Southeast Mitsubishi announced the end, and the joint venture car companies that "hit soy sauce" gradually became passers-by

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According to enterprise investigation data, recently, the equity of Southeast (Fujian) Automobile Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Southeast Automobile") has changed, and Japan's Mitsubishi Automobile Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Mitsubishi Motors"), which originally held 25% of its shares, withdrew and was taken over by the new shareholder Fuzhou Transportation Construction Investment Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fujian Jiaotong"). After this equity change, Fuqi Group, Warwick Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Warwick Shares") and Fuzhou Trading will hold 50%, 25% and 25% of the shares of Southeast Automobile respectively, and Southeast Automobile has also changed from the previous chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese shareholding structure to a Chinese+ Taiwanese structure. At this point, the joint venture between Southeast Motor and Mitsubishi Motors was completely terminated.

♦ "Southeast Mitsubishi" has existed in name only for a long time

According to the data, in 1995, Southeast Automobile was established, and Fuqi Group and Warwick Shares each held 50%. Among them, Fuqi Group is 100% controlled by Fujian State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, while Huawei shares are derived from Taiwan's Zhonghua Automobile. Chunghwa Motors, part of The Yulon Group in Taiwan, was founded by Yan Qingling, the founder of Yulon Motors, and was initially responsible for the production of mitsubishi series commercial vehicles in the form of technical cooperation, and later Mitsubishi also invested in Taiwan's Chunghwa Motors. As a result of this relationship, in 2006, Mitsubishi signed a contract with Southeast Motor to acquire a 20% stake in Warwick. Shortly thereafter, the equity of Warwick shares was further diluted, and the shareholding ratio of Fuqi Group, Mitsubishi Motors and Warwick shares was stable at 50:25:25 for a long time.

After Mitsubishi joined the shareholder Nan Motors, it has successively introduced models such as Gelan, Lanse, Yishen, Junge, and Fengdisi for the Southeast Mitsubishi brand. In the case of good products and market reputation, Southeast Automobile sales continue to rise. According to the data, the cumulative sales of Southeast Automobile reached 116,000 units in 2013, the highest in history. However, there have been rumors in the industry that as the largest technology exporter behind Southeast Motors, Mitsubishi Motors only holds a 25% stake in Southeast Motors, which has caused dissatisfaction from Mitsubishi. To this end, Mitsubishi has repeatedly proposed to increase its stake to 50%, but all of them have failed. Perhaps in the case of hopeless equity increase, Mitsubishi began to plan cooperation with other domestic car companies.

In 2012, Mitsubishi Motors and GAC Group established GAC Mitsubishi, each holding 50% of the shares, and successively produced models such as Outlander and Jinxuan. Since then, the focus of Mitsubishi's development in the Chinese market has begun to tilt towards GAC-Mitsubishi. Since the launch of The Wind Disc in 2013, Mitsubishi Motors has stopped introducing new models to Southeast Motors, and Mitsubishi Motors and Southeast Motors have gradually drifted apart. By 2015, Mitsubishi Motors stopped delivering new technologies to Southeast Motors, and R&D personnel withdrew to Japan — a move that marked the demise of Mitsubishi's cooperation with Southeast Motors. In the same year, Mitsubishi Motors announced that it would stop the research and development of cars and performance cars, and would focus on the three types of SUVs, pickups and electric vehicles in the future, which meant that Mitsubishi had given up cooperation with Southeast Motors. There was no new model and technology introduction, and the products hanging the Mitsubishi logo under Southeast Motor were discontinued one after another, and with the suspension of the production of Southeast Mitsubishi Wing God in 2017, Southeast Automobile has no longer produced any Mitsubishi models.

It can be seen that although Mitsubishi Motors and Southeast Motors only officially received the "divorce certificate" in 2021, before that, the two sides have passed at least 4 years of "cooling off period".

♦ Strategic changes become the main cause of "divorce"

In the view of Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Association, the competition in the domestic automobile market is becoming increasingly fierce, and if it is not possible to follow up the rapid changes in China's automobile market in time, many car companies will face the fate of "unable to carry it". In addition to market reasons, Mitsubishi Motors' withdrawal from Southeast Motors is due to the adjustment of multinational car companies' product strategies and regional strategies in China.

