"Enterprises give value to products, and this value needs to be converted into money in market exchanges in order to complete the 'thrilling jump' and become revenue." Whether you can jump high and jump far depends on the customer's trust in the enterprise and the recognition of the value of the product, the brand is the carrier of value and credibility, and will provide a strong impetus for completing this 'jump'. This passage was excerpted from a signed article by Miao Wei, former Minister of Industry and Information Technology, entitled "Treat every day as a "China Brand Day". This article was published on May 10, 2017, the first "China Brand Day" approved by the State Council.
Another year on May 10, five years have passed since the first "China Brand Day", for independent car brands, whether it has completed the "thrilling jump", in terms of data is the initial results, this year's terminal sales data of independent brand market share of 42.9%, which is enough to see that more Chinese consumers will choose their own brand cars.
If you have some understanding of independent brand cars, you can see that the current price of independent brand cars is not limited to the previous 100,000 yuan range, the 200,000 yuan range has been hot, and even the price of nearly one million yuan is not a handful. The gradual increase in price represents the improvement of the strength of independent automobile products on the one hand, and also highlights the confidence of independent automobile brands in their own products. The establishment of the "China Brand Day" in the past five years is the golden period for the development of independent automobile brands to high-end, and the current independent automobile brands have found the right path for high-end development.
The road to high-end has been bumpy
If it is gratifying that independent car brands have achieved high-end results at this stage, then how embarrassing it has been to independent car brands on the road to high-end in the past 20 years. In 2001, China officially joined the World Trade Organization, and this year became the "first year of China's private car". In the following years, China's auto market began to develop rapidly, and after meeting the initial demand for family cars, Chinese consumers had more demand for cars such as sportiness and high-end.
Although independent car brands have keenly captured the change in chinese consumer demand, they have launched high-end independent sports cars such as China CoolBo and BYD S8, and want to take advantage of this "sports car fever" to carry out brand upwards and enhance product premium capabilities. However, because the independent car brands at that time did not have advanced independent technology, and the original design capabilities of the two did not reach the top level, the final works were not recognized by the market.
The time came to around 2009, after experiencing the global financial crisis in 2008, the international automobile market has ushered in a "big reshuffle", and many international automobile brands are on the verge of bankruptcy and restructuring, and even change the court. The most impressive of these is undoubtedly Geely's acquisition of Volvo, which is currently a win-win situation and even gave birth to the Lynk & Co brand.
Of course, this is a later story, around 2009, most of the independent car brands are still in the trial and error stage in terms of high-end, on the one hand, they launched new sub-brands with high-end positioning, such as Ruiqi launched by Chery in 2009 and Qoros launched in 2011; on the other hand, through the acquisition of overseas brands or technologies to achieve high-end, such as BAIC Senova established after the acquisition of Saab Technology in 2009, and Beiqi Foton acquired the German Borgward brand; at the same time, in this period, Based on the idea of launching high-end models based on this brand, it has not been abandoned among independent brands, such as Geely Borui, GAC Trumpchi GA8, Dongfeng A9 and other models listed between 2015 and 2016, but at this stage, most of the independent brands are still in a stage of eagerness and have not been able to achieve a longer-term plan, so the attempt to high-end independent brands at this stage is ultimately difficult to say successful.
However, with the rise of the SUV boom in the domestic automobile market and the entry of many new car brands to accelerate the transformation of the new energy vehicle market, the Chinese automobile market has ushered in earth-shaking changes, and the high-end of independent car brands has finally had some eyebrows. At the end of 2016, the price of 163,800-259,800 yuan positioning medium-sized SUV GAC Trumpchi GS8 listed, into the joint venture SUV competition of the most fierce price range, at that time perhaps no one will be optimistic about it, but riding on the "SUV boom", as well as the inherent cost-effective advantages of independent models, Trumpchi GS8 after the listing of the monthly sales once exceeded 10,000, obviously such a performance of everyone's expectations, even GAC Trumpchi, since then due to transmission capacity, GAC Trumpchi GS8 sales gradually declined, But its emergence undoubtedly makes independent brands understand that SUVs are the correct carrier for the high-end of independent brands. A year later, at the end of 2017, weilai ES8 was officially listed, when the subsidy before the guidance price of 448,000-548,000 yuan of it, let us see the prospect of new energy vehicles carrying high-end to achieve curve overtaking.
