Joint venture fuel vehicles, it is almost cool

Produced by Tiger Sniff Car Group

Author|Li Wenbo

Edit|thoughtful

Head picture|《Bright Sword》

In Chinese Internet's most well-known Q&A community, there is a question that is quite hotly discussed:

When will the joint venture brand exit China?

The "Baoheists" believe that even if the earth is destroyed, the joint venture brand will not withdraw from China. Even if only one is sold a year, the "fire of hope" cannot be completely extinguished.

The "anti-unionists" believe that the future of joint venture brands in China can be condensed into eight words: this year at the earliest, and next year at the latest. Don't believe you turn your head and see, are there still people around you who "take the initiative" to buy joint venture brand fuel vehicles?

These two factions have their own reasons. However, no matter how-for-tat the views of the two sides and how tense the atmosphere, everyone has maintained a high degree of unity on one thing, that is:

Whoever can grab more share of the 100,000 to 150,000 A-class sedan market, the balance of victory will quickly tilt in that side.

For the joint venture brand, the A-class sedan is a money-printing machine that prints money around the clock, and it is the solid Maginot line. For Chinese brands, A-class sedans are a heart disease that has not been cured for many years, and they are the most difficult BOSS to kill before the victory endgame.

A0-class sedans below 100,000, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV dominates the rivers and lakes, and gouges coins wildly in the barren land that the joint venture brand cannot look at; 150,000 to 250,000 B-class cars, Honda Accord and Toyota Camry feigned teamed up to try not to let the joint venture brand be exported by the indecent development of BYD Han riding face; The 100,000 to 150,000 A-class cars are like the northwest of Jinxi on Li Yunlong's combat map, and the "three mothers on the road" Xuanyi, Corolla, Lei Ling plus Volkswagen Lavidi have become a pot of porridge with BYD Qin, Dolphin, Geely Emgrand, etc.

This "Ping'an Grad Battle" in China's A-class sedan market, which started the year before last, culminated last year, and ended this year: China and foreign sides from careful testing to layer by layer, from frontal confrontation to street fighting, this battle of every inch of land is fierce to the birth of such a widely circulated joke within the Chinese brand: "We won two, four, five, seven, but the big brother is still a joint venture!" ”

However, this year's "big brother" throne, there is a high probability that it will be the turn of China's local strength brother. Because, in the A-class car market, the joint venture brand can not be kept with the naked eye.

The emaciated camel died

In the impression of many people, the world's most difficult car should be Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and other high-performance supercars with millions of dollars. But in fact, you may not believe it, the most difficult car in the world to build is a super national car such as Nissan Xuanyi, Toyota Corolla, and Volkswagen Lavida.

It is no exaggeration to say that the technical content carried by a "Corolla" is not necessarily lower than that of a Ferrari 488.

First of all, this "Corolla" needs to have a certain degree of technological ingenuity, and these "no one has me" technologies are used to create barriers. Otherwise, as soon as Toyota introduced the Corolla to the global market, the leather ruler of the peer next door launched an imitation product according to the cat, relying on low prices to suck consumers away, and no matter how big the business was, it could not bear it;

Secondly, this "Corolla" must ensure the quality of each car under the premise of ultra-large-scale mass production. This means increasing production efficiency while reducing manufacturing costs. We know that in the manufacturing industry there is an "impossible" triangle theory of "cost-quality-efficiency": the level of technological energy efficiency increases, and the cost will inevitably increase; Under the premise of unchanged technology, the cost is reduced, and the quality has to be sacrificed.

Finally, this "Corolla" must be competitive enough in price to defeat models in the same class and leapfrog models with downward dimensionality. The configuration is too expensive and no one buys, the cheap configuration is low, and no one cares about it.

Similar to the "Corolla" such as the world's best-selling ordinary family car for many years is almost impossible to copy, if an American car company to produce a model with the same product concept, technical focus, price characteristics, the cost of the same technical level is definitely much higher than the Japanese and German series, if the cost is reduced, the quality can not reach the level of the Japanese and German series. Even if the quality cost is achieved, the production efficiency cannot be guaranteed, and the business competitiveness will decline.

With this delicate balance of "cost-quality-efficiency", coupled with the vanity satisfaction brought by "foreign brands" to early Chinese car owners, the joint venture brands represented by German and Japanese brands directly drove into the fast lane of high premium, high recognition and high sales as soon as they entered China. Forty years of German North and South Volkswagen, and thirty years of Japanese giants, before 2021, it can be described as invincible, and almost did not encounter any decent Chinese brand rivals.

But what the joint venture brand never expected was that the Chinese brand sedan did not choose to "if you can't beat, just join" this simple and easy to take the flat road, but embarked on the smart but rugged mountain road of "can't beat, just bypass" without looking back.

The logic behind it is actually very simple: fuel vehicles are dominated by engines and gearboxes, and the core technology of these components is in the hands of foreign parties, and Chinese brands want to highlight the technical differentiation in fuel vehicles and form a leading edge. But if you avoid the truth and be false, avoid the frontal fuel main force of the joint venture brand, go deep behind enemy lines, storm the new energy with batteries, motors, and electronic control as the core, and hit the joint venture brand by surprise, won't the opportunity be seized in the hands of Chinese brands?

It turns out that when the strategic rhythm is right, the tactical effect is immediate. The once unattainable technical wall that the joint venture brand fuel vehicles painstakingly built was easily bypassed by Chinese brand trams.

In 2021, Chinese brand passenger cars sold a total of 9.543 million units, a year-on-year increase of 23.1%, accounting for 44.4% of the total passenger car sales, and a market share increase of 6% over the same period of the previous year.

