Image source: Du Ge
2022 marks the 25th anniversary of Chery Automobile's founding, and it is also the year that Chery Automobile Chairman Yin Tongyue turns 60. For Chery, it is the year of the fight; For Yin Tongyue, who is at the helm, it is already the year of flower armor.
In Chery's 25 years, it can be seen that Yin Tongyue led Chery Automobile's rapid development, from a dilapidated hut to an independent leading car company with 10 million vehicles; What is invisible is that under the changes of the times and the ups and downs of the market, Yin Tongyue and Chery Automobile always seem to be half a beat slower, and the future has become blurred.
For such "fast" and "slow", Yin Tongyue has his own understanding. He believes that Chery's development is not "fast", and the super speed that the outside world seems to be derived from Chery's "slow". To be precise, long-term accumulation. Chery did not dare to be fast, nor did he dare to be impetuous.
The question is, compared with its own early development, Chery can say that this is calm, so later relative to the slowness of competitors, do you need to be vigilant? Today's Chery is mired in transformation and has an embarrassing position in domestic independent car companies, and the transformation must be fast.
At last year's Chongqing Auto Show, Yin Tongyue suddenly mentioned the word "retirement", saying that he "can't do it in 2030", but he still wants to fight again. Not long ago, it was proposed that when Chery is in its thirties, that is, in 2027, it will "join the ranks of the world's first-class car companies and become a real multinational automobile group".
In a limited time, can Yin Tongyue, who has reached the age of 60, continue to write the legend of Chery and then retire successfully?
1
Savage growth
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In the 25 years of building a car, Chery has created brilliance, and the "helmsman" Yin Tongyue has made great contributions.
Yin Tongyue, a native of Anhui, graduated from the Department of Agricultural Machinery of Anhui Institute of Technology in 1984, which is now Hefei University of Technology, majoring in automobile manufacturing. After graduation, he joined China FAW Group Corporation as a technician at Hongqi Car Factory, and worked in this position for 5 years.
At that time, German Volkswagen wanted to enter the Chinese market, first with SAIC Motor to form Shanghai Volkswagen, and then with FAW Group to plan a "marriage". Yin Tongyue was fortunate to participate in it, and in 1989 went to Germany and the United States to study and participate in the preliminary preparations of FAW-Volkswagen.
In February 1991, FAW-Volkswagen Co., Ltd. was officially established. In October of the same year, Yin Tongyue was appointed as the director of FAW-Volkswagen's final assembly workshop and the head of the logistics section, and was also awarded the title of "Top Ten Outstanding Youths" by FAW.
It can be said that Yin Tongyue's career at FAW was on the rise at that time, but sometimes the turn of fate was in an instant. At that time, Yin Tongyue's hometown Anhui was vigorously developing the automobile industry, and a special delegation was set up to visit advanced enterprises. Zhan Xialai, who was then assistant to the mayor of Wuhu City, Anhui Province, came to FAW for inspection, and it was rumored that during the inspection, he took a fancy to his fellow countryman Yin Tongyue and invited him to return to his hometown to preside over the preparation of the automobile factory.
Yin Tongyue was not without concerns, but later Zhan Xialai's sentence "Always do things for foreigners without interest, you come, we make Chinese our own car", completely moved him, so that he finally decided to go south to build a car and become one of the founders of Chery Automobile.
The transition from an automotive engineer to an entrepreneur was not easy, and the conditions were very difficult at the time. In 1996, farmland, deserted beaches, several thatched houses, and broken brick factories constituted the initial state of Chery Automobile. Yin Tongyue relied on the 300,000 yuan start-up capital allocated by the government and brought a group of small partners mobilized from FAW, and thus began Chery's road to independent car manufacturing.
In order to produce the first car, the Wuhu government invested in an engine from abroad and a second-hand engine production line, and invited more than 20 foreign experts. As a result, these experts were perfunctory, so angry that Yin Tongyue held the determination of "can't do it, jump the Yangtze River" and began to carry out independent research and development.
