Maserati is going to be acquired by Chery?
Some time ago, Italy's "24 Hours of the Sun" reported that the Italy government is considering introducing Chinese companies to take over the car brands of the European auto giant Stellantis.
After the news reached China, some media believed that Chery wanted to raise its brand tone by acquiring Stellantis' Maserati.
Because realistically speaking, Chery's biggest contrast at present is:
Abroad, Chery left a number of domestic rivals behind, including BYD!
However, in China, Chery has not been able to come up with models with outstanding product power in recent years, so that in the field of new energy, the volume is very small.
Today's Chery is in a hurry.
According to the 2023 car sales data, Chery's domestic sales only rank 8th, but of the total sales of 1.88 million units, 937,000 units are exported overseas, accounting for 49.8% of the total sales.
In the first half of this year, Chery's overseas sales surpassed SAIC's, becoming the first brand of Chinese automobiles to go overseas.
Until last month, Chery still maintained the attitude of being a brother to the sea, and its export sales were far ahead.
BYD, which focuses on the "going to sea" brand, is less than half of Chery's export volume.
Why is Chery's overseas data so good?
This has something to do with the layout for a long time.
Now many new energy vehicle companies are discussing how to go overseas and go overseas hand in hand, but as early as more than 20 years ago, Chery has begun to lay out its overseas business.
In 2001, the fourth year of Chery Automobile's establishment, when Syria businessman Samir saw Chery at the Beijing Auto Show, he was instantly planted, and then negotiated with Chery, can he sell the car to Syria?
Samir turned the car several times, found Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery, and said, "I want to import 200 vehicles." ”
Yin Tongyue was stunned, because Fengyun was Chery's first-generation car, and it had not yet been fully tested by the market, so he conservatively tested:
"No, I can only export 10 cars at most."
After Chery Fengyun was exported to Syria, it quickly attracted the attention of local consumers and neighboring countries, and since then, Chery has gradually opened up the Middle East market.
In the following years, Chery's overseas territory expanded to Latin America, including Brazil, Chile, Argentina and other countries, and now Europe is also becoming a strategic location for Chery Automobile.
In the process, Chery has also established a number of R&D bases around the world, such as United States, Germany and Brazil, and has accumulated a strong technical reputation for itself.
For example, in the Russia market, Chery's Xingtu has replaced BBA and become one of the imported luxury car brands favored by young Russian people.
Why is Chery so popular abroad?
Technology is king.
In the 90s, China's automobile industry just started along, and the concept of domestic cars at that time was that it was four wheels + sofas, and the experience and technology of car manufacturing were significantly inferior to those of foreign manufacturers.
The soul of a traditional car is the "three parts": chassis, gearbox, and engine.
Chery, on the other hand, has spent more than ten years gnawing these three hard bones and has complete intellectual property rights for the "three major pieces".
"I'd rather drop out of the top 10 in sales, but also transform the R&D system."
As early as 2005, Chery launched the first ACTECO engine with independent intellectual property rights in China, while BYD was still purchasing old Mitsubishi engines at that time.
Today, Chery's third-generation ACTECO engine data has come to 260 horsepower, compared with the 2.0T high power equipped by BMW, it is not inferior, in terms of technical level, has reached the international upstream level, even Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries is importing Chery's engine.
Not long ago, news came from the United Kingdom media: China's Chery is weighing the possibility of producing cars in the United Kingdom.
Last year, a foreign automobile research agency evaluated the quality of various Chinese cars (priced more than 150,000 yuan), and Chery ranked first.
However, the question also comes: why is Chery showing its strength overseas, but in recent years in China, its voice has been covered by BYD, Geely, Great Wall, Xiaomi and other car companies?
Under the overseas reputation, what are the hidden worries of Chery?
Time will reward those who work hard, but the times reward those who stand on the cusp.
Chery, which has the "three major pieces" hard-core technology, is dumb in the domestic market, and to a certain extent, it has encountered a "Nokia problem".
When the era of smartphones arrived, Nokia once dared to exclaim: "We don't know what we've done wrong." ”
When the era of new energy vehicles comes, Chery may also have such feelings.
