On the anniversary of Liu Xinyu's new office, Sylphy began to be surrounded and suppressed by Chinese brands, and the Dongfeng Nissan crisis is just around the corner

Super Cosmology

2024-04-08 10:10Posted in Beijing Automotive Creators

As the weather gets warmer in April, Dongfeng Nissan, an old joint venture brand, is experiencing a new round of pain and change under the warm spring breeze. And Liu Xinyu, the general manager of the sales company who took office last year, has been in office for exactly one year, but the crisis of Sylphy has appeared, and the situation of Dongfeng Nissan has not improved.

At the beginning of April, Dongfeng Motor Group announced the production and sales status of its various business divisions, and Dongfeng Nissan, a joint venture brand, sold 171,000 units in January ~ March, a year-on-year increase of 4.4%. On the surface, Dongfeng Nissan's sales are still in positive growth. But it should be known that Dongfeng Nissan's sales of 171,000 units are not only the Nissan brand, but also include Venucia and Infiniti.

Among Dongfeng Nissan's product lineup, the all-new SUV model Tanlu, which Dongfeng Nissan has high hopes for, sold 312 units in February. Judging from this sales data, it is unlikely that Tanlu wants to become a popular model. As the only product that Dongfeng Nissan can play, Sylphy seems to be gradually getting into trouble.

As the ace model that will account for 47.35% of Dongfeng Nissan's total sales in 2023, Sylphy can be said to have made great contributions. However, it seems that the "comfortable sofa" is still being promoted, and the evaluation of Sylphy on the Internet is getting worse and worse, and its future is difficult to say.

With BYD setting off a price war for the Glory Edition model, the pricing of the A-class car Qin PLUS Glory Edition has dropped to 79,800, which is a fatal blow to Sylphy. While the Sylphy Classic is still promoting the old-fashioned interior design, the Chinese brand has lifted the deadly stick above Nissan's head.

If Sylphy is still a door that Dongfeng Nissan can hold onto, but the other door does not seem to be open at all,

This is the new energy strategy.

Dongfeng Nissan is currently the only pure electric Japanese product brand SUV Arrow, sales in February are only 120 units, at present, the author found from the Dongfeng Nissan 4S store, has no longer displayed Arrow models, even the 4S store is reluctant to sell this car, Arrow is definitely a failed work, even if the price is greatly reduced in the later period, it has not been able to save Dongfeng Nissan's trust in it.

In addition to pure electric vehicles, Dongfeng Nissan's "super hybrid electric drive" concept has not impressed too many consumers.

Although the X-Trail was converted from a three-cylinder engine to a three-cylinder power generation and adopted a pure electric drive, it never returned to its original position in terms of sales, and Dongfeng Nissan had to launch the 2.0L classic X-Trail again as a supplement.

Sylphy's super-hybrid electric drive version is indeed very fuel-efficient, but from the perspective of use scenarios, Didi drivers are more likely to buy this model. Therefore, from the current point of view, Dongfeng Nissan's overall new energy strategy is almost a failure, and the Chinese market and Chinese users have voted a vote of no confidence in Dongfeng Nissan's new pure electric car.

As a result, Dongfeng Nissan began to try to change.

First of all, Nissan, a joint venture partner, announced on March 26 a new four-year strategic plan, "The Arc Nissan Arc Plan", which aims to promote the transformation of electric drive and establish a new development and production approach.

In addition, Dongfeng Nissan's senior management has also been adjusted, including personnel changes in management, R&D department, functional departments, and manufacturing departments.

"A diverse management team will play an important role in the company's cultural transformation, and this realignment places greater emphasis on flexibility, speed and adaptability in decision-making to help the company respond more effectively to market demands and changing trends," Nissan said. ”

At the same time as the strategy and manpower adjustment, some foreign media reported that due to unsatisfactory sales, Nissan Motor will negotiate with a Chinese joint venture company to consider reducing its automobile production capacity in China by up to 30%. However, a Nissan spokesman said that the content was not true.

However, in April 2023, Dongfeng Nissan has already made personnel adjustments in the marketing field, and Liu Xinyu replaced Xin Yu as general manager, and ironically, the savior did not come, and the total sales data of Dongfeng Nissan in 2023 led the decline of Japanese brands. It has become one of the "worst" Japanese brands of the year", and today, a year later, the situation may be even more troublesome.

Liu Xinyu, general manager of Dongfeng Nissan Automobile Sales Co., Ltd

Therefore, we still can't believe that Dongfeng Nissan's situation will improve in the short term, and the main reason is that the rapid transformation of China's auto consumer market after the epidemic has caught Dongfeng Nissan, an old joint venture, by surprise, and its slow action has led to a full passivity.

China is the world factory of new energy manufacturing, and the policy orientation has an irresistible charm, and a number of new power car companies have entered the game, with endless products and dazzling specifications, which fit the pulse of the personalized era, and even at the market level, a new level of consumer awareness has been established. Recently, Xiaomi SU7 was launched, with extraordinary brand communication coverage, which fully proves that even laymen have the sound of raising their arms and shouting, which makes traditional forces shudder.

Dongfeng Nissan has always followed the traditional style in the basic model, few updates, no surprises, in the words of consumers, "domestic refrigerator color TV sofa, but Dongfeng Nissan originally did not have the same nothing". According to the statistics of Sina Automobile Big Data Center, the maximum discount of the transaction price of Nissan Sylphy in the past month has reached 6.71 percent, and the cash of new cars has dropped by up to 35,700 yuan, and the national sales start at 72,900 yuan. The almost white-hot struggle gives people an intuitive feeling, which is inevitably overwhelmed by the old capital and passive response.

As Japan's third-largest automaker by volume, Nissan was a pioneer in electric vehicles with the all-electric Leaf. However, in recent years, the new energy vehicle business has also failed to achieve success in China. It is no wonder that after the announcement of the personnel changes, the official statement was that "the appointment is aimed at supporting the implementation of the new fiscal year and the next medium-term plan, accelerating the implementation of Nissan Motor Company's electrification and marketing strategies, and achieving long-term sustainable development."

At least for now, in the field of new energy vehicles, Dongfeng Nissan has not changed much at all, and after the failure of ARIYA, it seems that it is still a blank.

Obviously, for the old joint ventures, fuel vehicles are still the pillar products that support the enterprise to go forward, but it is an indisputable fact that the fuel vehicle market continues to shrink and new energy vehicles as a whole climb. The market share of Japanese brands, including Nissan, in China has been carved up, and if there is a lack of competitive products in the new energy field, it will be difficult to reverse Nissan's passive position.

"The Arc Nissan Arc Plan" sets out a series of goals: for example, Nissan plans to increase annual sales by 1 million units and increase operating profit margin to more than 6% by the end of fiscal 2026, and in China, 73% of Nissan brand lineup will be renewed and eight new energy vehicle (NEV) models will be launched, including four Nissan brand models, and 60% by fiscal 2026 The company will reduce the cost of next-generation BEVs by 30% by FY2030 to achieve cost parity between BEVs and ICE models, and significantly reduce the development costs of next-generation BEVs by leveraging Nissan's unique "family-oriented" development model.

It seems indeed ambitious, but today's automobile consumer market is full of strange and dangerous situations, and the landing of Nissan's new energy strategy, at least until now, is still still holding the pipa and half-covered. For the ever-increasing new car-making forces, there may not be much time left for Nissan.

The ideal is plump enough, but will the reality really escape from the skinny?

View original image 51K

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•