the main models, are not ideal. According to public data, in the first three quarters of 2021, the cumulative sales of Infiniti Q50L in China were 1677 vehicles, and the cumulative sales of QX50 were 3449 vehicles.
Originally in everyone's cognition, under the blessing of second-tier luxury brands, Infiniti will have good quality control standards, and in recent years, sales in the Chinese market have not been good, but also because brand marketing has not been in place, the majority of Chinese consumers lack of understanding of the Infiniti brand.
Looking at the essence through the phenomenon, poor brand marketing is just a fig leaf for Infiniti, and the core reason for poor sales is the frequent occurrence of product quality problems.
Founded in 2014, Dongfeng Infiniti has performed in the Chinese market. In the first year of localization in 2014, Dongfeng Infiniti sold 30,000 vehicles, but from 2016 to 2019, Dongfeng Infiniti sold 17,000, 20,000, 19,000, 10,000 and 8,951 vehicles, respectively. The root cause of Infiniti's sales so poor is its slow introduction of new models and serious quality problems.
At last year's 315 party, many Infiniti models were exposed due to the infringement of the owner's own rights and interests due to transmission failure.
CCTV once reported that infiniti QX50 and QX60 suffered from throttle/brake failure, abnormal noise setbacks, and sudden loss of power when driving normally on high speeds due to transmission failures. In response to the above failures, the solution given by the manufacturer and the 4S shop is to replace the gearbox, but the problem will not be fundamentally solved, some of the QX50 owners have replaced the gearbox several times during the warranty period, and some QX60 owners need to spend 140,000 yuan -150,000 yuan on their own high maintenance costs because they have exceeded the warranty period.
The various problems of the gearbox, so that the owners of the Infiniti brand has doubts, due to the fear of constantly replacing the gearbox in the later stage, the owners began to ask the manufacturer for explanations, forced by pressure, Infiniti chose to contact the active owners through the 4S store to discuss the solution alone, the solution is to extend the owner's warranty, while signing a confidentiality agreement.
Among them, the confidentiality agreement is even more bizarre, the agreement proposes that the 4S shop will repair or replace the remanufactured transmission on the basis of the original car transmission, rather than continuing to replace the new gearbox. In addition, the agreement also requires that the owner cannot carry out negative publicity or dissemination through any means (including media, self-media, forums, auto shows, etc.), which will affect the normal operation of Infiniti.
In addition to the agreement, what is even more unacceptable to the owner is that the extended warranty period given by the manufacturer is subject to different extents of the owner's rights protection, and the agreement also states that after this agreement takes effect, the dispute between the two parties to the agreement is deemed to be fully resolved, and the owner voluntarily abandons the recovery of losses or damages directly or indirectly caused by this incident.
Uncle Che summed up
No matter how famous the car brand is, it cannot let consumers encounter accidents again and again, repair and replace them again and again in the case of their own problems, and they cannot take care of their own image to make consumers give up their responsibility and give up the right to maintain justice. How high a brand can occupy a position in the hearts of consumers lies in how much sincerity it can bring to everyone, and only the manufacture of excellence, rather than the cover-up of the want to cover up, is the real speed and passion.