The Beijing Auto Show is about to be held, and it is not surprising that after a few years of dormancy, this time, in Beijing, China's automotive industry will show another danger.
The tear between the traditional manufacturers and the latecomers will not only not be alleviated by the transformation of the industry into the development period, but also through the observation of the past few months, it will further reveal the cruelty of market competition to the outside world with a scene of everyone rattling.
From the known information, it is not difficult to see that almost all manufacturers will bring their own blockbuster new cars, or focus on new market segments, or upgrade and iterate on existing models, and the excitement of this Beijing Auto Show will not be inferior to that of Shanghai in 2023.
In this regard, what kind of attack ideas will be given by Chinese companies that are hostile to both of them, which is related to the survival of the joint venture, will surely become a hot topic of discussion again.
How many times, countless people who eat melons believe that the future Chinese auto market is destined to drive away the unenterprising joint venture brands. In fact, the departure of brands such as Renault, Jeep, and Mitsubishi does prove that more and more overseas car companies are beginning to fail to keep up with the speed of transformation in the Chinese market.
Not long ago, when BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu also pointed out at the 2023 financial report investor communication conference, "In the next three to five years, the market share of joint venture brands will be significantly reduced from the current 40% to 10%, and 30% of them will be filled by Chinese brands." ”
Regardless of the position from which this is said, I believe that the difficult situation of the joint venture company in China is the most significant situation in the industry at the moment.
In order to make a living and maintain their reputation, even if it is as strong as Volkswagen can no longer come up with any decent electric vehicles at the Beijing Auto Show, but today, from bowing their heads one by one to learning from Chinese companies, to simply developing new cars with them, with the Beijing Auto Show as a node, each joint venture brand must immediately give an answer. From now on, the discourse power of China's auto market will definitely be switched.
Either bow your head or sit back and wait to be marginalized
Since the market is gradually diverging in the wave of transformation, how huge are the challenges brought by the rise of Chinese car companies?
The weak brands that have fled China have already conveyed to us with the most authentic side. Hyundai, which frequently sells its base, and Chevrolet, Skoda, and other brands that are gradually forgotten by the market, are also revealing the hidden killing opportunities of China's auto market to the outside world with their own deteriorating performance.
Throughout last year, the sales of leading joint ventures, including SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, Guangqi Honda, Dongfeng Nissan, etc., the final result of the decline in sales is that the market trend controlled by joint venture brands in the past has undergone qualitative changes. The market share has fallen below 50% and is still shrinking, and I can only sigh that the butcher's knife in this era is too sharp.
Now, when many of these brands began to hesitate to go to Beijing, they could only come up with some new cars with painless products, such as Tiguan PRO, the new Magotan, Explorer Plus, etc., everything more and more verified the judgment given by the outside world.
Will 2024 be the beginning of the collective downward trend of joint venture brands?
With such a question, some people will try to find the answer in Beijing. But all in all, in this new era, all joint venture efforts are no longer disruptive. If you want to survive, while bowing to consumers, putting aside the so-called global perspective and putting the bridgehead of development in China is almost the only option.
Previously, in the feeling of the surging market, Chinese consumers continue to use "miscellaneous" to describe all the new electric cars produced by major manufacturers, Volkswagen for the first time on its own ID. series price butcher knife, Toyota in the bZ4X after the collapse of the halberd found BYD and other Chinese companies to cooperate, in the later stage have been effective.
At present, instead of spending a lot of money on electric vehicles that are not suitable for Chinese users, it is a more cost-effective operation to continue to strengthen the linkage with Chinese companies.
At the beginning of April, a car blogger broke the news that "one of the three major Japanese mothers will be Huawei Smart Driving". In view of the fact that the blogger's news has always been very accurate, as soon as the news comes out, no matter how the outside world judges, at least the matter of joining forces with Huawei to engage in intelligent driving has confirmed that some foreign-funded car companies have lowered their arrogant heads.
"It's not that joint venture brands can't build electric cars, it's just that what they make is not fun, and they can't bring freshness and futurism to Chinese consumers. ”
I don't know how many people have found out, just like the FAW-Volkswagen ID.7 VIZZION has been on the market for so long, and the SAIC Volkswagen ID.7S, which is a sister car, has not entered the market until now. TO BE HONEST, WHETHER OR NOT THE LATTER CAN GIVE A PROPER EXPLANATION, I'D LIKE TO THINK THAT IT WAS INTIMIDATED BY THE SLUGGISH SALES OF THE ID.7 VIZZION AFTER ITS LAUNCH.