Despite the remarkable achievements in overseas markets, Chery's sales of new energy vehicles in August this year were only 46,526 units, lagging behind SAIC's 86,000 units and Geely's 75,000 units.
What about BYD? It directly dried to 379,000 vehicles.
This also explains why when Volkswagen thinks of going overseas, they first think of BYD instead of Chery.
Because most of the cars exported by Chery are fuel vehicles, while BYD exports new energy vehicles.
At present, new energy vehicles going overseas can better reflect the label of "domestic products".
At present, Chery has six passenger car divisions, including Chery, Xingtu, Jietu, iCAR, EH, and O&J, and the main sales volume is fuel vehicles.
However, in the field of new energy, Chery has not had too many eye-catching products in recent years.
For example, the former Tiggo 8PLUS Kunpeng e+ was criticized by many car critics due to problems such as high fuel consumption, false battery life, and driving frustration, and the first batch of car owners were even nicknamed "800 Warriors".
Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery, was also very calm, saying that Chery Automobile "got up early in the morning and caught up with a late set" in the field of new energy.
This is very similar to Toyota in Japan.
Toyota started earlier than anyone else in engaging in new energy, but it is precisely because the advantages accumulated in fuel vehicles are too great and the reputation is too good, which leads to the gradual lag behind Chinese car companies in the issue of new energy transformation.
On the other hand, BYD said that it would focus on new energy, and the whole group should transform new energy, and pay close attention to the layout of batteries, motors, electronic control and other industries, which seized the tuyere of the times.
But Chery turned late.
Since the launch of the first pure electric vehicle Riich M1 EV in 2010, Chery has only released a new energy product in an average of five years, and during this period, BYD has already completed the full coverage of pure electric products in the market.
Enterprise strategy determines the direction of development, and strategic determination determines the height of the market.
Now that BYD has reached the top, Chery, who has come to its senses, has just thought of catching up.
However, judging from the market feedback in the past two years, there is great resistance to transformation.
In particular, the Zhijie S7 that cooperates with Huawei, the sales volume is far less than that of the question created by Cialis and Huawei.
What's the problem?
Cialis dares to hand over the right to speak to Huawei, let Huawei let go of its hands, the model positioning business, the audience and the price are very matched.
But Chery may be because of the "boss burden", and finally cooperated with Huawei to come out of the Zhijie S7, which is nondescript, saying that it is a coupe, not as good as Xiaomi's car, saying that it is a business car, and the appearance is too young, plus the price of the car is too high, it is difficult for consumers to accept.
Fortunately, the failure of the first product also made Chery see its own problems.
Recently,ZhijieR7On sale,Due to the readjustment of the design language,The positioning is clearer,Received 10,000 orders on the first day,Compared with ZhijieS7The sales of hundreds of units a month,It looks much better。
In the live broadcast of Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue, we also observed the change in Chery's mentality:
"At present, Chery has invested nearly 10 billion resources and a R&D team of thousands of people to put the best production lines and the best talents into Zhijie products.
In addition, we also found that Chery Automobile began to apply for the registration of the "Yueji" trademark since September last year, which is suspected to be a new brand.
In this way, Chery has changed its thinking - it is going all out to transform into new energy.
In China, new car-making forces have overshadowed Chery's limelight, and overseas, Chery has also seen a crisis.
Despite overseas sales of Changhong, Chery's export models have long hovered below 150,000 yuan, with the starting price of Xingtu brand models all at 100,000-200,000 yuan, and the price of models under the iCAR brand at 100,000-200,000 yuan.
The product force can be played at the same level, but it is difficult to break through upward.
The dilemma of Chery's upward breakthrough lies in its brand power.
How to enhance brand power?
The traditional model is to buy a poorly run luxury car company and then create a high-premium brand.
For example, Chery has acquired Land Rover, and Geely has also acquired Volvo.
But will the acquisition of these luxury car companies have an effect?
In practice, the effect is not great.
For example, after the acquisition of Land Rover, Land Rover took the initiative to carry Chery's engine, but when it came to the road test stage, a large number of Land Rover users complained and resisted.
