Source: understand the car (id: idongche), understand the car and understand you better!
Author: All Weekly; Please bring the above information to be regarded as automatic authorization
Sometimes, people's perceptions often deviate from the facts. If it were not for the auto market, especially the sales of traditional fuel vehicles, it is likely that they would not have noticed that China's automobile (passenger car) sales have experienced three consecutive years of decline after the peak in 2017 (23,764,400 units). Especially in the first year of the pandemic, sales in 2020 fell below 20 million units, and by the end of 2022, they did not return to the pre-pandemic level.
More importantly, in 2015, the penetration rate of new energy was only 1%, and by 2022, the penetration rate of new energy has reached 28%. In other words, when the overall sales of vehicles in 2022 fell by 13.55% compared with 2017, fuel vehicles were also eroded by new energy vehicles by 27% of the market share.
This also means that in the past, those fuel vehicles were not competitive, and car companies that did not develop in new energy were in a very difficult situation in the past three years of the epidemic. The following car brands/car companies will enter the Chinese market in 2022. But surprisingly, the last one is a new energy vehicle company?
In addition, it should be noted that here we only talk about brands that are confirmed bankrupt or delisted. Car brands like Baoneng are still struggling, and even planned the mass production of three new cars, but they do not include Qoros. Wake up, the off-road world cannot do without Qoros, just as the West cannot do without Jerusalem!
1
Borgward
On April 9, 2022, due to the financial exhaustion of Beijing Borgward, unable to pay off its debts when due, and its assets were insufficient to pay off all its debts, Beiqi Foton issued an announcement on Beijing Borgward's application for bankruptcy liquidation. On November 30 of the same year, Beiqi Foton issued an announcement that the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court ruled that Beijing Borgward was officially bankrupt.
Although the history of Borgward dates back to 1919, the essence of Beijing Borgward is the passenger car project of Beiqi Foton. In 2014, Beiqi Foton purchased the Borgward brand from Christian Borgward, the grandson of Carl Borgward, the founder of German Borgward.
At the Intraday Motor Show in March 2015, Borgward officially announced its resurrection and unveiled its first production model, the BX7, at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September of the same year. In 2016, the BX7 with a guidance price of 16.98-302,800 yuan was launched in China. Beijing Borgward naturally could not bring a mature fuel SUV in less than two years, and later we also learned that the BX7 was actually developed in reverse to the first generation of Volkswagen's Tiguan, and even the EA888 oil leakage problem came back in reverse.
In 2016-2018, the total sales of the Borgward BX7 were only 106,900 units, which was not considered a success. At the end of 2018, Beiqi Foton sold 67% of Beijing Borgward, and finally UCAR actually controlled Borgward.
However, the internal orders of UCAR did not save Borgward, and because Luckin Coffee's financial fraud of 2.2 billion yuan, and coincided with the due payment owed by Beijing Borgward to Beiqi Foton, the capital of Shenzhou without cash on the account could only be offset with assets such as Beijing Borgward's production equipment. The separation of production equipment and brand basically announced that Beijing Borgward has lost the ability to make cars and make blood, which is also the reason why Beiqi Foton issued the bankruptcy announcement of BAIC Borgward.
2
GAC Acura
On April 8, 2022, the day before Beiqi Foton announced that Beijing Borgward filed for bankruptcy, Guangqi Honda issued an announcement announcing that from 2023, Guangqi Honda will no longer produce and sell existing products under the GAC Acura brand. In fact, before 2023, GAC Acura's official website can no longer be opened.
Compared with the owners of Beijing Borgward, the owners of GAC Acura do not have to worry too much about follow-up maintenance and repair, after all, Guangqi Honda is still there. On the other hand, there are not many Acura owners who need to worry about this problem: from officially entering the domestic market in 2016 to discontinuing sales in 2023, GAC Acura has only introduced three models (CDX, RDX, TLX-L), with cumulative sales of only 64,000 units.
3
GAC FCA
GAC FCA, a joint venture between Stellantis Group and GAC Group, has sold only 20,000 Jeep units in 2021 after yellowing the Fiat brand and then the Jeep brand, and the sales data after February 2022 is untraceable.
In July 2022, Stellantis announced that it would adopt an asset-light approach to develop the Jeep brand in China and negotiate with the GAC Group to terminate a local joint venture. GAC Group also responded that it is negotiating with Stellantis to terminate the joint venture in an orderly manner. On November 3, GAC FCA officially filed for bankruptcy with the Changsha Intermediate People's Court in Hunan Province. The joint venture, founded in 2010, came to an end after 12 years.
Interestingly, GAC FCA may not have gone bankrupt. On January 27, 2022, Stellantis announced on its official website that its shareholding in GAC FCA will be increased from 50% to 75%. This also means that the Stellantis Group will lead the development of GAC FCA, but GAC Group then responded that "the two parties have not yet signed a formal agreement on GAC FCA's equity adjustment." The differences between the two sides are likely to be the last straw that killed GAC FCA.
However, GAC FCA Jeep sales reached 179,900 units in 2016 and 222,000 units in 2017, which is a large number of units in China. Stellantis Group announced on February 6 this year that it will provide maintenance and after-sales service for GAC FCA Jeep owners.
In addition, although the domestically produced GAC FCA Jeep cannot be bought, Jeep's import business has not been shut down, and models such as the Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee are still sold.
4
Self-traveler
The end of the first three automobile brands, although the core is product strength or lack of product quality, but it also has a lot to do with the decline in sales of fuel vehicles in the Chinese auto market. However, on December 7, 2022, the self-traveler NV, which took the extended range route, announced that the first model, the Ziyujia NV, could not be delivered in the short term. At this time, only more than 8 months have passed since the release of Ziyujia NV, and it has ended before it even started.
There is only one problem that Ziyujia NV cannot be mass-produced, that is, the Dacheng car, which is the OEM for Ziyoujia, has not passed the new energy vehicle qualification review of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to the previous regulations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, new energy vehicle companies that have stopped production for more than 24 months need to be reviewed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for reproduction.
In the past, there were two ways for new car companies, one was to build its own factory like Ideal Auto, and the other was to find Jianghuai as an OEM like NIO and use Jianghuai's qualifications, while Ziyoujia was the latter route. For a long time, many new force car companies are releasing new cars, while looking for OEM car companies and qualifications, self-traveler is a warning to latecomers: even if everything is ready, only owe Dongfeng, "Dongfeng" may not come.
However, it is worth noting that the road of building cars by Niu Innovation Energy behind Ziyujia has not ended, which is also the last announcement that Ziyujia NV cannot deliver, and the reason why the payment is Dacheng Automobile. Niu Innovation Energy changed its name to "Mars Stone Technology" after the stillbirth of Ziyujia NV, and turned Ziyoujia NV into "NIUTRON NV" jointly developed by Mahayana Automobile and Martian Stone. It can be seen that the Martian stone is trying to get rid of the negative effects of the NV of the self-traveler. In the near future, Cow Innovation Energy is likely to make a comeback.