Although there are already traces of BYD's possible suspension of fuel vehicles, it is really waiting for the boots to land (much earlier than everyone expected), and it can be seen from the various reports that the outside world is paying high attention to this incident.
The reason why it is so high is because many people feel that BYD's first announcement of this decision has epoch-making significance (whether you admit it or not) - the final performance of the fuel car really begins to enter the countdown.
In the past few years, whether it is a multinational auto giant or our local independent brand, we have basically given a clear timetable for the suspension of fuel vehicles, roughly around 2030, and later in 2040, it will be almost electrified.
BYD is now the first to stand up and say that it will stop production, and from the market level, it will somewhat put pressure on competitors. But the greater significance is still a success in BYD's marketing, occupying the high point of public opinion and consolidating the market position of "new energy vehicle leader".
I started tracking BYD since I started in 2007, and I can't say I'm very familiar with it, but at least I know something about it. IT WAS NOT SURPRISING THAT BYD MADE SUCH A DECISION.
Last November, when BYD signed a pledge with GM, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and Ford to "stop production of fuel vehicles worldwide in 2040", I talked to a friend in the circle about this matter and made a small bet, BYD will definitely not wait for 2040, maybe next year will take the lead in stopping production. The other party does not believe, with a meal to bet, I am not a god, just a joke come true, ready to cash in after the end of the epidemic.
Over the years, with my understanding of BYD, they must be high-profile when they should be high-profile, and they must be low-key when they are low-key.
The labels that the outside world labeled Wang Chuanfu are mainly "technical maniacs" or "car maniacs", emphasizing his technical characteristics. At the same time, BYD also has a large team of engineers, creating a strong engineer culture, coupled with the legendary entrepreneurial experience of Wang Chuanfu in the early years, and defeating Giants such as Sony and Sanyo in Japan with the production mode of "artificial + fixtures" (and later these companies turned back to visit the production mode of BYD batteries and said that they could not learn at all), many people generally believe that Wang Chuanfu likes to indulge in the study of technology.
But you know, Wang Chuanfu is not only an engineer, he is also an entrepreneur who must personally check all the indicators of business operation and is extremely sensitive to the smell of the market. Simply put, he understands technology, understands the market better, and is a technical and marketing complex enterprise helmsman.
Therefore, in addition to the label of "technology maniac", another trait that Wang Chuanfu is rarely discussed is "marketing master". And whether it is technical marketing or brand marketing, or even product marketing at the point of sale, Wang Chuanfu has his own set of marketing philosophy.
"I've decided to bundle up cars for the rest of my life. At BYD I say one thing or the other, marketing and R&D I personally master. The two are interconnected, do not need two heads, the combination of the two to form my sense of the direction of the direction of the enterprise, this feeling can only be understood in words, like a dish can only be tasted in person to know the taste. ”
The above passage was said by BYD in 2003 when it acquired Qinchuan Automobile, and Wang Chuanfu was interviewed by the media. As the saying goes, an engineer who can't do marketing is not a qualified entrepreneur. BYD has come to this day with technology and marketing, not just technology-driven.
Therefore, in the announcement of the suspension of fuel vehicles such an epoch-making event, I firmly believe that BYD will definitely take the lead in announcing, rather than waiting for other opponents to follow suit before playing the cards, occupying the commanding heights is one of the characteristics of BYD's wolf culture.
▲ The first model F3 laid a foundation for BYD, and it was also a success after the suspension of production last year
I don't know if you have noticed a point, but the high appearance rate of Fan Wang Chuanfu means that BYD will "do things". Moreover, his public remarks are much more straightforward and radical than those of the middle and high-level people who were originally rushing to the front line.
For example, in the early days of BYD's automobile development, "a car worth millions of yuan, in my opinion, is actually a pile of steel" The phrase spread widely, which is not just a nonsense, externally speaking, it is this sentence that let the world know the existence of BYD and attracted attention in the industry. Internally, it greatly boosted morale, to know that at that time, BYD, whether it was a worker or a research and development team, most of them were young people who had just graduated, and it was easy to be conquered by the personality charm of the "commander-in-chief".
As the automobile business enters a stable period, Wang Chuanfu rarely appears in the public at present, except for occasional interviews with some financial media or central media, like the automotive media in our industry, even at some of BYD's blockbuster model launches, it is difficult to see his figure, and small-scale group visits are even rarer. Many important meetings are also attended by the following middle and senior executives.
Then in recent years, wang Chuanfu's frequency of appearances has been significantly higher, because the key stage of BYD Automobile's comprehensive transformation to new energy vehicles, whether internal or outward, requires him to detonate some topics, especially to outline and create a blueprint for future green energy. As for what he said, you can find it in a casual search on the Internet, and the core keywords are basically around: opportunities, challenges, subversion and change of the world.