Three routes develop in parallel
After 2016, the high-end of independent car brands has entered a new stage of development, in the new stage, SUVs and new energy are important components, and the specific route is implemented in three ways. The first to emerge route or traditional car companies to create a new high-end brand, but unlike the previous Ruiqi and other brands, the brands such as Lynk & Co, WEY and Xingtu that were born at this stage have taken SUV models as the focus of their products, and the VV7 and VV5 first launched by the WEY brand have quickly achieved a good response in the market, and the first model of the Lynk & Co brand, Lynk & Co, has achieved sales of 120,000 units in the first natural year of listing, starting at more than 150,000 yuan. It has laid a good foundation for the high-end of independent brands.
The second route adopts the "curve overtaking" strategy, in the early "dividend period" of new energy vehicles. It gave birth to a number of "new car-making forces", and after 5 years, it finally left brands such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal. In terms of product layout, thanks to the new energy and intelligent attributes, new power car companies can achieve higher pricing in products, thereby penetrating into the high-end model market. Following the launch of the ES8 at the end of 2017, WEILAI has successively launched two models of ES6 and EC6 priced at more than 300,000 yuan, and since then, Xiaopeng and Ideal have also launched Models such as Xiaopeng G3, Xiaopeng P7 and Ideal ONE, and have gradually gained a foothold in the market by new energy among high-end models.
In the sales list of high-end SUVs (starting at more than 300,000 yuan) released by the Association of Automobile Associations in March this year, Ideal ONE, Weilai ES6, and Weilai EC6 have ranked among the top ten in the sales list, and when a number of fuel vehicles in the list have negative year-on-year growth, they have achieved positive year-on-year growth, which is enough to see the importance of new power car companies in the high-end automobile market. As the saying goes, good food is not afraid of late, after seeing the new force car companies with new energy to break into the high-end market and achieve such remarkable results, many traditional independent car brands have also joined this track, and strive to accelerate the pace of brand high-end under the blessing of electrification and intelligence. As a result, Geely's Extreme Kr, SAIC's Zhiji, Dongfeng's Lantu, Great Wall's Salon, Chang'an's Avita and other brands came into being, and from the perspective of the products that have been delivered so far, they have indeed achieved a good response.
If the first two routes are to open up new battlefields, then the third route is to break into the traditional battlefield in a new way, through technical iteration, establish a new product series in the original brand, thereby driving the entire brand to develop to high-end. For example, BYD's DM-i series and Geely's "China Star" series are good examples. At the beginning of 2021, BYD released the "DM-i super hybrid" technology, which is different from the DM-p hybrid technology that has been replaced by three generations and focuses on performance, DM-i hybrid technology pays more attention to economy, and is equipped with lithium iron phosphate blade batteries that support fast charging and larger capacity, as well as hybrid special "Xiaoyun" series engines, which makes the models equipped with this technology have excellent feed fuel consumption and have a long comprehensive mileage. The leading position in technology has made the DM-i series models favored by many consumers, and has also indirectly accelerated the pace of brand upwards. In terms of sales, BYD's annual sales in 2021 were 603783 vehicles, an increase of 218.3% year-on-year; the average price of BYD's models in 2021 has reached 153,200 yuan.
After Geely's acquisition of Volvo, it has deepened cooperation in various fields, especially in technology, which has accelerated the pace of Geely's brand upwards. In 2016, Geely and Volvo jointly created the CMA super matrix architecture, which was first applied to Lynk & Co and Volvo brand models, and from 2021, Geely built a high-end "China Star" series model based on this architecture and Volvo Drive-E series engine technology, including Xingrui, Xingyue, Xingyue L, Xingyue S and so on. More advanced technology, stronger power and better quality make the "China Star" series models have a higher pricing confidence, and consumers are also recognized for good products. In 2021, Geely's China Star series models sold about 210,000 vehicles throughout the year, accounting for 20% of the total sales of the Geely brand, and in the first quarter of 2022, the proportion of sales of China Star series models expanded again, approaching 24%.
Write at the end
On the occasion of the fifth China Brand Day, independent car brands have indeed delivered a satisfactory answer sheet for us, not only the market share of independent car brands has gradually increased, but also the proportion of models with higher prices is gradually increasing. The last five years was the golden period for the high-end development of autonomous vehicles, and they also lived up to expectations and firmly seized the opportunity in various forms and embarked on the fast track of high-end development. In the next five years, the automotive industry will usher in a century of unprecedented changes, in the wave of electrification, intelligence and networking, there are still huge possibilities, what kind of development Chinese car brands will usher in, let's wait and see.