Written by / Cow Heel Shang
Edited / Meng for
Design / Shi Yuchao
Caption / Lee In
Chen Binbo, a 58-year-old veteran manager, may have missed two "million-vehicle" moments in China's auto history.
On December 29, 2015, Dongfeng Nissan achieved its goal of sprinting million vehicles since 2012. Previously, only North-South Volkswagen, SAIC-GM and Beijing Hyundai reached the scale of one million vehicles, enjoying the aura and dividends of the car market.
At that time, Chen Binbo had been the executive deputy general manager of Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co., Ltd. for 6 years.
In 1989, starting from the Dongfeng Company's car project preparation office, Chen Binbo, who has been the deputy head of dongfeng Nissan's marketing and sales headquarters since 2003, did not wait for dongfeng Nissan's million vehicles, and in 2009, he turned to Dongfeng Honda with 20 years of car dreams.
It was his first miss.
"We have a long-term goal, it is our dream to reach 1 million vehicles in 2023, but the dream is too far. I often joke that I was definitely not in this position at that time, and that I was 59 years old in 2023 and almost retiring, and I couldn't work in this position until retirement. ”
The polytechnic man jokingly said to automotive business reviews on July 13, 2017, in one sentence.
Chen Binbo, who likes to think about cars and has been working in marketing for a long time, will really miss the second "million vehicles" moment of his career concept again.
After 168 days, a paper transfer order, he left Dongfeng Honda, who had served for 8 years. That year, Dongfeng Honda achieved terminal sales of 727,000 units with a design capacity of 510,000 units.
In December 2017, Zheng Chunkai, then party secretary and deputy general manager of Dongfeng Passenger Vehicle Company, who was only seven months younger than Chen Binbo, took over Chen Binbo's role.
Now, after four years of continuous improvement, Dongfeng Honda has reached the moment of sprinting 1 million vehicles.
On February 10, 2022, Zheng Chunkai said in a meeting with Liu Ziqing, member of the Standing Committee of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee and secretary of the Wuhan Economic Development Zone Working Committee, that it will accelerate the construction of Honda's first new energy benchmark vehicle plant in the world and promote the annual production and sales of Dongfeng Honda Automobile to a scale of one million vehicles.
This is Dongfeng Honda's new year's public signal to march to millions of vehicles. Under the new goal of Dongfeng Company to return to the 4 million vehicle mark again in 2022 and the demand of Wuhan city to build a trillion-yuan industry, Dongfeng Honda's 1 million vehicles have been on the string.
Only forward and reform can solve various complex problems in development, and Dongfeng Company and Dongfeng Honda have such pressures, challenges and challenges.
Similarly, China FAW's FAW Toyota, GAC Honda and GAC Toyota of GAC Group, BYD Automobile in Shenzhen, Chery Group in Wuhu, Anhui Province, and SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicles will all take advantage of Niu Jin, which will increase sales in China's auto industry by 3.8% in 2021, and Huqi, which will open "red" in January-February 2022 (up 7.5% year-on-year), to challenge the target of 1 million vehicles.
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Under the new goal of Dongfeng Company to return to the 4 million vehicle mark again in 2022 and the demand of Wuhan city to build a trillion-yuan industry, Dongfeng Honda's 1 million vehicles have been on the string.
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Below, we use 5 tables to analyze how far these seven car companies are from millions.
Chery's goal is to achieve 1.5 million or even 2 million vehicles, an increase of more than 56%, whether it is from its own past or Geely, Great Wall, Chang'an over the years of experience, it is still quite difficult.
However, if we only look at the gap from one million vehicles, Chery Group, which includes joint ventures and autonomous vehicles, passenger cars and commercial vehicles, can easily achieve this goal as long as it maintains the bullish spirit of 2021 and makes a little effort to increase by 38,000 units per year.
Among the Japanese "two fields and four enterprises", the Toyota system has the least pressure to challenge, the sales volume in the past year has reached more than 820,000 vehicles, the Honda system is under greater pressure, all of which will fall to less than 780,000 vehicles in 2021, of which Dongfeng Honda "Alexander" will achieve a high growth of 31% in 2022, such an increase is still very rare in the history of Japanese cars, Honda and Dongfeng Honda.
The independent BYD seems to be the biggest gap from one million vehicles - to add 270,000 new vehicles, but BYD's current sales come from the spurt development of new energy vehicles, if it can continue to maintain the growth inertia of doubling sales in 2021, complete 1 million vehicles, and then achieve the target of 1.2 million vehicles - 64% growth, it is not a big problem.
Judging from the sales volume of the "Seven Tigers" in the past five years, the car companies with the largest sales increase are BYD, Chery Group and SAIC Passenger Vehicle, with an increase of 303,000 units, 278,000 units and 179,000 units respectively, an increase of 70%, 31% and 34% respectively year-on-year.
