What was the first thing that came to your mind when you mentioned Lexus in the past? It is a super high retention rate, domineering and exposed appearance, and it is difficult for dealers to increase the price of a car. And now when it comes to Lexus, you may think of a decline in sales, backward product strength, and frequent recalls.
Let's first look at 2021, Lexus sales, the future of 219,100 units, down 6.9% year-on-year. Mercedes-Benz, Audi although there is also a decline, but the overall sales are still very large. Tesla and Hongqi performed very well last year and grew very fast. Cadillac has surpassed Lexus, and even Volvo has a crush on Lexus.
So what is the reason for the recent dilemma of the Lexus brand?
[1] Frequent recalls, Lexus product strength declined
Stable product quality has always been the selling point of Lexus, usually luxury brand models, equipped with advanced technology, so in the event of a breakdown, maintenance costs are higher. Lexus, with its stable product quality, has become a value-added choice in the minds of users. However, in 2021, Lexus recalled a total of 140,000 vehicle models in China. It accounts for more than half of the annual sales.
On April 22 this year, Lexus recalled 4,316 NX350h and NX400h+ vehicles again, bringing the total number of recalls in the past three years to more than 400,000. This greatly affected the image of the Lexus brand.
[2] India set up a factory, talk about the spirit of craftsmanship?
Why has Lexus not insisted on domestic production? Some people say that Lexus imported originally in order to adhere to the spirit of craftsmanship. So how to explain Lexus' factory in India?
In fact, in the era of industrialization, the spirit of craftsmanship itself is nonsense, because even Rolls-Royce cannot be completely manually built. The tightness of mechanical production, the efficiency of work has long been a level that workers can never achieve. Today, Lexus is also a product under the Toyota TNGA architecture and a model produced on an industrial assembly line. And at present, Lexus has production plants in Canada, the United States, and India. Therefore, Lexus's talk of craftsmanship is untenable.
[3] Lexus will play the double standard to the extreme!
Although Lexus has always been under the banner of original imports, lexus models imported into the Chinese market are different from models from other countries. The warranty exemption condition of the battery pack of the 2021 Lexus ES hybrid model has quietly added the "first owner"; the Lexus safety system LSS+ has changed from the LSS+ 2.0 of the United States to the LSS+ high-end version of Japan, and then to the low-end version of China's LSS+; the US version of the Lexus ES started with a full-time 4-wheel drive, and the power system is a 203-horsepower engine plus an 8-speed automatic transmission, but the Chinese market has become a front-drive 173-horsepower CVT transmission.
In addition, the reason why Lexus is more durable is because of the low product force. The Lexus ES200 uses a 2.0-liter naturally aspirated engine, CVT transmission, and weak power. The same power has been widely used on camry, Asian dragon. There is no technical content, of course, the durability is high.
Moreover, Lexus's car machine system, including intelligent driver assistance system, is not advanced in the same class of models, and can even be described as backward.
Nowadays, the rise of young users, users for power performance, the pursuit of intelligent technology is getting higher and higher. At the same price of 300,000 or 400,000 yuan, users can buy models of the most powerful new power companies, and they can also buy products with stronger joint venture brands. And Lexus has been proud of the retention rate, product quality, is also slowly declining, then Lexus sales decline, it is not surprising.