Two years ago, Wei Jianjun, the head of Great Wall Motors, asked himself: "Will Great Wall Motors survive next year?" At that time, the development of Great Wall Motors was going smoothly, and this sentence seemed to make many people a little confused, and was once called "the dangerous words of the prosperous world". But the truth is that what Wei Jianjun feared really happened two years later.
In the first quarter of this year, Great Wall Motor's cumulative sales fell by 16.32% from the same period last year to 283,500 units. Great Wall Motors' sales were not as good as BYD's, slipping to fifth place, and the top three of its own, which had been unstoppable, had now fallen to fifth. In addition, since October last year, Great Wall Motor's stock price has fallen all the way, as of April 25, 2022, its total market value in the A-share market is 139.1 billion yuan, compared with the highest market value of 600 billion yuan last year, evaporating more than 400 billion yuan. If you still say that the development momentum of Great Wall Motors is good, it is inevitable that it will be a bit self-deceptive. What happened to Great Wall Motors?
The problem of Great Wall Motors can actually be summarized as follows: the epidemic has led to the suspension of production capacity, the high-end brand Wei brand that has high hopes has failed to impact the high-end, and the sales of the Haval brand of its main sales have declined significantly, and it has wavered in product planning.
Its five major brands, each with its own "troubles"
From January to March this year, Great Wall Motor's cumulative sales volume was 283,500 units, down 16.32% year-on-year. Great Wall Motors' current five major brands have certain problems.
Haval:
Haval is the basic disk of Great Wall Motor's sales, with sales of 770,000 units in 2021, accounting for 60.11% of Great Wall Motor's annual sales. However, the basic market of Haval is not stable, from January to March this year, the Haval brand has accumulated sales of 166756 vehicles, down 25.13% year-on-year. The Haval H6 missed the championship for 2 consecutive months, and none of The other models under Haval could take over the burden of the H6, and none of them sold more than 10,000.
Wei Pai:
Weipai, which has high hopes, has been pulling farther and farther away from its competitors since its birth, and in 2021, Weipai's sales volume was 58,000 units, down 25.65% year-on-year, only a quarter of Lynk & Co. In March, the total sales of the WEY brand were only 4,755 units.
Euler:
The Euler brand is an important part of Great Wall Motor's layout of the new energy vehicle market, mainly for the female market, and its sales volume reached 135,000 units in 2021, an increase of 140% year-on-year. It was an important factor for Great Wall Motors to be able to rank among the top three of its own sales last year, but the core change incident affected Euler's brand image, because the price of raw materials rose and some of Euler's models were discontinued.
Great Wall Pickup:
In 2021, the sales of Great Wall pickup trucks will be 233,000 units, which is basically the same as in 2020, and how to maintain this sales in 2022 is a problem.
tank:
The sales volume of tank 300 and other models is hot, and the sales volume of tank brands from January to March is 25,753 units, an increase of 79.8% year-on-year. However, due to factors such as lack of core and production capacity, the pick-up cycle of the tank 300 is about 7 months. Moreover, the tank series is relatively niche, which has limited help for the sales of Great Wall Motors.
The Great Wall seems to have lost itself in recent years
Haval Motors' sales decline has certain production capacity reasons, Great Wall Motors said that due to the impact of the epidemic in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Jilin and other places, many parts suppliers of Great Wall Motors have been affected, resulting in limited factory production capacity. But more importantly, the fuel vehicle models represented by Haval Motors are being violently impacted by new energy vehicles. In 2021, Great Wall's new energy vehicle sales were 139,100 units, accounting for 10.86% of total sales. Although Great Wall Motors said that it will transform into a new energy vehicle company in 2025, however, 90% of Great Wall Motors' sales volume is fuel vehicles, and Great Wall Motors is not willing to give up the huge dividends in fuel vehicles on the one hand, on the other hand, it is also clear that it must be transformed, so in the field of new energy vehicles, Great Wall Motors' determination is not large enough, and the progress is not smooth.
Originally in line with the good wish of "more children are better to fight", Great Wall Motors launched six major brands of Haval, Wei, Tank, Euler, BC and Pickup trucks to support the "Great Wall Empire". In 2021, Great Wall Motor also established an organizational structure of "one car, one brand, one company". But with so many brands, for the resources of Great Wall Motors, it also means dispersion and internal friction. In particular, the independence of the tank series from the Wei brand is undoubtedly worse for the Already poor sales of Wei brand cars. Coupled with the fact that almost all of Great Wall Motors' SUVs and pickups, Wei Jianjun said that he would not easily get involved in cars, resulting in a high degree of overlap in Great Wall's models, and it was difficult for ordinary consumers to distinguish clearly.
Weipai Automobile was originally positioned as a "Chinese luxury SUV", but has been poor sales, so that Great Wall Motors will completely overthrow the early strategy of Weipai Automobile, WEY brand positioning updated to "a new generation of intelligent cars", "VV + digital" naming method, replaced by Mocha, Macchiato and Latte three brand new models named after coffee. This also means that WEY's brand accumulation in the previous few years has been completely overthrown, and it needs to spend huge resources on brand reengineering, which is undoubtedly a huge consumption of weY brand power. The naming method of the coffee series is also not pleasing, it is not convenient to distinguish, and there is no affinity for the middle-aged group targeted by Wei brand cars.
I have to admit that in the past two years, Great Wall Motors has made a lot of efforts in research and development and product polishing, the first domestic independent research and development of 3.0T engines, independent research and development of 9AT and 9DCT gearboxes, lemon DHT hybrid system and other technologies have come out, Wei brand models in all aspects of the product performance has also been qualitatively improved compared to the old model, but Great Wall Motors is wavering in strategy. Want to transform new energy, but shallow taste, afraid of losing market share in the field of fuel vehicles. Want to relegate Wei brand to high-end brand fear of hurting the brand image, want to be more youthful, but in terms of naming completely let go of themselves.
In 2022, BYD completely abandoned fuel vehicles, Geely Automobile's high-end road has begun to bear fruit, Changan Automobile's high-end series is also smooth sailing, first- and second-tier independent car brands have launched hybrid systems, and new car-making forces continue to march forward. For Great Wall Motors, there is still a lot to do.