Lead
Introduction
The roof leak coincided with overnight rain, and Jilin and Shanghai, as the two important production bases of Volkswagen, have encountered severe epidemics one after another, casting a shadow on Volkswagen Shouzheng this year.
Author 丨 Li Sijia
Responsible editor 丨 Yang Jing
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
Affected by the current round of the epidemic, Shanghai has been carrying out global static management since the end of March, and the city has pressed the "pause button".
At the same time, due to the sealing requirements, employees of relevant car companies need to implement closed production or work from home. In this context, the production rhythm of many car companies in Shanghai, including SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM and Tesla, has been disrupted, and even faced a temporary suspension of production.
Saic-Volkswagen, as one of the earliest joint venture car companies in China, has a total of 6 production bases and 9 automakers. Among them, the Shanghai factory has a total of one plant, two plants, three factories and new energy automobile factories, all located in Anting Town, Jiading District, Shanghai headquarters, which will undoubtedly suffer a huge impact on production and sales in this epidemic prevention and control.
On the other side is Also North Volkswagen, which has been deeply hurt by the epidemic, and the epidemic in Jilin has also caused Volkswagen's base in the northeast to be hit hard. Although FAW-Volkswagen has long dominated the domestic market car company championship, there is no doubt that the impact of the epidemic on production and sales has also put Beijing Volkswagen at risk of losing the championship.
For the brand, Toyota, Honda's catch-up has made Volkswagen feel pressure; in the car companies, Changan, Geely, BYD's attack is not polite; in the strategy, the pace of the Volkswagen new energy ID. family has just started, under the pressure of more pressure, Volkswagen's road in China this year or will be extremely bumpy.
Discontinued Volkswagen
"Due to difficulties in purchasing parts during the epidemic, SAIC Volkswagen's Shanghai plant will be partially closed from Thursday."
On March 31, a Volkswagen spokesperson said so. At the same time, Volkswagen did not provide more details, including when production could be resumed, or which parts and models were particularly affected.
The SAIC Volkswagen plant in Jiading District is located in Puxi, the second batch of nucleic acid screening and control management in Shanghai. According to the relevant epidemic prevention regulations, the sealing time in Puxi area is from 3:00 on April 1 to 3:00 on April 5. Although SAIC's relevant person said: "Volkswagen has been coordinating with supply chain companies to ensure the supply of parts, and production is expected to resume on April 5." "However, before the deadline, we still have not received relevant information about the resumption of production by SAIC Volkswagen."
The sealing policy, which was originally to be unsealed on April 5, has been unsealed because of the high number of new confirmed cases and infections in recent days, resulting in the unsealing time having to continue to be extended, and the unsealing time is unknown.
In fact, this is not the first time this year that SAIC Volkswagen has stopped production due to the epidemic.
On March 14-15 and March 21-22, SAIC Volkswagen was notified that the Anting plant needed to carry out 48-hour closed-loop isolation control. Previously, SAIC Volkswagen's Shanghai plant did not completely stop production, but adopted a closed production system in single shifts. Unexpectedly, with the upgrading of prevention and control management, its production in less than half a month at its factory in Shanghai was once again affected.
Relevant data show that before the closed-loop management, SAIC Volkswagen Anting No. 1 Factory produced more than 320 vehicles per day, while during the closed-loop management period, it produced 200 vehicles per day. Although production has stabilized, production capacity has dropped significantly.
The leak in the house coincided with overnight rain, and what made volkswagen difficult to accept was that not only SAIC Volkswagen, but also the FAW-Volkswagen plant in Changchun was temporarily closed until April 5. As for when to resume work, Volkswagen China said that there will be news after the Qingming Festival holiday. However, as of the deadline, FAW-Volkswagen also did not give a relevant response.
As early as March 13, in order to cooperate with the realization of dynamic zeroing of the social surface, FAW Group decided to arrange for all planned production stops at the Changwu vehicle factories, and the initial plan was to stop production until the 16th of that month. The restart time of the production line will be determined according to the overall situation of epidemic prevention and control and the relevant requirements of the province and city.
Among them, FAW-Volkswagen Changchun Plant will produce FAW-Volkswagen models and Audi models, involving Volkswagen CC, Magotan, Bora, Audi brand A4, A6, Q5, Q3 and other models. Judging from the information released so far, the FAW-Volkswagen Changchun plant is still in suspension, which means that its shutdown time has exceeded 20 days.
Not only the suspension of production in manufacturing plants, the impact of the epidemic on the parts supply system will continue to be transmitted to the vehicle manufacturing, the sealing control is currently a reduction in vehicle production, and the shortage of parts supply brought by the follow-up will continue to hit Volkswagen in the next few months.
According to the data of the Association, in February this year, FAW-Volkswagen sold 105,000 vehicles, down 9.6% year-on-year, ranking first and the only car company with sales exceeding 100,000; SAIC Volkswagen sold 80,000 vehicles, down 19.0% year-on-year, ranking third in sales.
From the perspective of sales volume, in the context of the general decline of joint venture brands, it is reasonable that the sales volume of North and South Volkswagen has decreased significantly year-on-year; from the ranking point of view, FAW-Volkswagen has maintained the championship throne, and SAIC Volkswagen has also opened the road to catch-up, but the arrival of the epidemic has also been heavily affected by the overall performance of Volkswagen in the Chinese market while being heavily affected by the two cities of Jilin and Shanghai.