Under the grand digital narrative, we see two major transformation trends for Chinese brands: first, the price war is no longer fought, but the technology war is changed. Mainstream Chinese brands have launched their own plug-in hybrid technology in this year, BYD's third-generation DM-i, Geely Raytheon, Changan Blue Whale iDD, Great Wall Lemon DHT; Second, the "death squad" represented by BYD Qin DM-i killed the hinterland of the joint venture brand - A-class cars.

From 2020 to 2021, the overall sales of new energy of Chinese brands soared from more than 1 million units to more than 3 million units. The contribution rate of new energy to Chinese brands has also increased rapidly from 13% at the beginning of 2021 to 40% at the end of the year. At this moment, the joint venture brand does not know whether it has not woken up, or it can't believe it:

A thin dead camel is dead.

Fuel consumption wins, not wins

In 2021, Chinese brands have made a hole in the A-class sedan market. In 2022, this hole expanded into a faucet.

According to data released by the Passenger Association, the best-selling A-class sedan in China in 2022 is the Nissan Xuanyi, which sold a total of 420,000 units. Looking at the total amount alone, it is indeed okay, looking at the year-on-year, down 18%, directly showing the stuffing; The second place is Volkswagen Lavida, 350,000 units, down nearly 19% year-on-year, and Xuanyi is a difficult brother. The third place is BYD Qin, with 340,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 81%, which is the fastest growing model in the A-class sedan market.

Xuanyi can still sell so much, which shows that the potential energy brought by the inertia of Chinese consumers in the past to buy cars is still there, but it is clear that it is no longer the "overwhelming momentum" it was before. The rapid approach of BYD Qin shows that the new generation of Chinese consumers is no longer half-convinced of the plug-in hybrid technology and is willing to pay for it.

As of March 26, the number of new cars in the Chinese market has been insured, which more vividly shows the A-class car market.

Source: Happy and comfortable

Among the top 20 models in terms of risk volume, Nissan Xuanyi (67,470 units) and Volkswagen Lavida (61,666 units) are still the champions and runners-up in the A-class sedan market, but they have fallen by more than 26% year-on-year, which you can understand as "returning to light". BYD Qin Plus DM-i (45,942 units) maintained third, but the increase was 24%, if the amount of Qin Plus EVs is included, the Qin Plus family (65,916 units) can already be on an equal footing with the Xuanyi family.

What is even more surprising is that on this list, Toyota Corolla and Leiling disappeared, and Honda did not have an A-class car that could hit. Moreover, all the new energy vehicles on the list are growing, and all the fuel vehicles on the list are declining.

On March 26, 2023, a historic event also occurred in the Chinese auto market: on this day, the Chinese brand BYD, without counting Denza , exceeded the sum of the North and South Volkswagen (SAIC Volkswagen + FAW-Volkswagen), officially becoming the best-selling car brand in China. Moreover, the price of a bicycle of 151,800 yuan is also higher than Volkswagen's 147,800 yuan.

Relying only on the knife of "price", Chinese brands will definitely not be able to slaughter so many dragons of joint venture brands, and it is technology that plays a fundamental role.

In the recent evaluation of the A-class cars of China, Japan, the United States, Germany and South Korea, the advantages of Chinese brands in many tests are too obvious. For example, in the 100-yuan fuel consumption challenge, the two models of BYD Qin PLUS DM-i ranked first and third respectively, and the Corolla double engine, which is regarded as the grandmaster of hybrids, is the earliest of all test hybrid cars because of lack of fuel. In the actual road fuel consumption test, BYD Qin PLUS DM-i and Geely Emgrand L Hybrid ranked in the top three, and the most cost-effective kilometer was only 2 cents and 8 cents.

Source: Understand the car emperor

Even if the BYD Qin PLUS DM-i long-term feed run, it only costs 4 cents more per kilometer than the Corolla double engine. According to the price difference of 36,000 yuan, the Corolla double engine has to run 900,000 kilometers to equalize the price difference between the two cars when buying a car. If the BYD Qin PLUS DM-i can be charged, then the Corolla double engine will not have a chance to turn over until the day it is scrapped.

Source: Understand the car emperor

For example, in the two most basic driving assistance function tests, ACC adaptive cruise and LCC lane centering, the performance of joint venture brands is at the bottom, far less than Chinese brands. In the tunnel ACC adaptive cruise test, the Corolla double engine crashed straight into the front car and came to the scene of a large car accident; In the LCC lane centering test, lane lines and piles were completely unrecognizable, and he rushed to the barrier.

Source: Understand the car emperor

The test results of the car emperor show that the Chinese brand models at this stage no longer rely on stacking comfort configurations to impress consumers, but in the core dimensions of powertrain, intelligent level (intelligent driving + intelligent cockpit), safety, the three core dimensions of automotive product strength, the joint venture brand has been dimensionally reduced, and the collapse of the latter is completely reasonable.

If the sales of A-class sedans collapse, the joint venture brand in the Chinese market will lose the last opportunity to turn over against the wind, and Korean cars (Hyundai, Kia) are losing in China, which is to use Hyundai K3, Kia Elantra and other A-class cars cannot be sold as the starting signal. Today's Toyota and Nissan are repeating the story of Korean cars.

Write at the end

In 2022, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the market share of Chinese brand passenger cars is 49.9%. This year, as the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to deepen, the market share of Chinese brands will rise. When the A-class car, the once-solid Yangtze River defense line of the joint venture brand, is broken down by Chinese brands, it is only a matter of time before the rest collapses.

After all, there are not many Chinese still "obsessed" Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, as what kind of "high-end brand".