As for some specific marketing methods, it is difficult to list them all. To sum up, BYD has cleverly grafted many of the original marketing methods in the field of consumer electronics into the automotive field.
For example, the first model F3 was listed on the market to take a sub-stop marketing, I remember that there were friends in the circle who laughed at such a model at that time. Because the automotive industry in the past, including the current new car conference is to invite hundreds of media across the country to participate together, the scale of the conference is grand, some of the cost of up to tens of millions, sub-station marketing is somewhat LOW. However, this marketing method proved to be successful, including the strategy of sub-site listing that many brands adopted later.
There is also a major strategic model F3DM launched in 2008, the concept of "dual mode" used is also inspired by the dual mode of the mobile phone, so that ordinary consumers are easy to accept, and the dual mode electric vehicle is also called a golden signboard of BYD, which has played a very key role in promoting the brand.
Now, BYD unexpectedly announced the suspension of fuel vehicles, but chose a very appropriate time and made a very bold decision. Chip supply is insufficient, vehicle production capacity is limited, its pure electric and hybrid models are selling well (several main models are queued up to pick up cars), and the original fuel vehicles matched parts like gearbox inventory may just be digested again - what a perfect opportunity.
But the point to be stated is that this is not because BYD speculates, but because its strategic decisions should be clear and decisive.
The fact is also that at least looking at several first-line independent brands in China, BYD Automobile's strategic determination is the firmest. Always focus on the premise of battery as the core to expand the electronics and automotive business, continuous innovation, and actively seek differentiated development.
As long as the nearly 20 years of history after Wang Chuanfu chose to enter the automotive industry in 2003, it will be found that whether it is his car-making ideas and BYD's strategic choices and promotions in the automotive field in these years, there is no turning point or transformation, but a consistent progress year by year, it seems that everything is realized one by one according to wang Chuanfu's originally set concept.
At the beginning, Wang Chuanfuyi chose to build a car without hesitation, one is to see the huge profit margin of the automotive industry, and the other more important point is that the electric vehicle has a larger industrial development space after the combination of batteries and cars. His theory of the oil crisis has been heard by everyone, and to put it bluntly, it is a belief, a belief worth fighting for for a lifetime.
Many people will think that BYD's choice to build a car must be a strategic decision made after careful model data analysis or technical feasibility study in the early stage. However, this is not the case, Wang Chuanfu's confidence and eagerness to enter the automotive industry mainly come from the "flash of inspiration" when he visited the Japanese mobile phone case mold factory in 2002.
At that time, BYD had already defeated Sony and Sanyo in the field of mobile phone batteries, but there were still more than a hundred competitors in the entire battery field, the industry saturation was too high and the decline in profit margins, coupled with the company's account at that time lying more than a billion yuan of "idle funds", Wang Chuanfu wanted to expand horizontally to mobile phone cases and other components.
So in this year, when wang Chuanfu inspected the mobile phone shell mold factory in Japan, he found that one of the mobile phone shell mold factories was also making automotive molds. In the production of automotive molds, in addition to the process of processing, the rest can be completed by hand. The semi-manual semi-automatic production mode of "manual + fixture" is exactly what BYD is good at, so if it is so, according to BYD's model, if making car molds is not a problem, then making cars is also a matter of minutes.
Yes, Wang Chuanfu thought so at the time, and that's what he did later.
According to his philosophy, "Anything that is related to artificial labor, then China must have an advantage." This "flash of inspiration" became very urgent in Wang Chuanfu's later words: "When I found out that BYD also had a market opportunity to make cars, I rushed up too slowly, and I wanted to pounce on it." ”
Therefore, we often say that the personality charm of some entrepreneurs is very magical, when the outside world has not seen or seen or dare not think much, there will be such a sharp-eyed business wizard to seize the opportunity and soar to the sky. In particular, the determination of such a major strategic decision depends entirely on the vision and decisiveness of the decision maker. There must be no shortage of opposition around, and more than 80% of outsiders are not optimistic.
Just like BYD at that time, a company with a stable main business and maintaining a competitive advantage, suddenly transformed into a car, I think few major shareholders will readily agree. The opposition in the capital market is even more fierce, and some institutional investors who hold positions in BYD in Hong Kong have a clear attitude of fund managers to stand up and oppose it, as long as BYD enters the automotive industry, it will sell BYD stocks.
