"Seeking change in a dangerous situation", Li Xiaorui is afraid that it will be difficult to solve the dilemma of the Great Wall Haval brand

Text: Zheng Driving @ Tan Qing said AI editor-in-chief

There is not much time left for the great wall Haval in the market.

According to the data released by the Association, the Haval H6 sold 19620 vehicles in February this year, which is not only 5539 fewer than the first-place Honda CR-V, but also almost equalized by the third-place BYD Song New Energy.

In March last year, Haval had launched the H6 national tide version, hoping to play the national tide card to boost sales, at that time, at the press conference, Li Xiaorui, general manager of Haval brand company, said that it was necessary to further strengthen the H6 major items. Later data seem to indicate that H6 is still in decline. According to the data, since August last year, the monthly sales volume of H6 has continued to decline year-on-year, with a decline of 47.3%.

From the former sales crown to the current decline, the H6 dilemma seems to reveal the sense of powerlessness of the Haval brand and even the Great Wall Group in the face of today's industry changes, which also casts a shadow on the future of Great Wall Haval.

Great Wall Haval into the "lost"

In a sense, Great Wall Motors' past success has largely relied on the success of the Haval H6, and for the group, the H6's best-selling has brought a lot of cash flow. The Great Wall obviously wanted to replicate such success, so it successively launched brands such as Weipai, Euler, and Tank.

The multi-brand strategy seems to have failed to inject fresh blood into the group as desired, in February 2022, the three accounted for 6%, 9% and 9% of the total sales of Great Wall Motors, respectively, from the data point of view, great wall seems to have failed to replicate the success of H6.

The market did not give the Great Wall more room for fault, in September 2021, the Haval H6, which should have hit the 100 consecutive championships, suffered a rare sales volume "Waterloo", and the haval H6 was not the same positioning of the Changan CS75, nor the Honda CR-V, but the Tesla Model Y that was just listed last year.

Interestingly, while Haval H6 sales slipped from 35,570 units in January to 19,620 units, the BYD Song DM grew from 16,411 units in January to 19,057 units.

Behind the increase and decrease, the industry is changing.

Behind the data, it is not difficult to find that the other side of the decline in fuel vehicle SUVs is the growth of new energy SUVs. This may indicate that the challenge facing haval H6 is not just the rise of a certain brand, but the entire industry entering a new stage.

American scholar E.M. Rogers once proposed an innovation diffusion theory, which divides the diffusion process of new ideas, new things, and new products into five stages according to the attitude of adopters, in order: innovators, early adopters, early volkswagens, late volkswagens and laggards.

In Tan Qing's view of AI, the process of the development of new energy vehicles is also a process of continuous innovation and diffusion of technology and industry.

In the perspective of innovation diffusion curve, Tesla is the innovator of the industry to lead the development of the industry, Wei Xiaoli and BYD are early adopters, while players such as Toyota, Volkswagen, SAIC, and Geely are early Volkswagen, and can also follow the trend of the industry, while brands such as Great Wall, Renault, and Ford are late Volkswagen, which has obviously lagged behind the industry.

The Haval H6 was surpassed by the Model Y for the first time, more like the "industry innovator" to the "mass player" comprehensive transcendence, although the audience market of the two is different, but from the perspective of the entire category of SUVs, it may also mean a transcendence from "old" to "new".

This transcendence also seems to indicate that under the general trend of new energy replacing fuel vehicles, the situation of new energy SUVs dominating the list is likely to become the new normal in the future.

For the Great Wall Haval, in the face of the rise of new energy SUVs, there seems to be no effective countermeasure at present, even if Haval models continue to launch new versions to maintain sales, it is still "palliative rather than root", it is difficult to solve the difficulty of growth.

From this point of view, the current Great Wall Haval seems to be driving into the "lost". From a more granular point of view, on the product side, it is difficult for Great Wall Haval to have "iterative" competitiveness.

On the one hand, cost-effective, spacious space, atmospheric appearance and other characteristics have long been Haval's unique advantages, many car manufacturers who see Haval H6 in the SUV market are red-eyed, like Honda CR-V, Changan CS75, Geely Boyue and other models have formed a siege trend, Haval H6 although it can still play, but has fallen into homogeneous competition, so the advantages of Haval H6 have been wiped out.

On the other hand, new energy vehicles began to deal a fatal blow to the shortcomings of the Haval H6. According to many car owners, the most obvious disadvantages of the Haval H6 are high fuel consumption and poor power, which were not fatal in the past, after all, the price is there, and these shortcomings can be understood.

Compared with fuel vehicles, the technical content of new energy vehicles is more advanced, and the cost of cost is relatively high, so in the past few years, new energy SUVs have not constituted a competitive threat to Haval H6.

