As the curtain came down on the first half of the year, many car companies have released sales data for the first half of the year, the most eye-catching of which is definitely BYD.
BYD sold 1.613 million new energy vehicles in the first half of this year, of which 726,200 pure electric vehicles were sold, a year-on-year increase of 17.73%; The sales of plug-in models were 881,000, a year-on-year increase of 39.54%. Last month, in June, BYD's new energy vehicle sales reached 341,700 units. According to this trend, BYD's sales will exceed 3.2 million units this year, which is expected to surpass the sum of Volkswagen in the north and south.
However, while BYD's sales broke through a record high again, Chery Automobile was ignored by many people.
According to the sales report released by Chery Automobile, in June, Chery Automobile sold 200,000 vehicles, accounting for nearly half of the exports, selling 97,000 units, and in the first half of this year, Chery sold a total of 1.1 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 48.4%, creating a record high.
If you split the brand, the Chery brand is still the absolute main sales force, with 706,000 units sold in the first half of this year, followed by the Jietu brand, which sold 223,000 units in the first half of the year, the Xingtu brand sold 54,000 units in the first half of the year, and the iCAR brand sold 25,000 units in the first half of the year.
In terms of sales structure, Chery's export sales and domestic sales are almost half and half, domestic sales are 568,000 units, while export sales are 532,000 units, domestic sales increased by 72% in the first half of this year, many people say that Chery's sales are all dependent on exports, but at present, Chery's local sales are also growing rapidly.
The rise of Chery Automobile in the past two years has actually surprised many people, because compared with BYD's accumulation in the field of new energy, as well as the release of blade batteries, DM hybrids, Yunyuan technology, and Yi Sifang technology, Chery does not seem to have launched disruptive technologies, on the contrary, it is a bit like a follower.
Chery's success, simply put, is to take the route of overseas feeding the domestic market. Chery Automobile is one of the first car companies in China to realize the importance of overseas markets, since 2013, Chery began to lay out the automobile market in underdeveloped areas, such as Iran, Syria, etc., and then began to expand to South America, Russia, etc., because of the impact of geopolitical conflicts, Chery Automobile has gained a firm foothold in Russia, at present, Chery has 10 overseas production bases, more than 1,500 dealers, and sales in more than 80 countries and regions around the world.
Many people say that domestic car companies are going overseas, why is only Chery so successful? Because a car is not a mobile phone, not an electrical appliance, its pre-sales and after-sales service system is very important, how can you sell a car without a local dealer? If you don't advertise the region, who recognizes this Chinese brand? The after-sales service was not done well, the reputation was poor, and it was soon abandoned by local consumers.
At the beginning, Chery did rely on the price war and cost performance to obtain a certain amount of sales in some underdeveloped areas, but as Chery gained a firm foothold and began to transform from the cost-effective route to the quality-price ratio route, Chery released the "Global Quality Management System" in 2019, according to the situation of each country and region, the vehicle is transformed according to local conditions, for example, it is cold in Russia, then the vehicle should be designed for targeted cold-proofing, and a lot of industrial salt will be used to melt snow on local roads, which will corrode the chassis. Therefore, it is necessary to design targeted anti-corrosion design, and in the hot heat in Africa, it is necessary to design sunshades to improve the coverage rate of ultraviolet rays, improve the effect of air conditioning, and improve the comfort and satisfaction of passengers.
With the continuous increase of overseas sales, Chery began to have the capital and confidence to strengthen its layout in the Chinese market. Last year, Chery announced that it would build a brand matrix with "Chery, Xingtu, Jietu, and iCAR" as the core to accelerate the transformation of new energy vehicles.
Subsequently, Chery launched a single-gear plug-in hybrid Fengyun A8, as well as an extended-range Star Era ET, Chery's new energy products are gradually diversified, and they do not stick to multi-gear DHT hybrids, and in terms of pure electric models, Chery has iCAR series in the low-end, and Star Era series in the high-end market, and cooperated with Huawei to create Zhijie S7.
In fact, we can see that Chery's actions in the past few years have been steady and pragmatic, and it has not adhered to a technical route, but has chosen diversified development, and is better at listening to the opinions of users, which I think is an important reason why Chery has developed rapidly in the past two years and suddenly became the second largest independent brand in China.
Just like Li Bin of Weilai said, don't just stare at BYD, Chery Automobile is seriously underestimated.