So, don't say anything, with this most real market feedback, may I ask, which joint venture brand can still control the Chinese market on its own?
At this year's Beijing Auto Show, we will also see the official debut of Changan Mazda's new energy mid-level sedan EZ-6, Honda's localized new pure electric car e:NP2/S2, and the newly released electric brand "Ye......
These previously unimaginable operations can appear so intensively, which shows that this year's market changes still sting the hearts of most joint venture brands.
The Chinese market is no longer the region that can be mastered by relying on obsolete products. Even in a sense, at this juncture, it is not too much to separate the global business from the China business. After all, with the Beijing Auto Show as an inflection point, it will soon be clear who will be better off and who will be weaker day by day.
In the end, no one is a winner
In the first quarter, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the production and sales of passenger cars in mainland China reached 5.609 million units and 5.687 million units, up 6.6% and 10.7% y/y, respectively. At the same time, during this period, the sales of Chinese brand passenger cars reached 3.392 million units, a year-on-year increase of 26.4%, and the market share reached 59.6%, an increase of 7.4 percentage points year-on-year.
Next, will the share of joint venture brands in the Chinese market really shrink to the level of 10%? Will independent car companies launch a comprehensive encirclement and suppression to completely seize the right to speak?
Now it seems that the answer is not so extreme, but the trend is still extremely clear. Don't look at the Beijing Auto Show still brings together most of the joint venture car companies in China, they are also forced by the market to learn from Chinese car companies, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, etc. are all very interested in coming up with some achievements at this stage, or officially announced to strengthen the linkage with Chinese technology companies.
However, at the current speed of market changes, it is really difficult to preset a promising future for brands such as Hyundai and Kia, except for these joint ventures with a certain degree of brand stickiness. And the new products they launch are either not universal, or they are used for export at a glance.
Therefore, in this market environment, rather than analyzing the future development status of the joint venture, the replacement of the old and the new between Chinese brands is obviously more worthy of attention from the outside world.
For the most interesting area of this auto show, someone has pointed to the W2 exhibition hall early.
On the psychology of the spectators, we must expect some new "stories" to happen between Xiaomi and Zhiji, Xiaomi and Jiyue, Xiaomi and the whole Dajilie. Whether you say that this is a civil war between Chinese car companies, or the transfer of power that will inevitably occur today due to the transformation of the industry, on a practical level, this will be the focus of everyone's attention in the next period of time.
"At present, the new energy industry has entered a critical stage of the knockout round, and the next 2024-2026 will be a decisive period of scale, cost and technology. ”
In fact, the market has come to this day, and we can conclude that the protagonist of the knockout game has long been no longer simply on joint ventures and independent, or traditional car companies and new forces. Any car company that fails to keep up with the pace of the market and fails to survive the price war will fall into the darkest moment in 2024.
Gaohe, who suddenly stopped at the beginning of the year, is still looking for a home that can save him, but he is gradually forgotten by time. Then think about it, what else can the Chinese auto market have to leave enough buffer time for a certain company.
Recently, the war around Xiaomi cars has been wave after wave, and independent manufacturers have pushed their leaders to the forefront of public opinion in order to seek traffic. If you do, everything is easy to say, but if you can't pass, fidgeting will become the norm.
As we all know, the price war has been fought until now, and every link in the industrial chain is tired. OEMs, suppliers, and distributors, one counts as one, and which one is not holding on. To put it bluntly, when the user's willingness to consume is almost consumed by this endless price war, the relationship between whether to buy a car and the price has undergone a subtle chemical reaction.
"The growth of the auto industry in the first quarter of this year was largely affected by the low base of the same period last year, and in fact, consumer wait-and-see sentiment is still very heavy. ”
The China Automobile Association also did not shy away from worrying about the current outstanding problem of insufficient domestic demand in the automobile industry, and pointed out that the current profit margin of the automobile industry is already low, and it is showing a further "lower" trend. What excuse is there to say that with the help of electrification, the future of China's auto market will be a thriving scene?
In the end, no matter whether the joint venture brand has handed over the market dominance, and whether the new and old forces have changed their defenses thoroughly, the memory left on everyone will be painful.