The effort pays off. At the end of April 1999, Chery's first engine rolled off the production line smoothly and was successfully ignited. In May of the same year, it was officially announced that the first engine in the company's history was successfully ignited, which means that Chery's car manufacturing road began to be on the right track. Today, Chery's engines enjoy a good reputation in the industry.
Soon after, in December, Chery's first car, "Fengyun", successfully rolled off the production line. However, due to the problem of "birth permit", this car was officially launched in 2001, and 28,000 units were sold under a single brand that year.
By 2002, Chery sedan production and sales exceeded 50,000 units, successfully ranking among the "top eight" in the domestic car industry. In 2005, it sold 189,000 units, ranking seventh in the sedan industry, and on August 22, 2007, Chery's 1 millionth car successfully rolled off the production line, becoming the first independent car company to enter the Auto Million Club. On July 27, 2011, Chery rolled off the production line for the 3 millionth unit, making it the first domestic passenger car company with its own brand production exceeding 3 million units...
From a small factory without capital and technology to a well-known independent automobile enterprise in China, Chery's early barbaric high-speed development was accidental and inevitable. Those years were also when Yin Tongyue was most prosperous, who would have thought that what awaited him after the highlight was a cycle of transformation and falling behind.
2
Between ups and downs
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After the scenery, the "sequelae" of barbaric growth began to slowly appear, and the most criticized was the blind multi-brand strategy.
In 2009, Chery Automobile has firmly held the throne of its own brand sales champion, which also gives Yin Tongyue the confidence to continue to expand, so it announced the launch of a multi-brand and multi-channel strategy, dividing the automobile brand into four and creating four brands: Chery, Ruich, Karry and Weilin, aiming to create two brands: low-end and high-end for passenger cars and commercial vehicles.
Later, Chery made a joint venture with Israel Quantum Group to create Qoros Automobile, and launched models such as Qoros 3 and Qoros 5; In August 2014, the company officially announced its sub-brand Kaiyi Automobile, and released an A-class SUV concept I-CX.
In fact, this mentality is understandable. When a brand achieves excellent results, brand awareness and the number of users continue to rise, there is a chance that a single brand will turn to multiple sub-brand development, and there is a chance of "having more children and fighting". But you know, Chery has always taken the low-price route, so when Ruiqi, Weilin, which take the high-end market, was launched, it was not recognized by consumers, but became a "drag".
Due to the weak foundation and the variety and chaos of models, Chery's sales began to decline in 2011, with annual sales of 643,000 units, nearly 40,000 units less than the 682,100 units in 2010.
In 2012, even though Chery realized that it could not be used more during this period, it announced that it would return to the "one brand" strategy, and hid the Weilin and Ruich brands, but it still did not stop the decline. Sales for the year were 563,300 units, down 12.4% y/y.
At Chery's strategy conference to return to a brand, Yin Tongyue once sighed: "The first to reach the top of the mountain is the first to feel the cold, so Chery has carried out reforms." ”
However, Yin Tongyue's reform of returning to "one brand" does not seem to be thorough and difficult to see. Under the wave of consumption upgrades, Chery still wants to tear off its "cheap" and "low-end" labels, but transformation has always failed repeatedly. The latter Qoros was well received and finally transferred to Baoneng Group at the end of 2017.
Unexpectedly, before selling Qoros, Chery launched the EXEED high-end series in September 2017; In January 2018, Chery Automobile announced the launch of a new product lineup under Chery Commercial Vehicle (Karry) - Jietu. It can't help but wonder if Chery is repeating the same mistakes again.
It can be seen that the results of Xingtu and Jietu in recent years are not outstanding. Yin Tongyue once set a goal for Xingtu: the planned sales target for 2019 is 60,000 vehicles, and strive to achieve the sales target of 100,000 vehicles. However, by 2021, Xingtu's annual sales will only be 37,200 vehicles, far from Yin Tongyue's goal.
In 2019, Jettu aims to have 150,000 vehicles and 300,000 units in 2020. As a result, in 2021, Jettu sold 154,000 units, which is comparable to the sales target set two years ago.
