Even in the face of various acute problems, the executives of Great Wall Motors led by Wei Jianjun are also open and honest, and do not shy away from it, from the technical development route to the product, market layout and brand marketing, in and out of words, almost all the replies are inseparable from the words "long-termism".
It is very dangerous for electric vehicles to do pure off-road
Great Wall Motor's tank brand has set off a box-box craze in the Chinese auto market, and in 2023, tank sales will have a 55% market share in China's off-road market, building a strong brand moat. At present, the tank brand has comprehensively laid out and planned a complete product matrix from compact to full-size, covering 2.0T, 3.0T power systems of different specifications and different price ranges of 200,000 to 500,000 yuan, to achieve a full-category layout.
Regarding the "tank fever" that everyone is concerned about, Wei Jianjun pointed out that the square box car does not represent an off-road vehicle, but a development trend of styling. Because from the off-road scene and function, the off-road vehicle pursues "slow", and only slow can be better controlled. The slowest speed control of the international pure off-road vehicle is 2.7 km/h, which is a huge torque output at this speed. The Hi4T equipped with the tank series pursues low-speed torque and pursues slowness, which is a function that cannot be achieved by electric vehicles.
"Electric vehicles cannot achieve high torque output at low speeds, and electric vehicles climb hills by wheel slippage 'scratching', rather than really climbing up." Wei Jianjun stressed that electric pure off-road is a very dangerous product, because electric vehicles cannot control the speed when climbing, and when a certain wheel "grabs" a hard object, it is possible that the vehicle will run out.
At the same time, Wei Jianjun also mentioned that although the pan-off-road vehicle can play crossing, even the best four-wheel drive pan-off-road vehicle with decoupling of the front and rear axles cannot achieve four-wheel synchronous control, and there will still be individual wheels skidding or even "smoking" when off-road climbing, which cannot achieve the climbing effect of pure off-road vehicles. Wei Jianjun hopes that in the future, off-road vehicles will be classified into high-intensity off-road, pan-off-road, and urban four-wheel drive, so as to continuously improve the R&D and design of off-road vehicles, promote the innovation and development of the off-road vehicle industry, and provide consumers with better products and services.
Whether it is a pure off-road vehicle represented by the tank series, a pan-off-road vehicle represented by the Raptor, or an urban four-wheel drive vehicle such as H6 and Blue Mountain, Great Wall Motors has made corresponding layouts. Therefore, although it is better in the SUV field, due to the insistence on all categories of products, Mu Feng, president of Great Wall Motors, emphasized that Great Wall Motors will not give up the sedan category, and in the future, Great Wall will consider the possibility of laying out sedan products in the high-end Wei brand.
To go to sea, you must make money, and challenge to sell 500,000 vehicles a year
As one of the first independent car brands to be exported, in recent years. Great Wall Motor's performance in overseas markets is becoming more and more impressive. From January to December 2023, it sold a total of 316018 new cars overseas, a year-on-year increase of 82.48%; In the first quarter of 2024, Great Wall Motor's overseas sales reached 92,800 units, a year-on-year increase of 78.51%; In the just-concluded April, Great Wall Motors sold 36,141 new cars overseas, a year-on-year increase of 65.68%, a record high. When it comes to the development of overseas business, Wei Jianjun has set an annual sales target of 500,000 units overseas this year. Shi Qingke, vice president of Great Wall Motors, said that in terms of brands, to challenge the overseas sales target of 500,000 units, the Haval brand is the market, with a target sales of 300,000 units, a target sales of 60,000 pickup trucks, and a target sales of 50,000-60,000 tank brands. "Not only must the brand continue to develop upward, but also let the profit continue to grow." Shi Qingke bluntly said that in the pursuit of high-quality development overseas, Great Wall Motors must achieve brand upward, scale and make money!
In addition, Wei Jianjun also revealed for international business that Great Wall Motor's products are market-oriented development, so it is unimpeded to go out and adapt to the international market, and as long as you do a good job of adaptive development, you can open up overseas markets.
During this year's Beijing Auto Show, Great Wall Motor announced that it would promote the "ecological going overseas" strategy, focusing on the "international new four modernizations" of production capacity localization, operation localization, brand cross-culture and supply chain security, and promoting R&D, production, supply, sales and service to go overseas in an all-round way. By 2030, Great Wall Motor plans to achieve overseas sales of more than one million units, with high-end models accounting for more than one-third of sales.
Strive to be a quality influencer
Since the beginning of this year, the trend of the company's boss personally going down to be an "Internet celebrity" has swept the automobile circle, and Wei Jianjun, who has always been low-key, has also rarely gone live to attract traffic for Great Wall Motors. In Wei Jianjun's words, Great Wall Motors has won the reputation of users with its excellent product quality, and it is "its own traffic", so it rarely relies on social platforms to attract traffic. However, with the changes in the market environment and the increasingly fierce competition, it is normal to open up marketing.
At the shareholders' meeting, when talking about the live broadcast, Wei Jianjun said that netizens are very enthusiastic and should have a lot of curiosity about the company, and he is actually a role model. "I have an advantage, doing better than them (executives) because I'm the boss." In Wei Jianjun's view, although the traffic of the Great Wall is not very good now, it is not an Internet celebrity, but strive to be a quality Internet celebrity. "Recently, there have been cases of traffic but no quality, and we don't do it." Regarding the time of the follow-up live broadcast, Wei Jianjun said that the live broadcast is like eating, you can broadcast it if you want to, the Internet requires authenticity, Great Wall Motors is a simple and real company, and there is nothing to say except for the listing rules. Because every online netizen has the potential to become a user of Great Wall Motors, he is also very willing to communicate with everyone.
"In order for an enterprise to create social value, it must have hematopoietic ability." Wei Jianjun said that the current fierce competition in the automobile industry, is expected to be in the next three years competition intensity will not decrease, Great Wall Motors adhere to the bottom line thinking and long-termism, the pursuit of quality market share, do something and do nothing, for serious losses of models moderately reduce sales, and instead promote higher profit models. Great Wall Motor's 2023 annual report shows that thanks to the group's long-term strategy, it will achieve a total operating income of 173.212 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 26.12%, a record high; The net profit reached 7.023 billion yuan, and the net profit not attributable to the parent company was 4.834 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.98%.