The three major paths of “Defending the Self-Branded Brand” collectively break through

China has a word called crisis. Two seemingly contradictory concepts have always appeared together.

Sales volume decline, market share continued to shrink, BYD's profits plummeted to 10%, independent brands can not be described as "dangerous."

However, we see more "accidents" from "danger." Netizens' support for their own brands, Great Wall Motors' rising trend, Chery and BYD's blind pursuit of sales in the wake of the "vigilance", SAIC Roewe remodel its own brand in the high-end self-confidence ... ...

“The slowdown in the auto market is a good thing,” said Zhang Zhiyong, an automotive expert. “The “Bayonet” has not yet seen red, and how to fundamentally enhance the core competitiveness of independent brands is really worth considering.”

The four key words such as copycat knocked off the brand's “slap in the face”

Recently, NetEase Car also conducted an independent brand purchase willingness survey among netizens. In this survey conducted by 4,765 netizens, we discovered that the majority of netizens mentioned the key words associated with self-owned brands, such as copycat counterfeiting, cheap prices, poor workmanship, and backward technology.

At the same time, 61.6% of netizens believe that self-owned brand passenger cars have made some progress in the past two years, but there has been no breakthrough in core technologies.

When talking about the biggest advantage of self-owned brands, 91.6% of netizens highly consistently selected prices, and quality is always the biggest disadvantage. This is undoubtedly a sorrow for self-owned brands that have shouted many years of independent innovation.

However, to everyone who really cares about the growth of self-owned brands, 19.5% of the nearly 5,000 netizens who participated in the survey were already owners of their own brands. 49.1% of netizens are interested in buying their own brand cars.

Moreover, the participating netizens replied that if the joint venture brand further launches 4-7 million yuan worth of products, will you also consider the issue of autonomous brand passenger cars? 27.2% of netizens said they would choose their own brand, 40.7% Although users choose not to be certain, they will be based on specific models, which at least indicates that they are willing to give their own brand models a chance.

Zhang Zhiyong, an automotive expert, said that from an international perspective, Koreans are sitting in Korean cars, Japanese people in Japanese cars, Americans in Boeing, and Europeans in Airbus. However, in China, joint venture brands account for about 70% of the market share of passenger cars. The Chinese have given the greatest tolerance to joint venture brands, but China’s auto industry has always depended on our own brands.

From the above survey, we see that Chinese netizens are waiting and waiting for the rise of independent brands. Opportunities are still there. A self-owned brand company's intention to remove fake counterfeit and technically settled hats, and the group's high-end market's collective breakthrough has already begun.

Going upwards, going inwards, and walking out of the three major breakthrough paths of independent brands In the investigation of the “Defend Your Own Brand” series of reports, we interviewed a large number of self-owned brand companies, whether it is the anti-collapse school of Chery, the Shanghai Auto, or the frustrated BYD, Brilliance, or the Great Wall and Jianghuai, which have risen against the tide, we all saw one thing in common: Changing the past low-quality, low-price, “double-low strategy” to go upwards, and washing the high-end car market for years has almost “destroyed”. The shame; change the past "fight" in the domestic market only, began to have the strength to go out of the country, with the international auto giant in a larger stage to a higher one; change the past blindly pursue sales, production capacity, inwardly, really take One or two fine models, with absolute power in the core technologies such as engine and transmission.

Going up and going to the mid-high end "Only mid-to-high-end vehicles can represent the strength of a country's automotive R&D. Only mid-to-high-end brands can compete with other countries' brands." This is the release of Chery's head coach Yin Tongyue in Chery's mid-to-high-end car brands. Opening remarks at the meeting.

In fact, the high-end car market in Suizhong is obviously not just Chery. It is not an exaggeration to stand firm in the high-end market as the dream of all self-owned brand enterprises. It has made a series of positive attempts: Geely’s emperors and SAIC’s Roewe, Jianghuai's Bin Yue and so on.

But the market is cruel. After Ruiqi’s real high-end autonomous model G5 was officially launched, its cumulative sales volume was less than 2,500 units. JAC Bin Yue has not yet achieved profitability.

If you want to choose a brand that has a place in the high-end auto market, it is estimated that there is only Shanghai Auto.