According to the sales data of car companies released by the Passenger Association in the first half of this year, among the domestic giants, Chery's pace is significantly slower, and the total sales have lagged behind BYD, Geely, Changan, and Great Wall, losing the independent first throne for many years, and the sales gap with these head car companies is getting wider and wider.
Compared with the annual net profit of 56 billion yuan of Great Wall and Geely, Chery's performance over the years has been ups and downs, high debt, and has not been listed for more than ten years. Although Yin Tongyue also wanted to work hard to lead the big ship to the ideal channel and "save himself" through mixed reform, in the end, he only solved the urgent need and failed to return to glory.
3
Hundreds of billions of gambles
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Do you want to ask Chery if there is still a chance? Intelligent and electrified transformation may be a breakthrough.
Yin Tongyue himself said, "In the face of the unprecedented changes in the automotive industry in a century, Chinese automobiles should seize the key opportunity period of the transformation of the old and new tracks." In the face of this critical period, Chery will also set sail again. ”
This time, he no longer said "Chery does not dare to be fast, nor dare to be impetuous", but instead: "Chery's actions should be faster." ”
What's the quick way? According to Yin Tongyue's requirements, this kind of speed is not only reflected in the second-generation hybrid system that Chery will launch to the market next year, and even the third-generation hybrid system that will come out the year after, but also in the "Yaoguang 2025 strategy".
In September this year, Chery Automobile released the "Yaoguang 2025" strategy, planning to invest 100 billion yuan in the next five years dedicated to technological innovation, train more than 20,000 R&D personnel, of which the proportion of software talents exceeds 50%, and aim to build 19 Yaoguang laboratories this year and 300 by 2025.
At the same time, this strategy also involves Mars architecture, Kunpeng Power, Lion Technology, Galaxy Ecology, and almost covers many fields involved in the current intelligent electrification transformation of automobiles. On this basis, Chery plans to build 13 core technologies, including platform architecture, three electric power, intelligent driving, intelligent cloud platform, and ecological partners.
In Yin Tongyue's view, the "Yaoguang 2025" strategy is a brave attempt by Chery to keep the pulse of industry development, actively cater to the needs of pan-centralization, and innovate and start a business. It is an important strategic support point for the "technological leap" of enterprises, and it is also the "storm" and "manifesto" for Chery to accelerate its transformation into a global technology company, and it is also a brave climb for Chery to advance upwards and carry the upward mission and responsibility of national brands.
But after the release of this strategy, it still attracted a lot of doubts. First of all, in 2018, Chery also formulated four-stage development goals for autonomous driving, of which the third stage aims to achieve L3 conditional autonomous driving by 2020. Due to various reasons, L3 did not meet the schedule.
Secondly, whether Chery Automobile can withstand the pressure of hundreds of billions of gambling is also a question, after all, this figure is equivalent to Chery Automobile Group's revenue for the whole year of 2021.
Finally, although Chery started very early in the field of electrification, it is also relying on low-end products.
As early as 1999, Chery established the "Clean Energy Vehicle Task Force", which is responsible for the research and development of cutting-edge technologies of clean energy vehicles such as hybrid vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles; In 2010, Chery New Energy Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. was formally established, opening the road of independent research and development of new energy vehicles; In 2002, it won the bid for the national "863" plan electric car major project; In 2014, Chery eQ pure electric vehicle was launched, and later launched Chery Little Ant eQ1.
Although in the first three quarters of this year, Chery new energy vehicles (including new energy passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles) sold a total of 188,500 units, a year-on-year increase of 190.7%, of which micro electric vehicles Little Ant and QQ ice cream accounted for more than 80%. Whether it is a fuel vehicle or an electric vehicle, Chery's rush is urgent.
It is undeniable that the former autonomous "leader" has indeed slowed down under the wave of change. On the contrary, the subordinates who came out of Chery all seized the wind and ate the dividends, such as Fang Yunzhou, the founder of Nezha Automobile, and Qin Lihong, the co-founder of NIO.
Although the 60-year-old Yin Tongyue has gray hair and is no longer physically strong, he still needs to speed up and race with his 25-year-old Chery with his peers. The market is still waiting to see if the king will return.
Author | Liu Yuanyuan
Source | Car Visibility
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