2021 is a difficult year for Korean cars.
When sales decline, share decline, reduced number of models, equity changes, and personnel turmoil occur at the same time in Hyundai, Kia and their respective joint ventures, public opinion is not optimistic about the future of Korean cars in the Chinese market.
However, at the same time, Hyundai Kia Group still maintains its momentum in the global market, and is also at the forefront of multinational automotive groups in the field of new energy vehicles.
Korean cars in the Chinese market and the global market, showing a completely different performance, this is precisely Hyundai Kia is unwilling and will not give up the most simple motivation in the Chinese market, even if the share of Korean cars in the Chinese market in 2021 is only 2.58%.
After the market share is greatly lost, whether it is to change the model or change the marketing tricks, it is difficult to have an essential impact on the consumer mind. What Korean cars have to do is to completely bypass the original foundation to do subversive changes from top to bottom, from the inside out, so as to draw a clear line with the existing brand concept, car manufacturing system, and user operation.
In other words, the Korean car in 2022 needs to become a "new force".
How fragmented are Korean cars in the world?
In 2020, the share of Korean cars in China's new car market is still 3.63%, and from the beginning of 2021, the share of Korean cars has shown an almost monthly downward trend, and by the end of 2021, it is even on the verge of falling below 2%. In the end, the market share of Korean cars in 2021 stopped at 2.58%.
Specific to the two brands of Hyundai and Kia, their sales in the Chinese market in 2021 fell by 22.89% and 27.78% respectively.
But if you look at the world, Hyundai Kia Group's performance in 2021 is remarkable. With full year-round sales of 6,668,037 units, up 3.9% year-on-year, it continues to rank fourth in the world, behind the Toyota Group, the Volkswagen Group and the not-so-solid Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. Especially in the European market, Hyundai Kia maintained more than one million new car sales, with sales in 2021 increasing by 21.1% year-on-year, with a market share of 8.7%, ranking fourth in the European market and the best-selling brand outside Europe.
What is even more rare is that in the 2021 global new energy vehicle sales list, Hyundai Kia is also in the top five, leaving aside the top three Tesla, BYD and SAIC-GM-Wuling, which have performed well in the Chinese market, Hyundai Kia and Volkswagen are in the first echelon of new energy vehicle sales in the current multinational automobile group. In the European market, more than 13% of Hyundai Kia's sales in 2021 will come from new energy vehicles.
Obviously, Hyundai-Kia's situation in the Chinese market is very different from that in the global market. Just five or six years ago, Hyundai Kia had just reached its peak in China, when Hyundai Kia was able to sell 1.8 million cars a year in China.
The pace of progress in the global market, the highlight moments in the Chinese market, and the huge scale and potential of the Chinese market have determined that Hyundai Kia will not give up in China, and even strengthen its voice, increase investment, and continue to expand. In the context of the era of the full liberalization of the joint venture share ratio in the Chinese auto market and the revolution of the intelligent electric vehicle industry, Korean cars are also looking for opportunities to turn around in China.
Turn over, start by getting rid of the value for money label
If you mention the brand image of Korean cars in China, they have been labeled as "cost-effective joint venture cars" for many years. When the automobile market is growing rapidly, every positioning brand may have meat to eat, but when the market growth stagnates and enters the era of grabbing meat to eat, the cost-effective label of Korean cars not only makes it unable to withstand the pressure in the face of the shrinking market space of the joint venture, but also allows it to lose its brand aura in the face of the upward offensive of its own brands.
Therefore, Koreans instead want to understand this point when sales decline, that is, in the short term, they give up the emphasis on single sales, but instead cultivate internal strength in terms of sales structure, fist models, channel profits, etc. The core is to get rid of the cost-effective label and no longer take the route of low-price competition.
Perhaps for a cost-effective brand, this is a risky move, and a slight difference may be a complete loss. But for The Korean car, which accounts for only 2.58% of the share, changing the situation that is already bad, the consequences are not bad anyway.
Therefore, if we look closely at Hyundai Kia's sales data in China in 2021, it is not difficult to find that the adjustment of the sales structure has appeared.
For example, Hyundai's hottest models have switched from the old lead and the special delight to the latest global car, the Irant. The sales of the main SUV ix35 are even growing, Tucson L has also taken over the class of the old Tucson, as for the new high-end MPV Kustu, in the second half of the months of listing, once became a group of dark horses in the market segment.
