I remember one day last year, 51 Jun received a message forwarded by a friend: A local Guangqi Honda 4S store closed overnight and ran away! Only a group of car owners who have paid but have not yet picked up the car are left crying without tears.
When I first learned about it, 51 Jun was very surprised, this is a dealer with a history of more than 20 years, not to mention that such a thing will happen in Guangzhou, the base camp of Japanese cars and the headquarters of Guangqi Honda? It seems that the Japanese car, which was once the most sought after by the Chinese people, is also in big trouble.
Guangqi Honda's troubles are not over. Recently, it was reported that due to the sluggish sales in the domestic market, Guangqi Honda began to recruit voluntary resignations from the production line employees in May, and about 1,700 people have already applied, accounting for 14% of Guangqi Honda's total headcount. For those who voluntarily leave their jobs, the company said that it would compensate them in accordance with laws and regulations.
This is the second time Guangqi Honda has laid off employees in a short period of time. In December, Guangqi Honda laid off about 900 dispatched workers, or 7 percent of its workforce at the time.
Reducing the number of employees on the production line means less production, and behind the reduced production is a decrease in demand on the sales side.
Guangqi Honda's annual sales reached a record high of 780,000 units in 2021. However, in just two years, that is, in 2023, it will decline to less than 650,000 units, a decline of 16% in two years. From January to April this year, Guangqi Honda's sales were only 141,600 units, a decline of 19%.
The reason for the decline in sales is very simple, and it can even be used to explain the dilemma faced by all joint venture brands: the fuel vehicle market is constantly being squeezed by new energy vehicles, but it has been slow to improve the speed in the new energy track, and the competitiveness gap with independent brands is getting wider and wider.
In the direction of electrification, Honda launched the e:N all-electric brand in 2021 and will soon introduce its products to China. It soon became clear that the brand's first model, the e:NP1, claimed to come from the so-called all-electric architecture, but wasn't it actually a conversion from fuel to electricity. The price is not cheap, but it can only provide mediocre styling, performance, battery life and configuration, and is not competitive in the domestic market at all.
Therefore, the dismal sales were absolutely expected, and even if the terminal discount of up to 60,000 yuan was later given, the monthly sales of the e:NP1 were still only 1 or 200 units most of the time. By the way, Guangqi Honda has two PHEV models, Accord New Energy and Haoying New Energy, and we can easily find a much more cost-effective alternative in our own brand, so it is also left out by the market.
Seeing that well-laid out global products can only be marginalized in China, Honda decided to adopt a more localized new energy strategy to try to keep up with the speed of the Chinese market. At this year's Beijing Auto Show, Honda unveiled its all-new electric brand "Ye" tailored for the Chinese market, and announced that it will achieve all-electric vehicles for all models sold in China by 2035.
At the PPT of the auto show, I saw that Honda was finally willing to give Chinese consumers a dedicated architecture for pure electric vehicles, and cooperated with many local companies such as CATL, Huawei, and iFLYTEK to improve the performance of battery life and intelligence, and at the same time control the cost of the whole vehicle with the help of supplier localization, leaving room for more competitive pricing.
But is Honda really trying to localize? Who came up with the name "Ye"? The word "Ye" is "fire" and "Hua" when it is separated, and then read it in conjunction is not "cremation"? This is a big taboo for electric vehicles!
In addition, although Honda is proud to say that the appearance of the three new cars of "Ye" is dominated by Honda China, 51 Jun feels that it is a masterpiece of a third-tier independent brand designer who has been laid off and re-employed, and it is completely a non-mainstream design level, not to mention whether it is in line with the public's aesthetics.
Perhaps Honda's top management is quite proud of several new cars, after all, they are the most "new" cars Honda has ever built, but they are still quite mediocre for the current Chinese market, and it can even be said that they are backward when they go public. If Honda thinks that it can save itself with such a product, it is either overestimating its own capabilities or underestimating the perception of Chinese consumers.
It seems to be working hard but it is nothing, which is the inevitable result of Honda's choice to build a car with a relatively closed attitude. After realizing the disadvantages in the field of new energy, joint venture brands have begun to save themselves, but European and Japanese brands have shown completely different attitudes.
European brands generally have a relatively open attitude, choose the joint venture route of in-depth cooperation with Chinese brands or even déjà vu, when we exchanged the market for technology, and now it has become a joint venture brand that needs both technology and market, in general, it is a win-win model that is beneficial to both parties.
For example, Volkswagen announced that it will join hands with Xpeng to use the G9 platform to build two pure electric vehicles with the Volkswagen logo to make up for the brand's disadvantages in intelligent cockpit and high-end intelligent driving. In addition, Audi has also approached SAIC Motor to develop pure electric vehicles that are more suitable for the Chinese market using Zhiji's platform.
Another example is that Stellantis Group has just announced the establishment of a joint venture with Leapmotor to introduce Leapmotor's models into the European market and obtain the technology license of Leapmotor. Stellantis is also rumored to be interested in partnering with Chery to build the next generation of pure electric products from Maserati and Alfa Romeo using the E0X high-performance electric platform.
Although Japanese brands have shown a strong determination to transform and have repeatedly proposed to accelerate localization in the Chinese market, they have always insisted on developing their own so-called localized brands with their own brands as the main body, and are only willing to cooperate with Chinese companies to a limited extent, and the depth of cooperation will go to the supplier level at most.
For example, the "Ye" uses Huawei's car machine, CATL's battery and iFLYTEK's voice vehicle control technology, and the main body is still controlled by Honda. Although Toyota cooperated with BYD to build the bZ3, Toyota never mentioned BYD's elements, and in its opinion, BYD is only a supplier of three-electric systems.
If we want to achieve localization in the field of new energy, without the in-depth participation of Chinese brands, I am afraid that we will only create pseudo-local models that feel good about themselves and are not completely localized, which is far from the actual needs of Chinese consumers, and sales will naturally hit the streets. Since Honda is generously using GM's Autonom platform in North America to make its own products, why not try to deepen its cooperation with Chinese brands and launch a new car that is truly competitive to consumers?
Copyright Notice
Some of the pictures in this article come from the Internet
If copyright issues are involved, please contact this official account with the ownership certificate
If you need to reprint, please apply to the background of this official account and obtain authorization
Legal adviser
Beijing Weiheng (Fuzhou) Law Firm, Lai Chenglong, lawyer