This scene is finally coming.
Not long ago, the news that Acura, a luxury brand of Honda Motor, will withdraw from the Chinese market has come flooding in. More public details flowed out: the relevant dealers may have stopped selling the model; the only 4S store in Beijing, GAC Acura Beijing Jingang store, has officially stopped selling Acura... As of now, Honda China has not officially responded. However, in the eyes of the outside world, the decline of Acura in China is already an indisputable fact.
Once upon a time, Acura was also the proud son of Japanese luxury cars. In the 1980s, Honda Motor launched Acura to seize the U.S. luxury car market, which was a sensation. It was the first Japanese luxury car brand, predates later Lexus and Infiniti. In 2006, Acura officially entered China, priced at 300,000 yuan, and once shouted out the goal of selling 100,000 vehicles a year. Now, 15 years later, Acura's annual sales in 2021 are only 6,000 units, which is dismal.
The distant figure of Acura is lamentable. With the rise of China's auto industry, when domestic new energy vehicles roll in, more foreign brands will be crushed into the dust of history.
The first Japanese luxury car
After 15 years in China, sales are still dismal
Acura also had glorious years.
When it comes to the "Big Three" of Japanese luxury cars, people may first think of Lexus, Infiniti and Acura. Among them, Acura is a high-end automobile brand founded by Honda Automobile in the United States in 1986, and it is it that pioneered the concept of "Japanese luxury car".
At that time, the economic recovery coincided with a surge in demand for luxury cars in the North American market. Honda quickly sniffed the business opportunity and used Acura as a sharp blade to open up the luxury car market. At first, Acura was born on the basis of the Legend, Honda's large sedan Legend - with a caliper as the logo prototype, a small horizontal bar in the middle, and the overall pictographic letter "A" as the brand logo. Its English name Acura derives from the Latin word Acuracy, meaning "precise".
In 1986, Acura launched the Legend and Integra models in the United States, which became a hit and sold more than any European luxury car the following year. In 1990, Acura launched the world's first all-aluminum car "NSX", facing European supercars such as Ferrari and Porsche, and was hailed as "the best sports car in history".
The roar of overseas luxury cars has also entered the ears of Chinese, and the popularity of luxury cars in China has risen sharply since 2000. Acura hit the iron while it was hot and relied on the solid endorsement of Honda Group to break into China's luxury car jianghu.
In 2006, Acura announced that it officially entered China with the medium and large sedan RL and the medium-sized sedan TL. At that time, Acura had sold 200,000 in the U.S. market, and its popularity even exceeded mercedes-Benz. The confident Acura attempts to replicate the myth in China.
However, Acura's road to pioneering in China seems to be particularly difficult. As netizens generally believe: Japanese companies often sell first-class products to Europe and the United States, second-rate products to themselves, and third-rate products dumped to China. This impression made Acura's situation extremely embarrassing.
Coupled with the fact that at that time, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi had completed the localization transformation, and the first-line luxury car brands represented by them controlled the Chinese luxury car market, and the strong impression of the BBA had begun to appear.
The data is dismal. According to the sales situation announced by Honda China, Acura sold 4,014 vehicles in China in 2011, shrank to more than 2,300 in 2012, and although it doubled year-on-year in 2013, with sales of 4,600 vehicles, it was still far less than one-tenth of the first-line luxury car brands. After entering China for many years, Acura only has about 40 authorized dealers in the country, and nearly 10 of them have asked to withdraw from the network due to lack of operation.
Acura also thought about saving herself. In 2016, Honda joined hands with GAC to put into production of Acura models in China, opening the road to localization of the Acura brand.
Subsequently, Acura successively launched the first domestic model CDX, the four-wheel drive version of the CDX AWD and the new generation of sports car Acura NSX. Among them, CDX is positioned in a compact SUV, the guiding price is between 250,000-300,000 yuan, just listed for three consecutive months to achieve sales growth, becoming the main best-selling model.