As for the models with more serious sales declines in Hyundai, Mingtu is mainly due to the overall shrinkage of the market segment, Festa is dragged down by its own quality and safety reputation, and the lowest-end Rena is a model strategically abandoned by Hyundai.
The situation is similar on Kia's side, but because the product switching speed is slower than that of modern times, it is relatively backward in the adjustment of the sales structure. However, the average bicycle price of Hyundai and Kia in 2021 increased by 11,300 yuan and 0.21 million yuan respectively compared with 2020.
At the same time, according to the official information of Beijing Hyundai, the profitability of Beijing Hyundai's dealers will reach 80% in 2021, focusing on the four main high-end models of Elantra, Tucson L, ix35 and Kustu to achieve positive revenue. Therefore, even if the sales volume of Beijing Hyundai in 2021 is less than half of the peak, after the increase in the proportion of high-premium models and the increase in the unit price of terminal sales, the days of dealers are not as sad as the sales figures seem.
At the same time, whether it is restarting the import car business, introducing high-performance product sequences, or launching large-size, high-priced models, it shows Hyundai Kia's urgent desire to reshape its brand image.
And this has become a compulsory course for almost all "niche" joint venture brands.
In 2022, Hyundai-Kia bets on electric vehicles?
After a series of strategic transformations and personnel changes, today's Hyundai Kia will become more and more powerful in joint ventures in China. Even if the shareholding ratio of the joint venture company still maintains the balance of power for the time being, the Korean side will occupy the absolute initiative in operation and management.
Because only in this way will Hyundai Kia have enough motivation to introduce their latest achievements in the global market into the Chinese market. For Hyundai Kia, which has made achievements in the overseas new energy market, holding the dominance of the joint venture company may not be a bad thing for the joint venture company itself.
This latest achievement is to take out hyundai Kia's special platform for E-GMP electric vehicles, and the two sister models that have been launched first - Hyundai Ani Kr 5 and Kia EV6.
Regarding the E-GMP platform, we have explained it in detail in the previous content. Overall, this is a native electric platform that fully considers the characteristics of electric vehicles, has almost all mainstream intelligent and electrified technologies, and is even in the industry's leading native electric platform. In order to adapt to the global leadership and rapid development of China's electric vehicle market, Hyundai Motor Group also set up a forward-looking digital research and development center in China last year, aiming to enhance the local research and development capabilities of related technologies such as mobility, electrification, interconnection technology and autonomous driving.
And if we compare the modern Ani Kr 5 with the public's ID.4, it is not difficult to find that Ani Kr 5 is not inferior in product strength, and even more radical in product recognition and freshness. The difference between the two is more at the level of brand recognition.
However, the Volkswagen ID series, as well as a series of multinational car companies, including luxury brands, have fully proved that the brand equity of the fuel vehicle era has no way to directly migrate to the electric vehicle market. An electric car that sells well is all because the product is innovative enough, suitable enough, and sufficiently consumer satisfaction, and it is by no means a model that makes people feel "awkward".
If the Koreans are bold enough to create a new sales and service system that meets the needs of consumers in the new era for the future native electric vehicles with a mentality of "new car-making forces", and completely cut the brand image of Korean cars in the era of fuel vehicles, those hyundai Kia may not be a surprising thing even if they copy the pattern of competing with Volkswagen in Europe's electric vehicles in China.
Especially when all the electric vehicles of joint venture brands are almost from scratch, and they are facing the pressure of benchmarking with independent brands and new forces, Korean electric vehicles that still have little advantage in technology have a chance. If you miss this opportunity, with the competitiveness and consumer cognition of Korean cars in the fuel vehicle market, there is a high probability that it will go to the niche route of extreme personality, and it will be impossible to return to the mainstream ranks.
Write at the end
From selling more than one million vehicles a year to only 2% of the market share today, the biggest change in Korean cars is the mentality. In the same period as Korean cars, there are Also Ford and Peugeot Citroen, the former has come out of the lowest trough and is trying to move closer to the track of high-quality development, the latter has also begun to take the initiative to change, and even re-won the long-lost market voice through some models.
As for Hyundai Kia, compared with the first two, it actually has a stronger globalization background and more high-quality innovative landing products. Therefore, when the new era of automobile reform comes, when the blockade of strong brands in the past has begun to loosen, the role of Hyundai Kia, instead, must be through strong technology, strong personality, strong label, in the transition period from stable to chaotic, from chaotic to stable, as far as possible.
This opportunity may also be the last chance for Korean cars to make a comeback in China.