In people's impression, Chery has always been "more children and good fight" mentality, its has given birth to many brands, many have become mileage, but also exported Qoros, Kaiyi and other brands to the industry, rarely have the experience of acquisition and reorganization. At the beginning of 2022, Chery's painting style suddenly changed, and it suddenly made a bet to "revitalize" Southeast Automobile and sound the clarion call for external expansion.
Recently, a PPT document "on the cooperation plan between Chery Commercial Vehicle and Southeast Automobile" continued to ferment on the Internet, and the 3-page PPT conveyed the meaning of "Chery Commercial Vehicle or will acquire Southeast Automobile". The content shows that Southeast Automobile and Chery reached a VAM agreement, willing to exchange 80% of the equity for Chery technical support, the core is Chery to enter the southeast automobile with technology, and after the sales standard, Southeast Automobile will transfer 80% of the equity to Chery free of charge.
With the rapid development of new energy vehicles, many traditional car companies have begun to fall behind and fall into difficulties, and even some car companies have come to the brink of bankruptcy and have been merged and reorganized. At present, Zotye Automobile and Lifan Automobile have completed bankruptcy and restructuring, and Zhidou Automobile is entering the restructuring stage. Through the restructuring of car companies, not only have they got rid of the debt crisis, but the input of new technologies has revitalized car companies.
Unlike Geely's restructuring of Lifan Motors, Chery and Southeast are not so much a cooperation as a form of "VAM". According to the plan, the two sides will formally cooperate in 2022, will continue to use the main body of Southeast Automobile, and operate under the Southeast Jietu Automobile brand, and will strive to achieve an annual production and sales of 400,000 units within 3-5 years. Compared with the way of capital input, it is more challenging to invest in "betting" with technology.
However, the protagonist of this restructuring is not Chery Automobile but Chery Commercial Vehicle, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chery Holdings, that is, the original Chery van series, which currently has two major brand series of Kerry and Jietu. The Jetto serial models were released in 2018 and have been released on the market for the Jetto X70, jetto X70S jetto X90, jetto X70SEV, jetto X95 and other SUV models.
Similar to the Changan Auchan brand, Jietu was mainly based on vans in the early stage, and with the shift to the passenger car market to the SUV market, the main cost-effective route was the main route. Last year, Jietu became an independent brand and put forward the goal of "annual sales of 1 million vehicles". In the future, Jetway Will launch a number of new products, including 4 SUVs, 3 crossover models and a variety of hybrid models.
The data shows that Jietu will complete 150,000 vehicles in 2021, and if it wants to challenge the million target, according to the current scale of Jietu, it may take a long time. Jietu Automobile obviously cannot do it only by relying on new vehicles, and it is necessary to expand externally in a timely manner. Therefore, drawing on the model of Geely Automobile's continuous merger and reorganization, it is a good choice to include Southeast Automobile under its command.
What is the situation of Southeast Automotive?
In the past two years, Southeast Automobile has been relatively bleak, and last year it also suffered the withdrawal of Mitsubishi Motors, which is undoubtedly a broken source of technology. Southeast Motor is a tripartite joint venture whose shareholders were Fujian Automobile Industry Group, Taiwanese company Zhonghua Automobile and Mitsubishi Motors. However, in 201, it was announced that it would withdraw and be handed over by Fujian.
After Mitsubishi announced its withdrawal, it was undoubtedly a draw for the southeast. The later model entered a blank period, and it was difficult for qiao women to cook without rice, so it is said that Southeast Automobile chose to cooperate with Chery to achieve technical input.
According to the plan, it is divided into three stages, one of which can be seen as a stage to ensure the survival of Southeast China: the two sides will begin to cooperate in 2022, with Southeast Automobile as the main body, including Chery's new energy models labeling Southeast brand, improving the performance of Southeast Automobile products and other measures, with a sales target of 24,000 units.
Entering the second stage in 2023, Chery will put into production three retrofit products for Southeast Automobile, while locally producing Southeast brand new energy or OEM Chery models, and jointly achieve the sales target of 75,000 units. After 2024, the two companies will jointly develop three new models and reach sales targets of 150,000 to 400,000 units in 2024, while building a new plant with an annual production capacity of 250,000 units.
As can be seen from the above information, the authenticity of these 3 pages of PPT is still relatively high, with detailed steps and goals, and also involves the needs of both Southeast Automobile and Chery Automobile and the support of local governments. In response to this news, Southeast Automobile officials have said that "there is no relevant information to disclose at present." Chery Group and Jietu Automobile insiders did not disclose details.
It is worth mentioning that just in December last year, Southeast Automobile released a new development strategy in a high-profile manner after Mitsubishi's withdrawal, announcing three products based on the new scenario-based design concept of multi-functional family cars, futuristic technology-sensitive cars and a new pure electric platform, as well as a newly designed product LOGO.
Unexpectedly, three months later, Southeast Automobile and Chery Commercial Station were on the "bet" agreement table.
This time, regardless of whether Chery can reach cooperation in restructuring southeast China, it has released a signal that Chery wants to start strategic expansion, and its ambitions are clear. Chery Group has set a target of 1.5 million vehicles in 2022, and in addition to cooperating with Southeast Automobile, it has reached a cooperation with Luxun Precision to develop new energy vehicles.
At present, Geely Automobile has led Lifan out of the quagmire of loss, with the injection of two new models and the establishment of Ruilan Automobile, it will focus on the replacement model market and will become a major boost for Geely to open up the territory. Can't stand still, Chery Automobile must also abandon its own children's fighting thinking, and resurrecting other people's factories is a shortcut to expansion.