After Shanghai Auto’s acquisition of Rover’s core intellectual property in 2006, Shanghai Automotive announced that it had changed its name to Roewe and entered the Chinese high-end car market. The first mid-to-high end model, the Roewe 750, was launched in March 2007 with a short period of 9 months. The sales volume reached 17,000 units and the average monthly sales volume was nearly 2,000 units. The Roewe 750 firmly holds the top three in the mid to high-end segment of the V6 market. position.

The Roewe series subsequently introduced products 550 and 350 that are closer to the mainstream. Shanghai Auto's own brands quickly gained brand awareness and gradually gained a foothold in the mid- to high-end market. The compound annual growth rate of Shanghai Automotive in the past five years was 101.8%, which was once seen as the hope of high-end Chinese brands.

However, the stagflation of the auto market this year, and the almost doubled growth of Shanghai autos have also been halted. Taking the Roewe 550, which had created its own brand in the high-end market sales myth, as an example, the vehicle is currently 4,000 units per month. The sales volume of 22,000 vehicles in the first half of this year was a lot lower than the 48,000 vehicles sold in the same period of last year. .

"The main reason for the decline in sales of 550 is that the replacement of the product is too slow. There is very little that a car can not be renewed for three years," said a SAIC Roewe dealer.

An insider of SAIC Motor stated that a self-owned brand vehicle should establish a firm foothold in the mid-to-high end market and be a systematic project for product, marketing and service. In order to break the inherent image of low-quality, low-price, self-owned brands, SAIC Roewe has not only constantly proposed new industry standards since the listing, such as three years of 100,000 kilometers, and is about to wait for the release of the Twilight Repair; at the same time, in joint ventures Under the pressure of significant price cuts for brand models, SAIC Roewe did not substantially cut prices because it was pursuing sales.

This person believes that the company is not not concerned about sales, but more important than sales, is the overall brand value and the impact of this mode of exploration in the high-end market.

It is understood that in terms of research and development, SAIC Roewe has formed an innovative operating model of “Shanghai-led, global linkage” in recent years. Given the prevailing status of the domestic European car market, British design and Chinese manufacturing have made product design always in line with international standards. The listing of MG6 in the UK is another positive attempt from the high end.

As for the product update issue, the source disclosed that the 2012 Roewe 550 was just listed and more than 20 configurations were upgraded. At the same time, in the follow-up product planning, four new products and five medium-term retrofit products will be put into the market during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, and will be represented by core powertrain technologies such as NLE, SGE, DCT, SCM, and M1X. With a new generation of high-tech equipment, product competitiveness will be greatly improved.

It is an issue that SAIC-Roywe needs to solve urgently how to quickly digest, absorb, and innovate from the simple "acquisitionism." Whether the formal product can give an answer, let us wait and see.

Exporting strategic exports to the outside world means that the sales performance of Chery, JAC, and Great Wall in the first half of this year is obviously highlighted by the rapid export growth.

According to Chery’s internal data, the company sold 16,577 vehicles in overseas markets in June, a surge of 105.8% year-on-year, a record high. In the first half of this year, a total of 71,826 vehicles were sold in overseas markets, an increase of 88.5% year-on-year.

JAC announced recently that the company’s automobile and chassis exports in June totaled 7,500 units, a year-on-year increase of 467.75%. In the first half of the year, total exports reached 35,500 units, an increase of 254.97% year-on-year. JAC can be said to be the largest increase in domestic self-owned brands.

According to the data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, auto enterprises exported 381,100 vehicles in the first half of this year, an increase of 56.99% year-on-year. China Automobile Association even believes that the year is expected to exceed the historical peak of 644,000 in 2008, a record high.

Coincidentally, the top five exporters in the first half of the year were all independent brand companies, which in turn were Chery, Chang'an, Jianghuai, Great Wall, and Dongfeng.

"Export has become a key strategy for the next step in the development of independent brands." Su Hui, vice president of the China Automobile Dealership Association's tangible automotive market segment, said that the significance of strategic exports by Chinese self-owned brands rather than speculative exports has become increasingly evident.

Performance 1: Mode breakthrough. In Brazil, Sao Paulo spent 400 million to build factories. Chery Automobile spokesperson Jin Yibo said that sales performance is not the most important thing. It is a milestone for Chery's internationalization to spend 400 million yuan to build a plant in São Paulo, Brazil. Since Chery's 12 overseas production bases are just assembly plants, the Brazilian plant will become a true automaker with a complete stamping, welding, painting and assembly line. At the same time, Jianghuai will spend 600 million U.S. dollars with Brazil's major auto dealers SHB to establish a joint venture in Rio de Janeiro.