So much so that in the end, in order to appease consumers, Land Rover had to publicly announce that Chery's engines would no longer be used.
It can be seen that "upward acquisition" will not improve the reputation in the short term, but will also reduce the sales of the acquiree.
And Geely's acquisition of Volvo is also a lesson.
Geely's acquisition of Volvo, to a large extent, is due to Volvo's engine, and Geely has indeed created several good fuel models such as Xingyue after acquiring Volvo.
But here's the problem: on the new energy track, Geely, like Chery, has also fallen behind.
Originally, the sales volume was on par with BYD, but now it is getting farther and farther away.
Many market analysts believe that Chery's motivation to buy Maserati is very strong, and Maserati is a "necessity" for Chery to move upward.
But Wu Xiangjun's view is just the opposite, a car company facing a financial crisis, the Italy government wants to help the sale, can it be called "picking up leaks"?
If even Land Rover doesn't pull Chery's brand power, why can Maserati?
Moreover, the decline of fuel vehicles is the general trend, and the effect of Maserati's empowerment is limited.
Therefore, we believe that Chery's acquisition of Maserati is not technically necessary, and there is no imagination in brand promotion.
On the contrary, Chery may need to integrate hard technology to create its own high-end brand like "Yangwang".
In the context of the rise of domestic products, this is also more conducive to leaving a "strong" and "heavy" cognition in the minds of consumers.
It is worth noting that foreign media broke the news that Chery has recently established two new brands that are completely focused on the international market: Omoda and Jaecoo.
Last month, when Omenda was officially launched in the United Kingdom, Chery has also established a network of 60 dealers and hopes to have more than 100 dealers by the end of this year.
It can be seen that Chery has not completely bet on "Maserati", and may be more in line with Chery's background color than "backdoor start".
However, relying on overseas to establish a distribution moat cannot be the key to Chery's upward breakthrough.
The current question for Chery is: how to sell its new energy vehicles?
"Ninety percent rely on oil vehicles, and new energy vehicles are less than one percent."
"Among Chery's new energy models, I can't find a monthly sales volume of more than 10,000."
For a long time, many of Chery's new energy models have been criticized by the market for lacking their own design language and recognition.
In addition, the idea of the marketing model is also very traditional, so that the volume of new car announcements is not high.
Yu Chengdong once publicly said: Part of the reason for the failure of Zhijie S7 is the lack of Chery's marketing capabilities.
Not long ago, the Chengdu model car incident alarmed the police, and it also made Chery touch a nose of ashes.
It can be said that Chery's biggest failure is that it obviously has good technology, but it is dragged back by the marketing of pulling the crotch, which is very disadvantageous in the new media era.
Chery needs to learn from the top five new energy companies and update its marketing and design teams in a timely manner.
In addition, in terms of product creation, Chery must have a "hot style" thinking.
Previously, Chery said: "In the next two years, it will launch 24 super hybrid and 15 high-end pure electric products, and quickly enter the first camp of China's new energy vehicles." ”
Although the words are good, Chery's thinking is still limited to the traditional routine of "having more children and fighting".
What Fengyun A8, Tiggo 8PLUS, Star Era ET, iCAR...... Dazzling, but embarrassingly, consumers can't feel Chery's outstanding product power from these products at present.
Therefore, instead of blindly pursuing the number of products, Chery should focus on the mainstream market and concentrate resources to create one or two popular models like Xiaomi SU7.
Instead of changing the name of a new model and bringing something to market where the product and technology are not yet mature, this approach is tantamount to drinking water to quench your thirst.
Chery's anxiety is understandable, but car manufacturing is a long-term industry.
Especially in the second half of automotive intelligence, Chery needs to face the difficulties and cooperate with Huawei while upgrading its own electrification technology and intelligent technology.
You know, BYD originally looked down on intelligent driving, but this year it has expanded its intelligent driving team of 3,000 people.
Those who have gone have not been admonished, but those who have come can be chased.
The head is still so hard, and Chery has to redouble its efforts to re-squeeze into the first echelon of the new energy track.