Here is a set of data: in October 2016, acura's cumulative sales (wholesale) reached 1381 units, terminal sales reached 1378 units, an increase of 143% year-on-year. Among them, cdx sales (wholesale) of 1236 units, terminal sales of 1058 units, supporting most of Acura's country.
Since then, GUANGQI Honda has placed high hopes on the localization of Acura and plans to account for 10% of GAC Honda's overall sales by 2020, that is, annual sales of 100,000 vehicles.
The ideal is very full, but the reality is very bone - the data shows that in 2017, Acura sold 16,348 vehicles, an increase of 80.4% year-on-year; however, in 2018, Acura sold 10,044 vehicles, down 38.56% year-on-year; in 2019, Acura sold 14,786 vehicles, an increase of 47.21%;
By 2020, Acura sales were only 11,210 units, down 24.19% year-on-year. This figure is clearly still far from the target of 100,000. 2021 is even more bleak, squeezed by first-line BBA brands and second-tier luxury cars such as Lexus, Acura's sales have fallen to more than 6,000 units.
Not long ago, a number of media reported that Acura is about to withdraw from the Chinese market, and the relevant dealers may have stopped selling the model and have entered the inventory clearance stage. Up to now, Honda China has not given a clear response, but it is an indisputable fact that Acura is in jeopardy in China.
As soon as the news came out, a netizen lamented the message: "It is a pity, I remember that I liked TLX-L very much when I bought a car in 2018, but the price exceeded the budget, and I had no choice but to buy Maiteng." Just over 15 years after entering China, Acura left a sigh.
Defeat the Chinese market
Acura, what the hell is wrong
With an impactful appearance and power configuration, Acura was once a fan in the domestic circle. Now that we have come to this step, what did Acura do wrong?
Combing acura's actions since it entered the Chinese market, it is not difficult for us to find that "few models" and "high price" have always been labels that Acura cannot take off.
In the US market, Acura has at least 6 models on sale, and there are constantly high-performance models updated on the market, but since Acura stopped selling a number of imported cars in China in August 2021, only two domestic models, CDX and RDX, are currently on sale, with pricing ranges of 229,800-34.98 million yuan and 328,460 yuan respectively.
This has no advantage in BBA luxury brands. Chinese consumers are often more attracted by the same price point of Audi Q3, BMW X1, Mercedes-Benz GLA.
More importantly, acura's publicity and brand image after entering China are also tepid. Unlike the BBA, which preempts the user's mind with intensive advertising, Acura has only one advertising known in China, that is, in 2014, and asked Andy Lau and Gui Lun magnesium to endorse it, and in addition to participating in the auto show, there was not much publicity every day.
This is fatal in China's luxury car market, which pays attention to face and pomp.
Such an "unknown" brand sells luxury cars, not only is it high and low, but it will also be abandoned due to the problem of recognition - Acura is quite similar to the logo of the domestic brand Chang'an, and some people often confuse the two. Some car owners have helplessly said: It has been said that this is a new high match for Chang'an.
Of course, there is another most critical reason - in the context of the rapid transformation of fuel vehicles to electric vehicles, luxury cars are no longer beautiful.
According to the data, in 2021, the output of new energy vehicles in the mainland will reach 3.545 million units, and the sales volume will exceed 3.521 million, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, and the speed is amazing. In this context, major luxury car brands have thrown themselves into the tide of electrification, not only Mercedes EQC 400, Audi E-tron Quattro, BMW iX3, Tesla Model S and so on ignited the market. On the other hand, Acura, although it has announced its full entry into the development of electric models in the North American market and is expected to launch its first electric vehicle in 2024, has remained silent in the Chinese market.
And Acura may just be the beginning of "battle royale". Other leaders in the era of fuel vehicles, in the era of electric vehicles, even face a similar fate to Acura.
The rise of domestic new energy vehicles
Who will be the next to be eliminated?
Looking at the past few years, China's luxury car industry has undergone earth-shaking changes.