Performance 2: Sales breakthrough. At the end of the twelfth five-year period, JAC's overseas market will achieve sales of 320,000 vehicles of various types, which will account for 20% of the company's total sales.

Performance 3: Breakthrough in the main sales model. Among the Chery’s best-selling export models, Tiggo dominated the market. Among the models exported by the Great Wall, Haval H was the highest in the Great Wall with 13.815 million vehicles, followed by the Tengyi C30 with 2,723 vehicles. Not many people claim that they are exporting some very cheap models.

However, the current export of independent brands is still mainly concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. When can we really open the threshold of developed countries in Europe and America, then, the export of independent brands will usher in a qualitative leap. It is reported that Jianghuai Automobile has started its technical reserves and certifications for Western European and North American markets.

Inward-looking and seeking the core technological discourse power Whether going up or out, the quality of the product is the most fundamental.

Over the years, China has been pursuing a "market-for-technology" strategy. But thirty years have passed, and the result? As Xie Zhihong, deputy general manager of Guangzhou Automobile Group Passenger Vehicles Co., Ltd., said: “In the past 30 years, through joint ventures, we have shortened the time we spent doing cars, and have taken some detours. However, we did not completely replace them with the market-changing technology. 1800 The production and sales of 10,000 cars have little effect on the core technology of the car."

Xie Zhihong said, “Actually, our car companies are wage earners and earn a bit of hard money. The gap between core technology and others is not a half point. If we do not firmly grasp the opportunity, our generation was a wage earner, this generation is, The next generation is still."

The boss of a self-owned brand company once thought: “The engine is Japan, the gearbox is German, and even a power cord is also foreign, how can it be called autonomy?”

However, this situation is changing.

In order to remove fake counterfeit and technically backward hats, a person in charge of research and development at Chery Automobile reported to NetEase that Chery’s engine is not only self-contained, but recently a foreign company also hopes to purchase technology from Chery. In addition, Chery has recently developed a six-speed automatic transmission with higher technical difficulty, and at the same time, in order to adapt to smaller models, our products are smaller. At present, from the smallest car to the largest car, the front pre-driver and front-driver can all match Chery's own developed automatic transmission.

In fact, the majority of netizens have criticized their own brand products for poor workmanship, and independent brand enterprises have also realized this. Geely Emgrand can be said to be a model of work promotion. I remember that at the beginning of the media's test drive in the market, many media reporters mentioned one sentence and the workmanship was significantly improved.

Netease car once visited the car's manufacturing plant. Modern equipment can be seen everywhere in the stamping and welding shop. The stamping production workshop of the car adopts the industrial robot of ABB company in Sweden. The overall stamping molding strengthens the integrity of the car body. Eleven assisted manipulators cooperate with the assembly personnel, making the assembly process reasonable and orderly, accurate and reliable, electric tightening tools, torque accuracy Achieve ± 2%, angular accuracy of ± 1%, can be achieved without re-inspection requirements.

Geely Automobile also stated that Geely has completed the product development system of five product technology platforms and 15 product platforms, and has created tire burst monitoring and safety control technologies that fill the gap in the world's automotive safety technology. Regarding patents, as of 2010, Geely applied for 3,464 patents.

In addition, Shenzhen BYD? Daimler New Technology Co., Ltd. has passed the review of the government department, the first model will be on the market soon; Guangzhou Automobile has dug its chief designer Zhang Fan from Mercedes-Benz; Great Wall Automotive Research Institute has foreign experts everywhere; Geely even pocketed Volvo. .

We noticed that more and more joint ventures have recently launched their own branded products, such as Ideas, Kai Chen, and so on. Zhang Zhiyong stated that we support the joint venture's attempt to launch its own brand, but the premise is to understand the concept of autonomy. If the core technology is still in the hands of foreign-owned companies, or if only some backward technologies are brought in and the existing foreign-funded models are improved, then the autonomy of the joint venture will lose its fundamental significance.

Su Hui believes that the breakthrough of independent brands cannot be achieved overnight. This may take 8-10 years or even longer, and there will be survival of the fittest. However, if we persist, we must have a very good market and future. This is also the future of Chinese cars.