A car company that sells 340,000 a year is considering whether to withdraw from the Chinese market and will enter Vietnam!
Recently, there was news that another car company may be ending its operations in China.
This car company is Skoda, which we are particularly familiar with and is also known as the "standard version of Volkswagen". Skoda CEO Klaus Zellmer said that in the future, there will be no new Kodiak models (main products) in China, mainly because China's car electrification upgrade is obvious, Skoda cars may no longer adapt to the Chinese car market, and there is no point in launching new cars. As for whether to withdraw from China, Skoda will have to discuss with its Chinese partners before making a decision.
Although Skoda has not officially withdrawn from the Chinese market, we can see some clues from sales. From 2016 to 2018, Skoda created its own glorious history, selling more than 300,000 vehicles every year, and reached its peak in 2018, achieving a good result of 341,000 in one year. But the good fortune ended, and after 2018, Skoda car sales fell rapidly at a rate visible to the naked eye, and this year it fell to the bottom. From January to September 2023, Skoda's entire brand only sold about 18,000 new cars, and these new cars are all based on old models for discounts, so it is no wonder that some consumers said that Skoda is likely to be another joint venture brand that withdraws from Chinese car companies after Mitsubishi.
In fact, judging from the current layout of Skoda, Skoda does not have much mind to sell in China. Its new cars have not had a major facelift upgrade for too long, such as the mass model Octavia ushered in the market in January this year, but the appearance changes are not large, there is no subversive design, and even the models on sale have manual transmission versions, matching halogen light source headlights. More importantly, in the era of electrification, do you dare to believe that Skoda does not have an electric car? This is truly bizarre.
Skoda Motors may have begun to count down to its exit, and since Volkswagen could not withstand the pressure of sales and began to cut prices sharply, Skoda's fate seemed to be arranged, and the scales began to tilt.
Where will Skoda go in the future? In fact, the official has given the answer and will enter the Vietnamese market. The Vietnamese auto market has too many similarities with the previous Chinese market, with a large population and relatively cheap wages, so the capital for building a factory is lower, and the operating costs in the later period are low. More importantly, Vietnam does not have its own perfect automobile industry, so it can only buy foreign joint venture brands, and the low per capita consumption is more consistent with the positioning of car companies such as Skoda. Perhaps Skoda's low-price strategy can be reborn in Vietnam Nirvana, we will wait and see.