In the next 3-5 years, 80% of China's fuel vehicle brands will be "shut down and turned". That is, closure, discontinuation, merger, transformation.
This is the view expressed by Zhu Huarong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of Changan Automobile, at the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum. This sentence is undoubtedly a wake-up call for companies that are already in the automotive industry, as well as companies that still want to enter the track.
Zhu Huarong's view is actually not unreasonable.
According to the data of the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, the retail sales of narrow passenger cars in China in 2021 will be 20.146 million units, of which 2.989 million are new energy passenger cars and 17.157 million are fuel vehicles.
In 2021, 9 brands in the traditional fuel vehicle market have already died. Among the existing 86 brands, there are only 15 car companies with sales of more than 600,000 vehicles, with a total sales volume of 16.6106 million vehicles, excluding new energy vehicle-based car companies like BYD and Wuling, and the remaining more than a dozen head car companies also account for almost 60% of the sales of fuel vehicles.
There are about 60 brands with annual sales of less than 200,000 units, and 34 brands with monthly sales of less than 1,000 units.
Including Southeast Automobile, Qoros Automobile, Borgward Automobile, Zotye Automobile, Cheetah Automobile, etc., in the automobile industry that relies heavily on scale effect, the future fate of enterprises with monthly sales of less than 1,000 units can actually be imagined, and "shutting down and turning" is almost an inevitable end.
Borgward and Zotye have declared bankruptcy and closure one after another. Many car companies that have not gone bankrupt have actually stopped production or semi-suspended production, and a large number of idle production capacity is waiting for the emergence of the takeover man.
Of course, as long as you can find the next home to take over, shutting down is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the head of the car companies need to expand production capacity, and there are more and more new entrants like Xiaomi, Baidu, Niuchuang, etc., all need to quickly obtain capacity support.
So we see that Ideal bought Beijing Hyundai's Shunyi No. 1 factory, Geely took over the Cheetah Automobile Factory in Changsha, Dongfeng Honda took over the original Shenlong No. 2 Factory, GAC Aian took over the Guangfik Guangzhou Plant, Zotye Linyi Base was taken down by the Great Wall, and fuzhou's former Mahayana production base was acquired by BYD. Niuchuang Automobile, which was only officially announced at the end of last year, has also quickly taken over the Changzhou plant of Mahayana Motors.
Like Jianghuai and Haima, while oeming for new forces, they are planning the electrification transformation of their own brands, depending on which road can take the lead in keeping themselves alive.
Even the first dozen or so head car companies that account for more than 60% of the sales of fuel vehicles, although there is no risk of shutdown for the time being, are also facing the problem of transformation. Under the aggressive offensive of the new forces of electric vehicles, the greater the pressure of brand transformation with the larger the base plate of fuel vehicles.
Taking Volkswagen as an example, in 2021, Volkswagen has successively launched ID.4 X, ID.4 CROZZ, ID.6 X, ID.6 CROZZ, ID.3 and other pure electric vehicle models in the domestic market, which is the joint venture brand with the largest layout of new energy vehicle products during the year. Mercedes-Benz has also launched three pure electric vehicle models in China. Even Toyota and Honda, which have always been "sluggish" in electrification, will also launch real and pure electric vehicles in 2022.
Also at the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, Lin Nianxiu, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, made a policy footnote for "shutting down and turning". He said: "Vehicle enterprises to develop new energy vehicles, should rely on the existing production base to cluster development, the existing base to reach a reasonable scale, no new production capacity distribution." ”
No more new production capacity, which means that the powerful head enterprises either make transformations to their own production lines, or directly merge those weak enterprises that are on the verge of shutting down.
In fact, under the premise that the electrification trend is irreversible, it is said that 80% of the fuel vehicle brands in the next 3-5 years are already conservative, and it can be said that 100% of the fuel vehicle brands will face "shutdown and rotation". The development momentum is good, and the head brand with a solid foundation is mainly "turning", and other brands are basically "shut down and merged". (Text/UVIS Auto Old Cannon)
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