Around the Lunar New Year, the Denza brand completed two major changes.
On January 24, after Denza received a capital increase of 1 billion yuan from BYD and Daimler, the two sides signed an equity transfer agreement, and byBYD and Daimler's shareholding ratio in Denza was changed from 50% to 90% of BYD and 10% of Daimler.
On February 14, Denza Automobile Sales & Service Co., Ltd. was established, which is wholly owned by BYD.
The long-dormant Tengshi "returned" to BYD, which may be a good opportunity to get out of the predicament.
Daimler withdrew
We all know that Denza is the product of the cooperation between Daimler and BYD. However, since the formal establishment of Shenzhen BYD Daimler New Technology Co., Ltd. in 2010, Denza has been living in the contradiction of aura and doubt.
In 12 years, a brand has increased its capital many times, lost money for a long time, and only launched two products, neither its own sales channels, nor built a brand image and core technology, BYD and Daimler for Denza, more is not valued, drag each other down.
In fact, the cooperation model between BYD and Daimler in 2010 is a kind of attempt worthy of affirmation, different from the market exchange technology of the previous joint venture, BYD and Daimler are equal technology sharing, BYD is responsible for the three electric technology, Daimler is responsible for design quality control, both sides are in their respective areas of the best at the force, and finally created the Denza new energy model, which should be worthy of the expectations of the outside world.
But what happened next everyone also saw. Denza 500 price and personality do not match, the shape does not conform to the mainstream aesthetics, Denza X is the product of the magic of BYD, consumers in these two products can not see the "strong combination", but more "perfunctory".
Denza is not the image project of BYD and Daimler, it is a business, and it is also the attempt of Daimler to explore the new energy market and BYD to test the high-end. However, de Novo, which was born in 2010, is both pioneering and untimely.
On the one hand, Daimler's attitude towards the transformation of new energy is more hesitant. In the Denza project, Daimler probably only took out less than half of Mercedes-Benz's skills to design Denza, and the most direct impact was that consumers were very disappointed in Denza's styling design, and the abacus of spending a small amount of money to buy Mercedes-Benz could not be knocked.
On the other hand, BYD's accumulation in the field of three electric technologies is not enough to move towards high-end. Even if BYD has put all its efforts into developing Denza's three-electric technology, compared with BYD brand models, Denza, which has doubled its price, has not achieved the actual performance of doubling its performance. The final result is that the Denza 500 can not stop the decline in sales after several iterations.
Today, Daimler has become the most fierce representative of the electrification transformation in European car companies, changing the 2030 development goal from "electric first" to "electric only" within one year. In addition to the European domestic market, Mercedes-Benz has also launched three electric SUVs in China, such as EQA, EQB and EQC, and there will be high-end products such as EQS entering the market one after another.
Orthodox Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles have been popularized in the whole series, once as Mercedes-Benz to explore the market momentum has long been proved to be unsuitable to the market, therefore, Mercedes-Benz in the realization of the goal of full electrification in 2030, in fact, cooperation with BYD has not been too necessary.
BYD takes over
For Denza, it is obviously more appropriate to be tied to BYD. This suitability is not just because of genetic consistency and personality matching. Compared with Daimler, BYD also needs Denza such a brand to achieve the exploration of the high-end market.
According to the news released on February 14, Denza Automobile Sales and Service, which is 100% invested by BYD, will be responsible for new car sales and parts sales.
In the years of Daimler and BYD cooperation, Denza did not have an independent and complete sales network. Including the original Denza 500 and the Current Denza X, both rely on Mercedes-Benz dealerships for sales. In foshan, for example, only two of the 7 Mercedes-Benz dealers provide Denza's sales points.
Products can not keep up with the rhythm of the market, sales network is difficult to reach a wider user base, deforestation of the embarrassing situation is inevitable. Moreover, over the years, Denza and Mercedes-Benz's temperament are not in line with it, especially with bydie Tang gene Denza X into Mercedes-Benz dealers, it is difficult for people to recognize its relationship with Mercedes-Benz.
Nowadays, Daimler has gradually withdrawn from cooperation with BYD, holding only 10% of the equity and participating in depressive quality control, and since then, denza's development has been difficult to be associated with Mercedes-Benz.
According to the official announcement, IND, which holds 90% of the shares, will continue to be responsible for the three-electric calibration of Denza products, and will take the lead in including styling design, brand definition, marketing communications and other aspects. We can think that Denza is no longer a cooperation project between BYD and Daimler, but a new brand for BYD to impact the high-end market. Therefore, after the equity transfer on January 24, the concept of "New Denza" was proposed as a new member of the BYD system.
For BYD, it also needs such a new brand to touch the high-end market of more than 300,000 yuan. Taking Denza X as an example, the price of 28.98-35.78 million yuan is much higher than THATD Tang, even if the two have deep roots in body architecture and three-electric system, but in terms of high premium styling design, quality materials, luxury and sense of technology, Denza X has been supported by Daimler, making it able to compete with the current high-end products of independent brands.
But high-end products pay attention to origin. The consumer group that enters the Mercedes-Benz dealership may not be able to recognize the BYD gene of Denza X, but for the BYD supporters who have accumulated from the Dynasty series, they are more willing to contact and understand BYD's high-end attempts because they recognize BYD's technology and products.
Three new cars to speed up the catch-up
This year, BYD will enter a new phase after taking over Denza in its entirety, starting with the launch of three new models, including midsize SUV, mid-size SUV and MPV.
In fact, the current Denza brand does not have any historical baggage, Denza X has not set off waves in the market for more than two years, attributed to the new Denza under the BYD system, called light upper body. Although Denza has not been able to open the market in the past few years, fortunately, it has not left too many word-of-mouth problems.
Therefore, BYD's determination can fully control the fate of Denza. It is expected that the fastest project to be promoted this year will be the redesign of Denza X, bidding farewell to the previous "styled by Mercedes-Benz" styling, and BYD re-creating a set of design languages belonging to the Denza brand, and applying highly integrated sanelectric technology on BYD's e3.0 platform as a showcase covering performance and intelligence.
In the past year or so, Han's market performance has proved BYD's ability to stand in the high-end market of more than 200,000 yuan, relatively speaking, BYD Tang EV lacks enough competitiveness at a high price of nearly 300,000 yuan, whether it is Tesla facing new forces or the volkswagen ID of the joint venture, it lacks enough differentiation advantages. If the high-end market of more than 300,000 yuan is completely handed over to Denza, with a new brand image and product positioning to meet the new forces, perhaps Denza still has some opportunities.
It is worth noting that another new car in Denza's planning is the MPV. Also aiming at the outlet of electrification of the MPV category, Denza hopes to show its ability to build technology and luxury in a track that is not yet crowded. Compared with the medium-sized electric SUV that has been very competitive, an electric MPV with product highlights is more likely to reverse the impression of Denza.
Denza is of course not a new force, from 2010 to the present, it has far richer experience in new energy car manufacturing than Xiao pengwei; but after more than ten years of development, denza today's return to the BYD system is like a car building from scratch.
Figure | Sourced from the web
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