New Energy Future Competition: The Division of Performance of Autonomous Leading Vehicles

SAIC Motor's December 2015 production and sales report was released. For the whole year of 2015, SAIC Motor completed sales of more than 5.9 million units at a market growth rate of 5% compared to the same period last year, and it still ranks first in the domestic auto group. Dongfeng Group ranked second with annual sales of 3,872,500 units, an increase of 5.53% year-on-year. The total sales volume of Changan Automobile reached 2,776,500 units, an increase of 9.14% year-on-year. BAIC Group achieved 2.48 million units of production and sales throughout the year, a slight increase from 2.4 million units in 2014.

Since FAW Group has not yet announced its monthly sales for December, it is not yet clear whether the Group's position in the third place will be replaced by Chang'an. From the sales in the first 11 months of 2015, sales of Chang'an Group and FAW are already very close to each other, the gap is only about 30,000, and in the first half of 2015, Chang’an had surpassed FAW and got into the top three auto groups. throne.

Although the overall ranking of the top five automotive groups in the country has not changed significantly, in fact, an interesting phenomenon is slowly emerging: during the “Eleventh Five-Year” period or even earlier, when all car companies When the group’s own brands are still in a relatively early stage, the competition in the group’s performance is more of a competition in the level of joint ventures. Now, with the end of the incubation period for the self-owned brands, the market position of the joint ventures is basically stable and autonomous. The brand began to "lead" the group's performance.

As we can see from the “13th Five-Year Plan” of car companies, the competition between auto groups will be further focused on self-owned brands and new energy vehicles in the next five years. Whoever wins will be a long process of competition.

Self-owned brand "dominant" car enterprise group performance trend

If no accident occurs, Chang’an Group will become the fastest growing company among the top 5 automotive groups. However, this high growth rate does not mainly come from the contribution of the joint venture company. Instead, the “giving power” of independent brands has laid a good foundation for Chang’an’s high growth. According to the data released by it, in 2015, Changan’s own-brand passenger cars produced and sold more than 1 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of more than 30%.

Compared with the other two groups, including SAIC and Dongfeng, they surpassed the former in terms of volume, but the relative weakness of their own brands has caused them to lag behind in the overall market growth rate. In the sales of Dongfeng Group, the sales volume of self-owned brand passenger vehicles was 781,200, an increase of only 6.6% year-on-year. SAIC Motor's overall growth rate is only 5% for the whole year, which is a decrease of 5 percentage points compared with last year. SAIC Volkswagen, which is one of the two major joint ventures, only grew by 5% for the whole year. SAIC GM also showed a decline compared to last year. In addition to the downturn in commercial vehicle segments, SAIC Motor’s pressure this year is evident. The annual sales volume of self-owned brands was only 170,000 vehicles, down 5.56% year-on-year. Although not performing well, it has narrowed compared with the 28% drop in the market in the first half of this year.

From the model point of view, this year's overall self-owned brand market, the overall reason for the better or said to be warmer, the most direct reason is that SUV pull, whether Dongfeng, SAIC, or Chang'an will benefit greatly. In the sales of 1 million autonomous passenger vehicles of Changan, the SUV models CS35 and CS75 sold a total of nearly 360,000 vehicles, accounting for about 36% of the total. The recovery of SAIC's own brands also relies mainly on MG Ruiteng's market performance. The annual sales volume was approximately 40,000 units, accounting for more than 20% of the sales volume of 170,000 units. The complementary advantages of the A-Class Roewe 360 ​​and the previous 350 models resulted in monthly sales of the two models exceeding 10,000. Vehicles also drove a rebound in performance.

But even so, Chang'an has comparative advantages in the above-mentioned major groups, both in terms of product layout and structure. Compared with several other companies, the biggest difference lies in the balanced development of their product lines. Whether it is a car, SUV or MPV, you can produce a relatively bright transcript alone.

"Thirteenth Five-Year" Competition Focuses on Autonomous and New Energy Vehicles

With the release of the annual results of the major auto groups, the compliance status of various companies in the "12th Five-Year Plan" has basically come to an end. On the whole, neither SAIC nor Dongfeng nor Changan Automobile has completed the target planning of five years ago as scheduled, and the actual performance of independent brands is far away from the target value.

However, this does not hinder the formulation of the next five-year plan for the big group. With the change of national policies, new energy vehicles will become the country's key encouraging industry development direction. Therefore, in the next five-year plan, the big groups will focus on new energy vehicles and self-owned brand cars.

SAIC Group plans to sell 1 million of its own brand in 2020. Among them, the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” export accounts for 20% to 30% of the total sales volume, becoming one of the auto companies with the highest percentage of overseas sales, and the global operating capability is at the forefront of auto companies. At the same time, SAIC Group said that in the next five years, the new energy business will add 20 billion yuan, and the target sales of new energy vehicles will be 600,000. In the next five-year plan of BAIC Group, its own brand will enter the top three of its own domestic brands. According to media reports, its new energy vehicles will achieve 500,000 sales by 2020. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the production and sales volume of Dongfeng's own brands will reach 3 million, and the production and sales of new energy vehicles will also be further planned. In the "13th Five-Year Plan" of 4.5 million Changan Automobiles, the number of self-owned brands will reach 2.3 million, and new energy vehicles will reach 400,000 by 2020. In the next decade, Changan Automobile will invest 18 billion yuan to build a research and development system for new energy vehicles.

Behind the series of plans, competition is the R&D strength and brand marketing capabilities of car companies. From the reporter’s point of view, neither of these two points is easy. Judging from the R&D of new energy vehicles, due to the core technologies such as motors, electronic controls, and batteries, the vast majority of autonomous car companies do not have independent research and development capabilities. Therefore, in the future market competition, the vehicle that takes the initiative in the above core technologies should be mastered. Enterprises will occupy certain advantages. It is precisely because of this that during the past 12th Five-Year Plan period, SAIC has been devoting itself to building a high-standard complete vehicle and parts system and autonomously mastering core technologies to prepare for the expansion of the new energy matrix to 30 models during the 13th Five-Year Plan period.

In terms of branding, under the previous background, the joint-venture car company has almost become the “brand” of the big group. The next step in how to build the brand influence of its own brand has become an important issue facing the big group. For example, the Group has already recognized that although the quality of SAIC Passenger Vehicle products has improved significantly, its brand capacity is not strong enough, resulting in a relatively weak premium capacity, which makes the new vehicles listed as “wonderful”.