The road to catching up is so difficult
With the advantage of entering the Chinese market more than 30 years ago, Volkswagen created a dynasty that belonged to Volkswagen, during which nearly 4 million sales were sold every year, making all cars daunted.
With the gradual maturity of the domestic automobile consumer market, coupled with the emergence of negative news such as Volkswagen's own particle trap, Passat collision, and twice on the "3·15" party, Volkswagen's brand belief began to collapse, and its development in the Chinese market gradually went downhill, although its joint venture company can still reach the top of the annual sales list, but from its peak, it is already dying.
The public, who are accustomed to seeing other brands in the rearview mirror, are naturally not willing to be lonely. As a result, in recent years, we have created the Volkswagen ID. family, which aims to lead the future new energy vehicle market, to save the market image and market position. However, under the influence of the epidemic, the suspension of production has undoubtedly been weighed on the development of the entire Volkswagen China in the Chinese market, making it bear the burden again on the road of catching up.
At the same time, SAIC Volkswagen undoubtedly played a more stressful role in this "crossing". We all know that as a former sales champion, SAIC Volkswagen has not had a good time in recent years, with annual sales of only 1.24 million vehicles last year, far from its peak of 2 million vehicles, not only won the championship title by FAW-Volkswagen, but even defeated by some head independent brands.
The former, who had planned to use the new energy ID family and the new products to increase efforts this year, was unexpectedly disrupted by the epidemic again, resulting in difficulties in the road to turnaround.
The first is sales pressure.
According to the data, FAW-Volkswagen ranked first in 2021 with 1.85 million vehicles, and SAIC-Volkswagen's cumulative sales of 1.242 million vehicles in the whole year ranked fourth. Although both are still at the head from the ranking point of view, SAIC Volkswagen, which has topped the domestic passenger car brand sales for several years, has not returned to its original position since it was surpassed by FAW-Volkswagen with an advantage of 44,000 vehicles in 2019.
Therefore, whether it is the vertical market pressure or the horizontal pressure of THE FAW-Volkswagen, the pressure is enormous.
SAIC Volkswagen also began to embark on the road of redemption after the introduction of the ID. family series of models.
Last year, the emergence of saic and Volkswagen's three ID. family models broke the originally calm new energy market, and gained a firm foothold in the market with its super high cost performance. After less than a year of hard work, the SAIC Volkswagen ID. family has accumulated sales of 48,000 units (data as of February this year), which is "the first appearance" in the domestic new energy vehicle market.
Therefore, the ID. family, which has high hopes, has even been given the expectation of "200,000 vehicles sold annually" this year.
In addition to the hot-selling ID. family models, SAIC Volkswagen has made great efforts to launch new products this year. It is understood that in addition to some of the annual small changes in addition to products, SAIC Volkswagen will successively launch four blockbuster new cars this year, including new Weiran, new Lingdu L, new Langyi and new Tuang X.
Among them, the new Weiran and the new Lingdu L have been listed in March; the new Langyi is expected to complete the listing in April; as for the listing information of the new Tuang, there is currently news in the industry that the new Tuon X is expected to be listed in June. It is not difficult to see that SAIC Volkswagen's new product launch this year is mainly concentrated in the first half of the year.
The suspension of production will undoubtedly have a greater impact on the rhythm of SAIC Volkswagen's product launch and the delivery of new cars.
On the other hand, while SAIC Volkswagen is under heavy pressure, FAW-Volkswagen will not be easy.
Last year, FAW-Volkswagen sold more than 1.85 million units, the highest sales car company in China, and this year, FAW Group will sell 4.1 million vehicles, an increase of 17.1% year-on-year. For the sales target of 4.1 million vehicles, Qiu Xiandong, director, general manager and deputy secretary of the party committee of China FAW, said that he hopes that FAW-Volkswagen sales will exceed 2 million units in 2022. The suspension of the Changchun plant will naturally affect the production and sales of the latter.
Of course, on the whole, North and South Volkswagen is only the tip of the iceberg affected by the epidemic control of car companies. According to a report released by the Association on March 30, the overall retail sales of the narrow passenger car market in the fourth week of March reached an average of 39,000 units per day, down 29% year-on-year, and the performance was relatively abnormal, compared with the fourth week of February this year.
This means that although the impact on the entire industry in the month of the new pattern of comprehensive staticity in the main domestic automobile production bases (individual regions) is difficult to judge, it is foreseeable that the automotive industry, which is already deeply affected by the tight supply of parts, will be affected by more than the original expectations in the case that some factories are forced to stop work due to the epidemic factors.
According to the news released by the National Health Commission on April 6, from March 1 to April 5, more than 176,000 cases of local infection were reported nationwide, affecting 29 provinces. Although with the effective implementation of epidemic prevention and control in various places, many places have shown a good trend, but the epidemic situation in Shanghai, Jilin and other regions is still in the development stage.
That is to say, car companies in the corresponding regions and even related automotive industry chains will still encounter difficulties in production lines and sales. For Volkswagen, which has important plants in Shanghai and Jilin, its impact is far from profound.
| Li Sijia |
Leader of the anti-parsley alliance and long-time occupier of the first floor of the commune