2024 is the 40th year of SAIC Volkswagen's establishment and the second year that Jia Jianxu is here.
The year before, he single-handedly took up the post of general manager, at a time when the external price war and the lag in the internal electrification transformation had exhausted joint ventures, including SAIC Volkswagen, and their market share was constantly eroded by domestic brands.
As soon as he took office, Jia Jianxu bluntly said that he did not have many cards in his hand when he met with the media for the first time. When I talked about the cards in my hand again, it was the 2024 Beijing Auto Show.
At this time, what cards Jia Jianxu has in his hand, you can go to SAIC Volkswagen's booth to see it first. SAIC Volkswagen's lineup this time is led by the Tiguan L Pro, and star models such as the ID.3, ID.4X, ID.6X, Touran, Weiran, and Lingdu L are all debuted.
In the past two years, Jia Jianxu often partnered with Yu Jingmin, executive deputy general manager of sales and marketing of SAIC Volkswagen Co., Ltd., and took the stage name "Jia Yu Combination". The media liked to participate in the interview with the two of them, and the two middle-aged men in Shanghai belonged to the kind of executives who dared to speak, could speak, and could speak.
"We can only deal these few cards now, and the key is how to use these cards to the fullest. In the second interview with the media, Jia Jianxu said.
Prepare for 2026
Jia Jianxu admits that SAIC Volkswagen's trams are not so smart, which is a shortcoming. At the same time, fuel vehicles are still the foundation of SAIC Volkswagen and cannot be lost.
"I can't change yesterday's decision, but I will definitely make today's decision." As a result, Jia Jianxu played the card of "oil and electricity with intelligence", in short, to provide consumers with the enjoyment of smart cars for oil vehicles. The Tiguan L Pro and Passat Pro are the result of the collaboration between SAIC Volkswagen and DJI.
There are not many cards in hand, so it is even more important to "see the right time to play the cards". After a relaxed operation, even in the first quarter of the price war, SAIC Volkswagen's sales performance was still stable. In the first three months of this year, SAIC Volkswagen's ace product ID family continued to be the leader of the joint venture camp, while in terms of fuel vehicles, the Passat family and the Tiguan family grew steadily driven by cost-effective products.
But that's just the beginning. "In 2023, 2024, 2025, it will be more difficult in these years. "But in the second half of 2025, the world will be different from 2026, when the products we plan now will be on the market." "I think we can get through the darkest of the most difficult moments, and everything I'm doing today is preparing for 2026."
What Jia Jianxu wants to do and is doing is to communicate with the Germans, gain a certain degree of dominance, shorten the decision-making process of SAIC Volkswagen, and keep up with the rapidly changing market rhythm. This is a necessary prerequisite for joint ventures to get out of the predicament in China.
In the past 40 years, SAIC Volkswagen's annual sales reached 2 million units at its peak, and now it is 1.2 million units.
Jia Jianxu said that the joint venture has two shareholders, and the communication cost must be higher than that of the independent brand, and what he can do now is to "communicate and communicate desperately". "Tell the shareholder how it can win and help it achieve that." Jia Jianxu said. Prior to taking the helm of SAIC Volkswagen, Jia Jianxu was the leader of Yanfeng, the world's largest automotive interior supplier, and he led Yanfeng's active transformation to exceed 100 billion yuan in annual sales. Jia Jianxu is undoubtedly an excellent leader, but he knows that "one person takes 10,000 steps, not as much as 10,000 people take one step".
Jia Jianxu tried to convince the Germans to "forget about profits for a moment and remember that Volkswagen is a brand that lives for Volkswagen," and he told the Germans that "Chinese competitors have far outwitted joint ventures in terms of software understanding, but we can be a Fast Follower."
The nature of the joint venture determines that Jia Jianxu needs to put in more effort than expected. However, some changes are happening. A recent milestone event is Volkswagen's agreement to hand over all hybrid models to SAIC Volkswagen, which will lead the development of the powertrain and work with Volkswagen and SAIC to create hybrid models for the Chinese market, including PHEVs and range extenders.
Jia Jianxu also put forward requirements for the engineering team, "the cost of range extension and hybrid vehicles should be almost the same as that of fuel vehicles", and at the same time "increase the intelligent entertainment space". This means that SAIC Volkswagen's next hybrid model will be based on the pure electric platform, rather than a change in the architecture of the gasoline vehicle.
SAIC Volkswagen is accelerating, "at least not very slowly, at least to catch up". Jia Jianxu said that this is the change he wants to make after reflecting on the past year.
Be beautiful with others
Jia Jianxu not only likes to use cards as an analogy, comparing the order of new cars to playing cards, and from time to time he and Yu Jingmin also have to "tell fortunes" and calculate what products need to be put on the market at what time; he also compares the 40 years of SAIC Volkswagen and Volkswagen to "ballroom dancing", "If you take a step back, he can further everyone not step on each other's feet."
Playing cards, fortune telling, and ballroom dancing sound like a three-piece set for middle-aged people. If you really want to talk about it, Jia Jianxu and Yu Jingmin are both old people in the automobile circle. Jia Jianxu has been in the automotive industry for more than 20 years, and Yu Jingmin has never left SAIC since the beginning of the industry. A job is done for a lifetime, and in the era of fast-food job-hopping, the two of them also seem "very slow" and "very slow".
But life is never in vain, and the long life experience has endowed this group of people with the wisdom to pass through the darkness and the courage to turn the tide. At the beginning of the year, BYD took the lead in starting the price reduction tide, and then Xiaomi inadvertently triggered the second round of price wars, and the entire car market was miserable. Jia Jianxu has his own ideas about the two car companies that are leading the price war. On BYD, he said, "The vertical integration of the supply chain is not comparable to BYD. So we can only compare the value with it", and about Xiaomi, he said, "Don't belittle it, and don't deliberately learn it." There are some things that you don't have and can't learn, and if you insist on learning them, you will pay a great price."
"Don't see the beauty of others and forget your own beauty", Jia Jianxu said, "We should not give up what we have today, but share the beauty with others and sing our own beauty." At least that's one thing we SAIC Volkswagen people should do today. ”
What is the value of SAIC Volkswagen? Used car service is one of them. The price battle, the iteration of technology, and the current car are depreciating faster than before. Therefore, it is particularly important to manage the residual value around the user.
For bulk consumer goods such as automobiles, just buying cheaply is not necessarily really cheap. SAIC Volkswagen pays more attention to the cost performance of users' car ownership, that is, the difference between buying and selling. In order to continuously optimize the cost of car ownership for users, SAIC Volkswagen has taken the lead in opening the financial policy and launched the service of "three-year to 6% discount hedging and repurchase" for the ID.3 to alleviate the worries of electric vehicle consumers about the long-term value preservation of the car.
SAIC Volkswagen will not forget the essence of the car, safe and reliable. Facing the products in 2026, Jia Jianxu hopes that the product lineup will be complete and excellent. "We will not be stuck in the national standard to make electric vehicle products opportunistically, we need to meet the consumer scene more, and give everyone more certainty in the product, including safety and reliability, which is the key. Jia Jianxu said.
Is the golden age of joint ventures over? Maybe. Has SAIC Volkswagen said goodbye to the top? No one wants to lose here, and they must not lose.
"Don't underestimate it. Jia Jianxu said, "So our positioning is to hold on for these two years, and look at it by 2027." ”