Great Wall Motors: The dream of high-end is not fulfilled, and the new energy problem is coming

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | Spirit Cat Finance

With the impact of the new energy wave on the automotive industry, traditional car brands have made different degrees of attempts in the sales of new energy vehicles, such as the more aggressive BYD currently selling all models of new energy vehicles.

And with the improvement of the acceptance of new energy vehicles, it is expected that the market size will continue to grow, the huge cake has attracted the attention of capital, and a number of pure electric car brand players have emerged in the automotive industry, such as Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal.

Unlike the elephant turn of traditional car brands, although the new car-making forces lack experience and brand power, their burdens are also lighter, and the new forces are strong latecomers to traditional car brands in the new energy war.

Cut into the SUV market from Haval

Looking back at the development history of the domestic automobile market, before the advent of the new energy trend, the sales of SUV models in the domestic automobile market were in the heat. If Tesla is the first person to eat crab in the new energy vehicle market, then Great Wall Motors is the first person to eat crab in the domestic SUV sales market.

On March 29, 2013, the Great Wall sub-brand "Haval" was established, the production and sales of SUV models is Haval's main business, in the Great Wall brand SUV sales, Haval occupies most of the proportion, its main model "Haval H6" has achieved the first result in cumulative 76 months of SUV sales, "Haval H6" is also known as the "National God Car" by car friends.

In the early days of Haval's establishment, with the improvement of residents' disposable income, more families can afford car consumption, as the family's first car consumption choice, the overall body is higher, the visual effect is larger, and the trunk space is more sufficient SUV models have captured the love of more consumers.

However, at that time, the price of SUV models sold in the domestic automobile market was generally high, mainly for the high-end positioning, and the high price for most of the "first car" consumers could only sigh, and the low-end SUV models in the automobile market were needed to fill the gap.

And from the perspective of the development history of the world's off-road vehicles, in a mature market, off-road vehicles can generally account for about 10% of the car ownership. Although this proportion will change in the domestic market, considering the characteristics of the off-road SUV model site is higher and suitable for the Chinese township market, the difference in this proportion will not be very large.

At the same time, according to the past data analysis of the world automobile market, off-road vehicle consumption generally lags behind the consumption of cars, but once it is started, its growth rate will be faster than that of cars, and SUV models have the potential to become "dark horses" that are latecomers.

It seems to have tasted the sweetness of SUV, Great Wall Motors has launched H series models with Haval's technical accumulation in SUV models, such as H2 and H5 are also best-selling models of the H model series, in addition to the H series, Haval has further expanded the SUV product line, Haval M series and F series models are also aimed at the compact SUV market launch series. In the public impression, the "Haval" car has almost been equated with the "SUV".

The brand image is limited, and the Great Wall is difficult to step on the luxury threshold

Compared with the "thankless" compact SUV market, the premium that luxury SUVs can bring is obviously not small. But Haval's brand tone has been deeply rooted in the public impression, and Great Wall Motors needs to find another way to break into the luxury SUV market.

It can be seen that the Great Wall WEY debut is brilliant, but after a short period of bloom, it gradually withers away, the high-end dream of Great Wall Motors seems to be shattered, and the reason for the decline in sales of Great Wall WEY may be related to the product strategy of "changing soup without changing medicine".

In terms of the "vv5" and "vv6" of the Great Wall WEY, these two models and Haval H6 and F7 in addition to the appearance and interior have obvious differences, but there is no obvious gap in technology and quality, although the appearance of the interior of these face things are more youthful and luxurious, but lack of "Lizi" luxury, and "vv5", "vv6" "vv7" three products have the meaning of matryoshka dolls, the appearance of the design in addition to the size and no obvious difference in design style.

Although the sales volume of the WEY brand has declined, the Great Wall still adheres to its high-end dream.

In 2020, Great Wall Motors launched the "tank" model, positioned as a "smart luxury off-road SUV", taking into account off-road and luxurious comfort, this quite fresh positioning successfully attracted the attention of consumers, and the tank showed the potential to become the next blockbuster.

Euler, a product of "her economy", cannot solve the new energy problem of the Great Wall

On August 20, 2018, Great Wall Motors released the new energy vehicle brand Euler, and at the same time launched the brand's first model "Euler iQ", and on December 26 of the same year, it launched the Euler R1 electric car, which was later renamed "Euler Black Cat".

At the beginning of the establishment of the Euler brand, it seems to be based on "caring for women" as the direction of efforts, and Euler's "cat series" model style is generally retro, taking the cute and cute route. It is understood that Euler's model design is from the sixties people's fanatical imagination of outer space into modern models, Euler's model looks with a retro "classic car" style.

Cute appearance, beautiful interior, light steering, convenient car machine system, Euler's model design features seem to be for female users, more like the "her economy" under the car products, with accurate positioning Euler also successfully stood out in a number of new energy models and won a number of users love.

Euler brand released 2021 data showing that sales in December were 20,926 vehicles, and the cumulative sales volume for the whole year was 135028 vehicles. It seems that Euler has successfully entered the new energy market, but it seems that like the fate of the Great Wall WEY, after a short period of glory, the sales growth of Euler in the first quarter of this year seems to be in a dilemma.

At present, the scale of the new energy market is still growing, the overall scale of the industry is growing in stage of brand competition is the growth rate, the growth rate is ahead of the overall level of the market is optimistic performance, and Euler in the first quarter of this year data shows that its sales growth rate has been close to stagnation.

Euler's first quarter data show that Euler's monthly sales were 13229 vehicles, 6261 vehicles and 14264 vehicles, with a year-on-year increase of 28.90%, 10.50% and 9.31%, respectively, and the growth rate showed a significant slowdown trend.

Compared with the overall growth of the new energy market, Euler's sales growth rate is worrying, whether it is from the appearance of the nesting doll, or the curve to save the country's "she economy" positioning, in the face of new changes in the new energy vehicle market, Great Wall Motors seems to use the old way.

From SUVs to new energy, Great Wall Motors, which is good at finding opportunities, is more like a sprinter with strong explosive power, but in the durable goods industry, long-distance runners with stronger endurance and can run farther seem to be able to go further.