This week, FAW Toyota's flagship TNGA sedan, the new Asia Dragon, was launched. Since its birth in 1994, the Toyota Asian Dragon has sold more than 2 million vehicles worldwide. After entering China in 2019, sales also exceeded 300,000 vehicles. Obviously, there is one more competitive product on the market. Some people say that the new Asian Dragon has opened the curtain on FAW Toyota's new product offensive this year.
In fact, FAW Toyota's product offensive began last year. Asia Lion, Yize Shuangqing, Lingfang Harrier and other models were launched on the market last year. Not only that, they put this wave of offensive under the framework of "three major strategies" (TNGA strengthening strategy, Crown brand replacement strategy, and new energy strategy), and each new car listing has been successful and achieved good results. In 2021, FAW Toyota sold a total of 860,000 new cars, an increase of 8% year-on-year, once again outperforming the market. What is FAW Toyota doing this year? Continuing a strong product offensive is naturally a must. The "joining" of the new Asian Dragon will surely enable enterprises to grasp the initiative and be more confident in the competition. Next, the arrival of the pure electric bZ4X is also expected. Not long ago, the "FAW Toyota Beyond Zero bZ4X Pure Enjoyment Tasting Tour" has been launched, this car is equipped with a number of advanced technologies first adopted by Toyota, and has left a deep impression on everyone in terms of styling, interior, driving experience, driving performance and other aspects.
Behind such a fierce product offensive, FAW Toyota has also set itself a big goal: in 2022, it will achieve "annual sales of one million vehicles, tens of millions of users, and annual revenue of more than 100 billion". This was proposed by Hu Shaohang, secretary of the party committee and general manager of FAW Toyota Motor Sales Co., Ltd., at the Guangzhou Auto Show in November 2020, which caused quite a stir at the time. However, Hu Shaohang's goal is justified. Over the past many years, FAW Toyota has always had strong development potential and resilience. In 2021, in the market environment affected by complex factors such as repeated epidemics and chip shortages, FAW Toyota still maintained its growth and gained the 9 millionth user of the brand. In other words, having past experiences has made FAW Toyota understand what it should do and what kind of goals it can achieve. This is also where Hu Shaohang said this 2022 goal.
It can be seen that FAW Toyota is going to accelerate its power. This also brings another deeper level of thinking: under the current market total, the sales of car companies such as FAW Toyota are growing, whose cake has been robbed?
In the past few years, China's auto market has grown rapidly, mainly due to the continuous release of incremental markets. So much so that people have been asking: How big is the market space? Some say 40 million, others say 60 million. But since three years ago, market growth has slowed down and even seen negative growth. Let people see that the incremental market seems to be slowly disappearing, and enterprises have begun to enter the competition of the stock market. Here we must give a thumbs up to the sales team of FAW Toyota under the leadership of Hu Shaohang, whose achievements last year are not small. I remember that when Hu Shaohang took over as the general manager of FAW Toyota Sales Company, the public opinion field generally believed that "high-level takeover". This "high" is not just that it has sold enough, but the market is so big that you have one more mouth, which means that others will have one less bite. Such a sale is really a fierce competition of real knives and real guns. Now Hu Shaohang has added weight to the work in 2022, which is enough to see FAW Toyota's "ambition" for this competition.
But I'm thinking about another question: Does entering stock competition mean that the market plate has reached the "ceiling"? What must be said here is that there are two tracks in the future market, one is the track of traditional cars and the other is the track of new cars.
In the past two years, new force car companies have continuously entered the market, and the growth rate is very fast. Many analysts believe that the "overall recovery" of the automobile market since last year has benefited from the growth of new energy vehicles. Such a judgment seems to be correct, but it is easy to form a misreading that new energy and intelligent vehicles are only an increase in the demand for traditional cars. This is certainly not right. I have always described new energy intelligent vehicles as "new cars", just to express a layer of meaning, the competition in the stock market is the competition of traditional cars, and the competition in the incremental market is the competition of new cars. The "ceiling" of the current market is only the ceiling of the traditional automobile market. There is still a lot of space and possibility in china's auto market, which belongs to new cars. This is also easy to understand why there are so many new forces car companies and brands continue to enter, they are aiming at the increment, rather than the stock market, they see more of the new car market incremental space is still very large.
Hu Shaohang dared to speak out, in fact, it showed that FAW Toyota had to grab both tracks. He understands that the market will not compete for the stock market because you are a traditional car company, nor will you grab the "share" of the stock market because you are a new car. Some people say that the growth of the overall market last year benefited from the rapid growth of new energy vehicles, which must be to take the market small. I noticed that faw Toyota's message for the upcoming "bZ4X" was already "very new". Whether it is product highlights, features or marketing methods, it is no different from new car companies. It shows that we must dynamically look at the changes and competition in the future automotive market. It is by no means a competitive lineup that some people have drawn up now. Traditional car companies can also be new forces in car manufacturing, and new forces must continue to innovate. The same is true for the future market offensive, which must be the concept of a large market between the two so-called lineups, and promote each other to form a big market. China's auto market has a lot of space, and the increment is created. I believe that FAW Toyota must understand the reasoning, and they will not give up such a creation. The new Asian Dragon, including the next "bZ4x" listing, should look at every move of FAW Toyota today from this perspective.