Among them, the largest incremental record of BYD and Chery Group occurred in 2021, and the largest increase of SAIC passenger cars was recorded in 2018, and they are all independent brands or mainly independent brands.
They will be sprinters, radicals who challenge millions of vehicles.
In contrast, the Japanese top four, all of which are joint ventures, the largest sales increase is GAC Toyota and Dongfeng Honda, which occurred in 2018 and 2019 respectively, with an increase of 140,000 vehicles and 92,000 units, respectively, an increase of 31% and 13% year-on-year, respectively.
From the past, Japanese management is relatively stable and will not fluctuate greatly. These four cars will not necessarily pursue the so-called 1 million for sales. When core chasing contradicts cost, sales and revenue, their first criterion is still to put the quality of operations – high quality and operating efficiency and profit returns – first. This is also to prevent and control business risks.
They will be the steady and calm people who challenge millions of vehicles.
Judging from the explosive models with monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles, the "two fields and four enterprises" have 3 models, and the explosive effect is remarkable, all of which are at the forefront of the SUV and sedan model segments; SAIC Passenger Cars has 3 models, including 2 MG models and 1 Roewe model, with monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles; Chery and BYD each have 2 models, which are inferior to the data of Japanese explosive models, relying on the number of models and the derivation of "Jiading Prosperous" to win.
Since the Spring Festival in February and February are the historical valleys of China's automobile production and sales, there is no sample analysis here.
January opened the door, year-on-year, month-on-month growth rate of Chery Group, Dongfeng Honda, GAC Toyota, the target completion rate of more than 10% only GAC Toyota, year-on-year growth of 5 - doubling only BYD; from the chain point of view, only three growth - Dongfeng Honda increased by 4%. Faw Toyota's plant, affected by the epidemic in Tianjin in January, declined year-on-year and month-on-month, reversing in February with retail sales of 63,000 units and wholesale of 76,000 units.
And GAC Toyota has Camry, Leiling, Willanda; GAC Honda has Accord, Binzhi, Haoying; Dongfeng Honda has Civic, CR-V, XR-V, Yingshipai - more than 1 model; FAW Toyota has Corolla, RAV4 - less Asian Dragon; Chery Group only has one Tiggo 8, less Jietu X70.
Historically, 8 single car companies that maintain sales of 1 million vehicles in 2021 include FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Geely Automobile, Great Wall Motor, Changan Automobile, Dongfeng Nissan, etc., all of which , including the millions created by Beijing Hyundai, all occurred in the last golden decade (2009-2017) of China's traditional automobiles.
Faw-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and other four car companies have all sold more than 2 million vehicles a year – once had a brilliant record – and then returned to the era of millions in 2021.
In 2021, with the comprehensive blowout of new energy vehicles, the opportunities for traditional car companies to rely on fuel vehicles to fight for the market are becoming less and less and smaller. BYD's sudden rise is proof of this.
In February 2022, BYD retailed 89,000 passenger cars with a penetration rate of 96% of new energy vehicles, second only to FAW-Volkswagen in 105,000 units, surpassing SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-GM, and ranking second in sales and first in independent sales of Chinese single car manufacturers in a single month.
Faw-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and five other car companies have all sold more than 2 million vehicles a year – once had a brilliant record – and then returned to the era of millions of vehicles in 2021.
Beijing Hyundai, which was one million vehicles in four consecutive years, slipped to 380,000 in 2021.
Changan Ford also had the closest to one million vehicles, selling more than 950,000 units in 2016, but slipped from 2017 to 180,000 units in 2019.
Dongfeng Dongfeng Yueda Kia created 700,000 and 640,000 brilliant vehicles in 2015 and 2016 respectively, but declined in the following year, and sales in 2021 were more than 100,000 vehicles.
They, including car companies that are impacting millions of vehicles, seize the opportunity of new energy vehicles and seize the track of intelligent electric vehicles, in order to adapt to the times and customer needs and create brilliant achievements.
1 million vehicles, 2 million vehicles, in this superstitious, demonic magical land, like a kan, like a pass, and like a magic spell, you can see both "infinite scenery at the peak", but also experience "the high place is not cold", the most test is concentration, mental strength and system strength, perhaps Dongfeng Nissan's kind of trembling, such as the abyss, such as walking on thin ice, it is possible to stabilize, sit steady, and then move forward.
But from the world's top ten auto groups, in 2021, Toyota topped the global auto industry with 10.5 million vehicles, BMW Group ranked tenth with 2.52 million vehicles, and bmw brands sold 2.21 million vehicles.
According to the brand ownership, no car company or group in China has entered the ranks of this top giant. This is worth pondering by Chinese car companies.
This article was originally produced by Automotive Business Review
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