In 2009, China's domestic automobile production and sales surpassed the United States for the first time and became the world's largest automobile production and sales country. However, the luxury car market is a heart disease of the Chinese people - the best-selling foreign brands are almost exclusive, and there is no trace of a domestic brand. Such an embarrassing scene deeply stung the hearts of Chinese auto people.
But the rise of any luxury brand did not happen overnight, so another path emerged. In 2010, auto maniac Shufu Lee took the first step, winning the Volvo brand that had competed with the BBA for $1.8 billion.
Subsequently, the most important corner overtaking opportunity came - the outbreak of domestic new energy vehicles. In 2014, Li Bin, the godfather of travel, started his fourth business and founded Weilai Automobile.
In fact, before the official construction of the car, Li Bin pondered a question: what price car should be built? Looking at the founders of global auto companies, the founders of the three mountains of Geely, Great Wall and BYD in China were still young and strong, while the founders of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi abroad were very old. Under comprehensive consideration, Li Bin believes that entering the mainstream high-end market is a choice with comparative advantages.
Since its inception, Weilai Automobile's positioning has been a high-end luxury car brand, benchmarking the head camp of traditional fuel vehicle luxury brands. At present, NIO has three pure electric SUVs, ES8, ES6 and EC6, a pure electric vehicle ET5 and a flagship pure electric sedan ET7, with a starting price range of 358,000 to 448,000. Among them, the positioning of ET7 is a medium-sized pure electric car, with a starting price of 448,000 yuan, and the top match has exceeded 500,000 yuan.
Coincidentally, in 2015, Li wanted to start resigning from his position at Autohome and start his third business. This time, Li wanted to choose the "hell model" in entrepreneurship - building a car, establishing a car and a home, and later changing it to an ideal car car. Ideally launched the ideal ONE positioned as a luxury medium and large SUV, priced at only 338,000 yuan, this price is on the same price line as Acura, but the performance is worlds apart.
In January this year, the Association announced the wholesale sales ranking of passenger car manufacturers for the whole year 2021. In the luxury SUV market in 2021, mercedes-benz GLC, Audi Q5L, and BMW X3, which have been sitting in the top three for many years, have suffered an unprecedented impact. The big hit in the field of new energy, Tesla Model Y, occupies the top position in the list.
In addition, China's new car-making forces performed well - the annual sales of the ideal ONE reached 90,491 units, a year-on-year increase of 177.4%, ranking fifth. It is worth noting that in December 2021, the ideal ONE ranked second with a performance of 14,087 vehicles, an increase of 130.0% year-on-year, briefly surpassing traditional luxury car brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW; while the NIO ES6 ranked 10th on the list, with annual sales reaching 41,474 units, an increase of 48.4% year-on-year.
In 2021, the ideal annual revenue of 27.01 billion yuan, an increase of 185.6% year-on-year, hit a record high, as of now, the ideal ONE has delivered more than 10,000 vehicles for three consecutive months, setting a new record for the delivery of Chinese luxury brand models of more than 300,000 yuan.
With the rise of new energy vehicles, more and more domestic new energy brands have begun to squeeze out the market share of foreign brands. In recent years, Nissan's luxury car brand Infiniti has been losing ground, and the price of Cadillac, a luxury car brand under GM, has dropped continuously.
If in the era of fuel vehicles, it is difficult for domestic brands that start late to break the walls built by traditional luxury car brands. Then in the era of electrification, the opportunity for domestic independent brands to overtake in curves has come.
As an investor who has been following the automotive industry for many years put it bluntly: "From the endgame, more than 70% of China's auto market may be independent brands." More critically, Chinese car companies, especially the new car-making forces, are leading the innovation of intelligent electric vehicles in the world. We believe that Chinese companies will define the form and way of automobiles, and will also rewrite the global automotive market. ”
And Acura's loneliness may just be the beginning. I don't know who will be the next overseas car brand to leave?