China's auto market is quietly changing

In recent years, although the growth rate of the Chinese auto market has slowed down compared to previous years, it still attracts the attention of major global auto makers. Whether it is a luxury brand, a joint venture brand, or an independent brand, all of them put important product resources in the Chinese market, and the parties are struggling to make the cake bigger. This year, major auto giants all over the world are introducing new products into the Chinese market and continue to exert their influence on localization. The independent brands that suffered market share declines are also trying to achieve self-salvation. The pattern of the Chinese auto market quietly changed, and the forces of all parties showed a stalemate.

On the 1st, the department car is expected to go out of the trough. In 2012, the Japanese car suffered a severe market decline. In the following two years, all major Japanese car companies have adopted various measures to save lost market share. With continued efforts, the downturn began to change in September last year, and Japanese brands finally recovered. This year, it was even considered by Japanese car companies as a year of full recovery. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, after the sales of 280,900 units of Japanese brand passenger cars followed the Ashkenazi in October this year, the strong growth has attracted the attention of their opponents.

In fact, younger positioning and intensive launch of new cars are considered to be the killers for Japanese brands to achieve recovery. For the current Chinese auto market, how to put products that meet young people's tastes is an issue that every car company must consider. In the Japanese brand, Toyota continued its "small car" strategy. Both the Vios and Zhexia models aimed at young consumers regardless of positioning or price. At the same time, the new Corolla and Lei Ling two sister cars are also targeting the A-class market, with different product positioning to seize the young consumer groups. After Honda introduced the new Fit in May this year, it also launched a small-scale SUV in late October, with a clear intention of grabbing market share. Unlike Toyota and Honda, Nissan has more price tags, and the Kaichen R30 has lowered the price to less than 50,000 yuan, putting tremendous pressure on many self-owned brand models.

While competing for young consumer groups, Japanese brands are also making efforts to “localize” and continue to launch products targeting the Chinese market. Last year, Honda announced a new generation of "Earth Dream" powertrain technology and decided to release 12 new models to China by 2016. Among them, five models are specifically developed for China, and two are completed locally in China. . The localization of Nissan is even more grounded. The Qichen brand jointly established with Dongfeng aims at occupying the market segment. The R30 launched this year, although the price has fallen below 50,000 yuan, it has a prototype car Nissan Machiqian. The contact of Wan Hao can see that Nissan is taking another step toward localization.

2 Decrease in the growth of the auto market As the world's largest auto market, the auto market in China has gradually emerged from a period of rapid growth and entered a stage of steady growth. However, the struggles of the big car companies in the Chinese market have become more intense. According to the latest statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the first 10 months of this year, China sold a total of 15.8644 million passenger cars, an increase of 9.76% year-on-year. Among them, German, Japanese, American, Korean, and French passenger cars sold 3.347 million, 2.4138 million, 2.017 million, 1.421 million, and 59.61 million, respectively, which accounted for 21.06 of the total passenger car sales. %, 15.21%, 12.84%, 8.96%, and 3.76%.

In the passenger car market, FAW-Volkswagen is undoubtedly the biggest winner. In the first 10 months of this year, FAW-Volkswagen sold a total of 1,945,400 vehicles, which currently ranks first in the auto sales charts. However, Shanghai Volkswagen followed closely behind with 1,488,500 vehicles, which greatly surpassed the trend.

In the luxury car market, with the major brands accelerating the pace of localization, the distance between BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi is getting closer. At the same time, second-tier luxury car brands represented by Jaguar Land Rover, Infiniti, etc., have also set up factories in China to achieve local production. The reduction in the cost of second-tier luxury brand models and the continued strengthening of brand building have begun to put pressure on luxury brands.

In addition, it is worth noting that the sales of the self-owned brands that have just stopped the "12 consecutive drops" of new car sales have changed their minds many times. From 2004 to now, in a short span of ten years, from Chery, Geely, BYD, to the Great Wall and Chang'an, the self-owned brand boss has changed hands five times. Nobody at the self-owned brand car companies can currently say that they can maintain their sales status for a long period of time. The reason is that the brand cannot give consumers a sense of dependence. Fortunately, however, this situation has changed, and the major auto makers have also increased brand building while creating more applause and winning products. Perhaps soon afterwards, independent brands that are expected to bid for joint venture car companies will come together.

3 Joint ventures and independent models In the increasingly fierce competition in the auto market in China, joint venture car companies have put aside their bodies to take measures such as lower prices, channel sinking, and close competition with their own brands. Different from the practice of listing mid- to high-end models at the beginning of the year, this year's joint venture brand launched several models at the beginning of the year at the beginning of the year. For example, the third-generation Fit launched by Guangzhou Automobile Honda in May this year pulled the price down to the 7 million range. According to industry insiders, the strategy of the joint venture car companies with lower new car prices than the old ones aims to increase sales while also covering the lower-level markets.

This move not only appeared in the Guangzhou Automobile Honda. In recent years, a number of joint-venture car companies have used the method of price dropping to grab the market. When FAW Toyota replaced Vios in the past year, the new car's lowest price dropped by nearly 20,000 yuan compared to the old model. In June of this year, the 11th-generation Corolla had a price drop to the 100,000 yuan range under the condition that the vehicle configuration was fully upgraded. In fact, not only Japanese cars are used for big price cards, but also European and American car companies such as Volkswagen, Chevrolet, Ford, etc., value the small car market, and they hope to lay the foundation for the entry-level market and grab shares with their own brands.

Joint venture car companies have successively introduced lower-priced models, which have directly caused the loss of their own brand price advantages. At the same time, the joint-venture car companies have begun to move to third- and fourth-tier cities under the restriction of the first-tier and second-tier cities' restrictions on purchase policies, and many automakers have accelerated their channels to sink. After these markets were impacted by the joint venture brands, their own brands became even more difficult. Starting in September last year, the market share of self-owned brands began to decline, and eventually there was an embarrassing situation of monthly sales falling by "twelve consecutive drops."

The industry believes that the past A-level and below models are the main direction of their own brands, the joint venture car companies to introduce new cars in disguised price cuts, intended to obtain market share. In the future, the prices of joint-venture auto makers and the sinking of channels will become more apparent. However, in the face of heavy pressure, self-owned brand car companies also competed to explode, explore models, strengthen brand building, a section of fine models have been launched, and market share is gradually recovering. In short, all signs show that the Chinese auto market has entered into a melee situation where all parties are in a stalemate.