In recent years, Continental has continued to make efforts in the export of automobiles. A number of independent brands have released their overseas strategies and are in full swing to deploy automobile export business to South America, Europe and other regions. Most of the proposals and suggestions of representatives of many car companies at this year's two sessions also focused on new energy, intelligence, and going overseas.
Chinese cars "roll" to the world
As an important engine for the growth of automobile market sales, the number of automobile exports is also a vane to measure the maturity of a region's automobile market. In the past 2023, China will have a total of 4.91 million cars, replacing Japan as the world's largest auto exporter for the first time. Automotive products from China are not only part of the global industrial chain, but also play a more important role in more and more markets.
According to the latest data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, exports of traditional fuel vehicles in April reached 390,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 41.6%; NEV exports totaled 114,000 units, reflecting a 13.3% y/y increase. It is understood that among the top 10 vehicle exporters in April, Chery exported 89,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 23.4%, accounting for 17.7% of the total exports. Compared to the same period last year, GAC's exports increased most significantly, reaching 19,000 units, a 5.5-fold increase from the y/y increase.
From January to April this year, vehicle exports totaled 1.827 million units, reflecting a 33.4% y/y increase. Passenger car exports totaled 1.539 million units, reflecting a 34.8% y/y increase. Commercial vehicle exports totaled 288,000 units, reflecting a 26.5% y/y increase. Among the top 10 vehicle exporters, BYD exported 140,000 units, up 1.4 times y/y, and Great Wall exported 129,000 units, up 74.7% y/y. Geely exported 154,000 units, reflecting a 64.4% y/y increase.
Today's Chinese auto market is very volatile, and many products are verified by domestic consumption capacity and then exported to foreign countries, which also allows some car companies to change the previous strategy of occupying foreign markets at low prices and achieve high-end transformation.
Car companies have optimized their overseas layout
Not only that, the overseas mode of Chinese automobiles is being optimized, gradually changing from the trade model of early export products to a more comprehensive and complex "ecological going overseas", and obvious differences can be seen from several brands that have recently updated their overseas plans.
Great Wall Motor announced that in the future, it will focus on the "International New Four Modernizations" of localized production capacity, localized operation, cross-brand culture and supply chain security, and will fully go overseas in research, production, supply, sales and service, and plan to achieve overseas sales of more than one million units by 2030, with high-end models accounting for more than one-third of sales.
Yin Tongyue, Chairman of Chery Holding Group, said that Chery Automobile will continue to cooperate with global partners in the whole value chain such as talent chain, innovation chain, industrial chain and supply chain, and work with global partners to build a new ecosystem of open innovation and expand the "circle of friends" for win-win cooperation.
In addition, VOYAH has established the core goal of "6655", and by 2030, it will have a layout on six continents and 60 countries around the world, with a total of 500 sales and service outlets, and a total of more than 500,000 overseas sales. GAC Aion plans to expand to Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and other markets in the next 1~2 years, and is expected to account for 5%~10% of sales this year. BYD announced that it will build a new energy vehicle production base in Szeged, Hungary; SAIC Motor has revealed its plans to invest in the construction of new energy vehicle plants in Europe. In addition, new automakers are accelerating their plans to build factories in overseas markets.
Not only to go out, but also to go in
Earlier, Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of the China Automobile Association, said that the mainland's automobile exports continued the good trend of last year. At present, Chinese automobiles have spread all over the world and have performed well in many markets, but they still face some special impacts or risks. Risks include geopolitics, taxes, carbon barriers, differences in technical regulations, certification thresholds, and cross-cultural integration.
Not long ago, the European Union issued a notice on the customs registration of electric vehicles imported from China, and may impose "retroactive tariffs" on related vehicles in the future, and the United Kingdom and the United States are preparing to conduct countervailing investigations or national security risk investigations on Chinese electric vehicles. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the administration is taking steps to ensure the success of the electric vehicle industry in the United States. Especially recently, the United States has peddled the "new energy overcapacity theory" and the rise of global trade protectionism, which has also posed a big challenge to China's new energy vehicles going overseas.
In response to this situation, Liu Yan, deputy secretary-general of the China Automobile Association, put forward two suggestions. First, for a single brand, "going out" is only the first step, and it is more important to "go in". Car companies need to fully integrate into the local political economy, social environment, cultural customs and consumption habits, and adopt a management and marketing model that combines internationalization and localization to stabilize the market and win long-term trust. Second, Chinese auto brands should avoid vicious internal competition and unite to jointly enhance the overall brand image.
Opportunities and challenges coexist, in the era full of uncertainty, China's transformation from the world's automobile power to the world's automobile power, sales and scale are far from enough, there must be good products, Chinese auto companies are well aware of this. Therefore, in order to create the ultimate product power, they have increased R&D investment and increased investment in brand building, and I believe that Chinese automobiles will eventually go overseas with high quality to realize the "dream of automobile power".