Here is a detailed story reported by the media, on the eve of the signing of the agreement to buy Qinchuan Automobile, a Hong Kong institutional investor said to Wang Chuanfu on the phone: "Mr. Wang, we are going to sell your stock until we die." ”
Later, BYD's Hong Kong stock plunged 21% on the day it bought Qinchuan Automobile (January 23, 2003). After all, the institution plays a short-term game, and Wang Chuanfu sees the future.
▲ BYD's stock price, which closed on April 8, although it has been in a state of shock in the past six months, the stock price is already out of reach compared to other local independent brands
But then again, at that time, Wang Chuanfu entered the auto industry in addition to Japan's "flash of inspiration", the continuous upward development expectation of the entire auto market did stir the interest of peripheral capital.
At that time, the general environment of the automobile market was from 1999 to 2003, the entire automobile market ushered in double-digit growth for several consecutive years, and in 2003, on the basis of 2002, it ushered in a blowout again, and the national automobile production and sales reached 4.44 million units (an increase of 35% year-on-year) and 4.39 million vehicles (an increase of 34%) respectively.
Based on such an industrial scale, the interest of multinational auto giants in the Chinese market is no longer stuck in the feasibility report, such as Beijing Hyundai, Dongfeng Honda, Dongfeng Nissan and BMW Brilliance, etc. are almost all formed in the past one or two years before and after that, and the brands that have entered China earlier are represented by Volkswagen, and many no longer meet the CKD assembly but want to build joint ventures, or even wholly-owned factories (of course, this is not allowed by the policy).
Some domestic "laymen" are also coveted, such as midea and oaks from the home appliance industry, waveguide from the mobile phone industry, Wuliangye in the liquor industry, and even the transformation trucks from the tobacco industry in the past few years from the tobacco industry Yunnan Hongta Group, which also sharpen their knives to build cars. Only in the next few short years, the car-making movement of these companies soon collapsed, or withdrew or withdrew.
▲ Oakes briefly produced an SUV, entered 2003 and quit playing for only 2 years from 2005
Combined with this historical background, we can imagine the excitement of Wang Chuanfu at that time to seize the opportunity of the times. "In the field of batteries, BYD beat Sony and Sanyo with only a 30% cost advantage, and the car has a 40% cost advantage, and we have no reason not to defeat foreign companies." The abacus opened in his mind.
Then, as everyone knows about his automotive entrepreneurial history, basically following the set in the field of batteries, the semi-manual semi-automation of "artificial + fixture" can even produce the equipment of the chassis suspension system can be built by itself, thus opening up BYD's automobile era, which is also our current era of new energy vehicles.
Now to summarize why BYD can succeed, at that time, some opponents who were comparable or even stronger in strength have successively pounced on the street, mainly Wang Chuanfu has his own set of theoretical basis and practical experience in industrial manufacturing based on years of exploration in the battery industry.
Other "laymen" will basically only comply with the so-called strategic advice given by third-party consulting companies, and use a set of ideas used by the entire industry to build cars - buying design solutions, manufacturing drawings and other technical documents from abroad, some also include direct purchase of mature chassis, manufacturing links first to Japan and Europe to open molds, and some in order to support the scene also set up a temporary R & D team abroad, such a car does not meet the needs of domestic consumers, and the manufacturing cost alone cannot be reduced.
BYD can survive, from the beginning it was not seduced by the car-making model created by this multinational giant, relying on high cost performance, what cottages, reverse research and development, etc. are not worth mentioning when the company is facing life and death.
▲BYD's current intelligent production line has basically achieved full automation
Later, BYD's history in the automotive industry was as everyone can see, bumping and bumping all the way, growing up in great controversy and rapid development.
BYD's smartest approach is to maintain the "focus" we mentioned earlier - based on the competitive advantage of its own unique resources, the advantages of electronic technology, software technology, communication technology and other resources are gradually transferred to the car, which greatly consolidates its own moat.
What is even more valuable is that on the road of new energy vehicles, Wang Chuanfu has been adhering to his strategic determination without wavering, you know, when he entered the automobile industry in 2003, BYD's lithium battery has been able to make the Electric Vehicle modified by the Flair model drive 280 kilometers at a time, so making electric vehicles is not a later idea, Wang Chuanfu has conceived the industrial linkage strategy of batteries and automobiles before truly entering the automotive industry.
▲ Qin Chuan made of Flair, before this car, Qin Chuan actually produced Alto models
Finally, put a small Easter egg - before Wang Chuanfu accidentally learned the news that Qinchuan Automobile was going to be sold, in fact, Li Shufu also went to Qinchuan to investigate and discuss, because the restructuring cost exceeded expectations and gave up. If Li Shufu had accepted Qin Chuan at that time, I don't know how the story would be rewritten?
Issue 1847
Author: Yu Jianliang