Indeed, in May last year, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, which was in crisis due to a series of turmoil, jointly issued a number of strategic initiatives to distribute "responsibility fields" in a new "leader-companion" cooperation model to re-stabilize the alliance relationship and strengthen the competitiveness and profitability of the three companies. Among them, in terms of markets, the alliance named the "benchmarking area" for different regional markets around the world, of which the benchmarking company for the Chinese, North American and Japanese markets is Nissan Motor; the benchmarking company for the European, Russian, South American and North African markets is Renault Group; and the benchmarking company for the Southeast Asian and Oceania markets is Mitsubishi Motors. This strategy also explains Renault's previous withdrawal from the Chinese fuel passenger car market and Mitsubishi Motors' withdrawal from Southeast Motors.

Cao Guangping, a researcher of new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, believes that there are three main reasons for Mitsubishi Motors' withdrawal from the list of shareholders of Southeast Automobile: one is that Mitsubishi Motors' vehicle business has not developed well in China historically, and has focused more on traditional engine parts technology; second, under the trend of electrification in the automotive industry, Southeast Motor has not kept up with the pace of the industry, whether it is a state-owned enterprise or a joint venture, so Mitsubishi Motors' traditional parts technology participation is basically meaningless Third, in the future, China's auto industry will carry out a greater degree of stock ratio opening, including allowing the establishment of wholly-owned enterprises, the competition situation of the Chinese and foreign automotive industries is stronger, and Mitsubishi Motors' main business in China's future is new technology competition, rather than relying on traditional parts and components to occupy the market.

For the future development of Mitsubishi Motors in China, Cui Dongshu said that Mitsubishi Motors' only remaining joint venture in China, GAC-Mitsubishi, is currently in a relatively stable operating state, especially in the stage where Chinese consumers are still in a special preference for SUV models, GAC-Mitsubishi still has great development potential.

♦ The old is gone, the new future

At present, on the eve of the auto industry's imminent full liberalization of the stock ratio in 2022, the industry sees more exits from the outside world, which may be the result of most people's initial expectations.

Cui Dongshu said that from Changan Suzuki, Dongfeng Renault to Southeast Mitsubishi, the foreign parties in the weak joint venture car companies have withdrawn from the Chinese market, which fully shows that the competition in the Chinese auto market is relatively fierce, and the elimination of auto products and enterprises in the future will be in a state of further intensification, if it cannot keep up with the rapid changes in the Chinese market, especially if it cannot follow the changes in China's new energy vehicle market, the tail enterprises of weak joint venture brands and even independent brands will face greater survival pressure. Overall, the concentration speed of the domestic automobile industry will be further accelerated, especially the development of intelligence and electrification, which will make more car companies face greater survival pressure, which is also a challenge faced by the world's automotive industry, and now international car companies are also with an anxious attitude to cope with the new changing characteristics of the automotive industry.

However, for the number of passenger car joint venture brands in China after the release of the share ratio restriction in 2022, Cui Dongshu believes that a significant reduction will not occur. Cui Dongshu said that at present, the main domestic joint venture car companies are in a relatively stable stage of development, especially the head Japanese and German car companies in China still maintain a relatively strong and good development characteristics. In the short term, the market share of traditional fuel vehicles will not shrink significantly, so the number of joint venture brands will still maintain a relatively large number in the future, and there is still a huge living space for advantageous joint ventures.

Du Fangci, an adviser to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, believes that under the current fierce competition pattern in the Chinese auto market, those products, platforms and even car companies that are untenable in the market will be eliminated by the market. Regarding the prospects of joint venture car companies in the Chinese market after the liberalization of the stock ratio, Du Fangci believes that the competitiveness of joint venture car companies in the Chinese market still depends on the competitiveness of foreign car companies' brands. When some foreign brands are at a disadvantage in competition with the top-ranking giant car companies in the world, their joint venture brands in China will not change. After the restrictions on foreign investment in the automotive industry are fully liberalized in 2022, those joint venture brands that have been operating in a slump before the liberalization of the share ratio are unlikely to reverse the decline through sole proprietorship or increase the share ratio, and in the final analysis, they need to improve their comprehensive strength.

Wang Qing, deputy director of the Market Economy Research Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council, also said in an interview with the reporter of China Automobile News that some of the existing weak joint venture brands in the domestic market must make changes in product strength and marketing to adapt to the new situation and new changes, otherwise they will be farther and farther away from Chinese consumers. Indeed, more and more cases of the demise of joint venture brands show that China's auto market has entered a stage of two-way choice, and only foreign car companies with strength are willing to take root in China, combine research and development with China's national conditions, and change for domestic consumers, and it is possible to gain a foothold in the domestic market. Enterprises that participate in the competition in the Chinese auto market with the mentality of "playing soy sauce" can no longer enjoy the development dividends as before.

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