However, after these years of policy subsidies and development, the current market size of new energy SUVs is expanding, and the price is gradually declining. For example, the price range of Haval H6 is 100,000-150,000 yuan, while the price of BYD Song DM-i is between 150,000 and 200,000 yuan, and if the price of Haval H6 is added to tens of thousands, you can buy a new energy SUV.

Although new energy models are still slightly more expensive, the price gap with fuel vehicles is not too obvious, and as sales gradually increase, the price of new energy SUVs is likely to continue to decrease.

With the current hybrid technology, the fuel consumption of new energy vehicles can already be about half lower than that of fuel vehicles with similar prices. Coupled with the rise in international oil prices, can not be on the green card and other factors, haval H6 represented by the compact SUV has not been fragrant.

One year after "taking up new duties", Li Xiaorui was unable to solve Haval's dilemma

In March last year, Li Xiaorui, general manager of the Haval brand, personally announced the new version of H6, and the outside world also paid more attention to the "old man" of the automotive industry.

In public information, there are very few news reports about Li Xiaorui, and it is reported that Li Xiaorui was the director of SAIC Volkswagen North China, responsible for some of SAIC Volkswagen's marketing work, and has rich experience in brand communication and marketing.

In 2020, great wall announced the transformation to a global technology travel company, under the initiative to seek changes, the personnel system has changed, the personnel aspect of the implementation of the "rotating president system", the implementation of "de-generalization" reform. As a result, Li Xiaorui became the general manager of the Great Wall Haval brand.

Changes in personnel can always reveal the direction of the group's strategic transformation, and the Great Wall Haval brand under Li Xiaorui is still difficult to get rid of the traditional inherent external cognition.

From the release of the national tide version of H6 last year, it can be seen that Great Wall Haval hopes to spread a young and trendy brand image through marketing momentum, but from the actual sales point of view, no matter how many marketing tricks are difficult to solve the dilemma of the Haval brand.

Tactical diligence is often behind strategic laziness.

The Great Wall can walk on one leg of the SUV, on the one hand, the success of the strategic layout of the SUV track, on the other hand, it also benefits from the "paranoia" of Haval's product positioning in the era of fuel vehicles.

In 2002, in the domestic SUV is still a niche market, foreign and joint venture brand SUV models pricing are basically more than 200,000, at this time the Great Wall, but dare to launch its first SUV model - Seffer, with 80,000 yuan of real incense price, Seffer quickly became the hit of the year.

At this time, other independent brands and joint venture brands have not found the market gap in the existence of low-end SUVs, which can cut the product positioning of user needs, so that Great Wall occupies a leading position in the low-end SUV market.

However, in the following two years, the blue ocean of the SUV market gradually disappeared and entered the stock game period. The countermeasure given by the Great Wall is to continuously derive multiple versions on the basis of the Haval H6 and continue to maintain its dominant position in the SUV market.

For example, the 2021 Haval H6 has as many as 24 versions, with prices ranging from 98,000 to 154,900, reaching a kind of "saturation" coverage of the low-end SUV market.

For car brands, version update is a conventional "tactic", upgrading is a heavy "strategy", which is like the current situation in Russia and Ukraine, no matter how successful the Ukrainian army tactics are, it cannot change the reality of strategic failure.

There are too many versions, but there is no substantive iteration of product power, and in the face of the industry trend of intelligence and electrification, the Haval brand does not seem to have outstanding advantages. On the contrary, the product "change the soup without changing the medicine" on the one hand leads to the confusion of the product line and cannot form a synergy, on the other hand, the user cognition is more dispersed, and it is naturally difficult for sales to maintain a sustained growth trend.

The Great Wall actually saw this too, so there was Euler. According to the information of the Tianyancha APP, in addition to Haval, the Great Wall also has WEY, Euler, tanks and Great Wall pickup trucks. In other words, Haval may not be important in the future development of the group.

However, compared with BYD New Energy and Geely, the Great Wall is actually half a beat slower in the transformation of new energy. Among them, BYD's new energy sales account for a higher proportion.

In addition, the Great Wall brand brand front is too long, easy to lead to the dispersion of resources, no matter in which segment, once the segment is verified, it will usher in competitors, even if the Euler, tank where the subdivision track is still a blue ocean market in the short term, but competitors will quickly follow up.

The Great Wall seems to want to find a shortcut, that is, to avoid BYD's sharp edge and focus on "her economy", but the problem that follows is that euler brands with gender preferences may be difficult to lay the foundation for long-term market growth through effective scaling.

One point that cannot be ignored is that the main force of the current automobile consumer market is on the one hand the family as a unit, on the other hand, the portrait of the market consumer group is still a male group. In other words, Haval, as the "pillar of the Great Wall", may still provide time, space and valuable cash flow for the transformation of the entire group for a long time.

At present, it is difficult to say whether Haval can meet the expectations of the group, and as the helmsman of the Haval brand, Li Xiaorui also needs to hand over a passing answer sheet to the group.