Self-prudence, sobriety for competition and responsibility for the development of the industry have all converged into the sincerity of Great Wall Motors.
From nothing to nothing to everything, Great Wall Motors' transformation seems to be just a few months away.
At the recent shareholders' meeting, Great Wall Motors answered questions from the public in the form of live broadcasts, and everyone was shocked by Great Wall's moves, not because this is a rare public shareholders' meeting in the industry, nor because of how rich the content of this discussion is, how luxurious the lineup is, but because the organizer is Great Wall Motors, and Mr. Wei Jianjun of Great Wall Motors sat on the lecture seat.
"In my many years of interview experience, it is difficult or almost impossible to face Wei Jianjun directly", in the circle, this is the consensus of media people. Wei Jianjun once said that "I will feel nervous in front of the media camera", so he rarely appears in public. In fact, in the past few years when Internet celebrity leaders have emerged, Great Wall Motors has hardly participated in it, except for the technical voice on the Weibo platform, which is really unpleasant.
The change appeared this year, Wei Jianjun opened a personal account on Weibo on the front foot, and Great Wall Motors held this shareholders' meeting in the form of a live broadcast, like a short echo. Some people say that Great Wall Motors has finally figured it out and wants to get the last wave of dividends in the traffic era. However, the automobile culture believes that the "figured out" of Great Wall Motors should continue to be itself in a different form.
The bottom-line logic has never changed
"In the face of general industry losses, Great Wall has done something and not done something. Long-termism, the bottom line is compliance, enterprises are to create social value, must have their own hematopoietic ability, adhere to long-termism, and look at the long-term. At the shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun opened with such a paragraph.
Long-termism is a high-frequency word in the automotive industry. But to be precise, the real long-termism, the brand's persistence in the past few decades is only a reference, and what the market, industry and users need to observe is the company's development outlook for the present, as well as the next three or even ten years. Zhang Lei, the founder of Hillhouse Capital, once mentioned that "long-termism is not only a methodology, but also a value.
According to this philosophy, Great Wall Motor's long-termism does not need to be observed in depth, but becomes visible at a glance.
The most obvious thing is that in the price war for more than a year, Great Wall Motors has always adhered to the principle of "not fighting price wars", and Mu Feng, president of Great Wall Motors, clearly mentioned that "the essence of price wars is not involution, but change".
The so-called "change" refers to the superposition of technological potential energy, and it is also the acceleration of the knockout round.
From the perspective of the industry, the cause of the price war is the surplus of the supply side and the serious homogenization of products. In this regard, Great Wall Motors not only has forward-looking R&D projects in the fields of "power, new energy, intelligent cockpit, automatic driving, intelligent chassis, etc., and has established more than 110 forward-looking projects, so that no one has me, and no one has me", but also "has always insisted on category innovation and insisted on creating distinctive product categories".
At the shareholders' meeting, the senior management of Great Wall Motors also made it clear that "Great Wall Motors will not give up the car category".
Wei Jianjun asked Great Wall Motors to self-hematopoiesis and create social value, which is the core of long-termism and the only way to break the involution - in the normal state of involution, it is not only the brand that hurts each other, but also the competition within the car companies, the pressure of dealers and the interests of suppliers are gradually exposed to the public eye.
Therefore, Great Wall Motors can not take "price" as a moat in the era of involution, but rely on differentiated products and technologies as a basis for competition.
For example, the ORA brand has always adhered to the positioning of "women" and created social cognition with distinctive labels; Although the tank brand is facing many "square box" models to catch up, it has core advantages such as excellent reputation at home and abroad, ecological verification of users, and Great Wall Hi-4 technology; In addition, the two major brands of WEY and Haval, with continuous technological upgrading and product innovation, have also shown stable growth since this year, forming a stable support for Great Wall Motors in the mainstream passenger car market.
Great Wall Motor believes that "the layout value is greater than the short-term business value". At the shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun profoundly talked about the competition expectations for the next three years, he said that "the competitive pressure will not become smaller", but this time, it was not as strict as "whether Great Wall Motors can survive next year", but with long-termism to carry out a simple but profound response, with the attitude of "flowing water does not compete for the first, and strives to be endless", to do a good job of the Great Wall's "do something" and "do nothing".
Great Wall Motor's endless talk not only established Great Wall Motor's values, but also brought eight major growth in the industry last year, and maintained a stable growth trend this year.
According to the data, Great Wall Motor's sales in 2023 will be 1.23 million units, a year-on-year increase of 15.85%. Among them, 256,400 new energy vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 113.88%; Overseas annual sales were 314,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 82.37%. The sales of models with more than 200,000 yuan were 225,800, accounting for 18.36%, a year-on-year increase of 3.09 percentage points. At the same time, the financial report data shows that its total operating income in 2023 will be 173.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.12%.
Sincerity, the background color of Great Wall Motors
If you want to find a car company similar to Great Wall Motors, it will only be Chery.
In public, Chery's senior management has repeatedly pointed out that Chery is a very stupid car company, and it will only work hard, even if it is "welcome", it will inform friends in advance. The "stupidity" of Great Wall Motors is also highly consistent with Chery, that is, the "sincerity" of the brand and the entire high-level team.
If you look at the entire shareholders' meeting, you can find a seemingly careless, but in fact word-for-word cautious, such as Great Wall Motors, as the first car company to deeply cultivate intelligent networking and new energy technology, and obtained the Thiel level certification, to create the world's first and only intelligent cockpit based on multi-screen interaction with excellent fluency, and now talk about not "far ahead", but "confident to sit at the table of new car change".
For the future market goal, Great Wall Motors also talked about "challenging 500,000 vehicles"; As for the business objectives, Great Wall Motors said even more plainly, "to achieve no loss, or a slight loss"; Even if you "be an Internet celebrity, you must be a quality Internet celebrity, without quality traffic, we will not want it", at the shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun seemed very sincere.
However, we should not understand the "sincerity" of Great Wall Motors only as a humble and introspective attitude, for what we have confidence or must do, Great Wall Motors has been fighting on the front line and taking the lead.
For the future of China's new energy vehicles, Great Wall Motors is full of confidence, Wei Jianjun said at the shareholders' meeting: "New energy is China's strategy, not the strategy of other countries, and there is no foreign country that supports new energy like China." Therefore, now it is very advantageous for our new energy products to go out, and it is a dimensionality reduction blow to foreign markets. ”
Since its inception, Great Wall Motors has always adhered to the overseas development route, not only the products have been widely recognized by foreign users, but also created the Great Wall pickup landing in Times Square in the United States and other events, therefore, Great Wall Motors can mention without any worries, "Great Wall Motors Xushui test site was planned ten years ago, so far surpassing Tesla, is the most complete and most luxurious test site in China's own brands", and convincing.
The prudence of self, the sobriety of competition and the responsibility for the development of the industry have all gathered into the sincerity of Great Wall Motors, and it is precisely because of the word "sincerity" that Great Wall Motors can keep the "bottom line" and Chery can accumulate steadily.
There is a text that says:
"We are very lucky to be able to do cars, and we like it very much", Wei Jianjun ended the shareholders' meeting with such a sentence.
In this shareholders' meeting, perhaps the biggest gain of the public is not to understand the achievements of Great Wall Motors, or to recognize the advantages and competitiveness of Great Wall Motors, but to discover what kind of car company Great Wall Motors is, and what kind of car man Wei Jianjun is, although this has nothing to do with interests, but it is an indispensable step in the formation of Chinese car culture - because of the same values and outlook on life and fall in love with the car brand, this love will last for a long time. (Cars have culture Ouyang/text)