2020 Final Season丨Joint Brand: Fighting for Life in the "Safe Haven"

As the saying goes: "Nine gold and ten silver." In the past September, my country's passenger car retail sales reached 1.91 million units, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%, achieving the highest growth rate in the past two years of around 8% for three consecutive months.

According to the analysis of Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the Passenger Car Association, in the atmosphere of the Great Depression of the global automobile industry, especially in the face of the danger of a second recurrence of the epidemic in Europe in the future, the steady recovery of the Chinese market has made It has become the most important production and sales platform for more and more multinational car companies at this stage. The Chinese market is both an incremental opportunity and a safe haven against the risks of international uncertainty. Therefore, China's auto market will continue to become the most competitive diversified market in the world.

For foreign brands to survive and develop in China, joint ventures are undoubtedly the most important form. Sales volume in September shows that the retail sales of mainstream joint venture brands increased by approximately 7% year-on-year and approximately 12% month-on-month. Among them, the retail share of Japanese brands is 24.5%, which is lower than the 26% share of German brands. The share of American brands has strengthened to 10%, a year-on-year increase of 1.4 percentage points. It should be said that the current market structure of "Germany, Japan and the United States" is still the same, but the internal structure is subtly changing in the undercurrent, and the competition is quite stalemate.

Germany: North and South Volkswagen are in "ice and fire"

The market performance of the German brand "North and South Volkswagen" in September can be described as "ice and fire".

According to FAW Group data, FAW-Volkswagen’s sales in China in September increased by 3.9% year-on-year to 224,411 vehicles. From January to September, FAW-Volkswagen produced a total of 1,457,084 vehicles, with terminal sales reaching 1,470,942 vehicles (including imported Audi vehicles), firmly occupying the top spot in the domestic passenger car market for 16 consecutive months.

Among them, the three major brands of Volkswagen, Jetta and Audi under FAW-Volkswagen have achieved varying degrees of growth. The terminal sales volume of the Volkswagen brand in September was 128,278 units, and the cumulative terminal sales volume from January to September was 850,713 units; the terminal sales volume of the FAW-Volkswagen Audi brand in September was 73,388 units (including imported cars), and the cumulative sales volume from January to September was 512,081 units (including imported vehicles). car); the terminal sales volume of the FAW-Volkswagen Jetta brand in September was 13,708 units, and the sales volume from January to September was 108,148 units. As of September, FAW-Volkswagen's sales now lead SAIC-Volkswagen by nearly 400,000 vehicles.

In terms of product planning, as of the end of September, FAW-Volkswagen has reached mass production conditions ahead of schedule for a total of 9 models in 2020, including the eighth-generation new digital golf and the new CC hunting suit. Cars, Audi A4PA, Audi Q3 coupe, Tanyue GTE and Tanyue X and other blockbuster models. With the launch of new models, sales are expected to continue to rise in the fourth quarter.

Looking at SAIC Volkswagen, another joint venture of the Volkswagen Group in China, it can be said that there is a huge contrast. In September, cumulative sales were 161,000 vehicles, down 8.5% year-on-year; cumulative sales from January to September were 1,031,385 vehicles, down 25.92% year-on-year. It is even the only one among the top ten domestic car companies to decline. Sales have declined year-on-year for three consecutive quarters, making SAIC-Volkswagen the only mainstream brand of SAIC Group to see a decline since June. The sales performance of the once "profit cow" is really worrying.

The reason is that Passat and Tiguan have always been the sales pillars of SAIC Volkswagen and should be responsible for boosting SAIC Volkswagen's overall sales after the epidemic eases. However, the failure of the two models in the China Insurance Research Safety Collision had an extremely negative impact on its brand. From January to August this year, SAIC Volkswagen Passat sales were only 74,400 units, a year-on-year decrease of 28.32%. During the same period, Tiguan L also experienced a year-on-year sales decrease of 12.66%. In addition, in recent years, Skoda's development in China has hit a bottleneck, which has also dealt a heavy blow to SAIC Volkswagen. Official data shows that Skoda's sales in 2019 have dropped to 282,000 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 17.3%.

Japanese brands are becoming popular, and their market share is close to that of German brands

As for Japanese brands, Toyota is better than other brands in terms of single-month sales and cumulative sales. According to data released by the Toyota joint venture, FAW Toyota's sales in September increased by 62.6% year-on-year to 84,834 vehicles, and GAC Toyota's sales increased by 24.62% year-on-year to 81,000 vehicles.

GAC Toyota officially stated that the sales volume of 81,000 vehicles in September was the first time that the brand achieved sales of more than 80,000 vehicles in a single month.

Cumulative sales in the first three quarters were 543,449 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 10%. In addition, GAC Toyota's new models or updated products including Corolla, Ralink, RAV4, Avalon, Camry, etc. have achieved good market performance.

As for FAW Toyota, its sales volume exceeded 70,000 vehicles for five consecutive months with 84,834 vehicles and a year-on-year growth rate of 62.6%, making it the largest joint venture growth segment within the FAW Group. According to FAW Toyota officials, thanks to the transformation of the internal dealer model, the profitability of FAW Toyota's national dealers is as high as 87%, much higher than the industry average of 40%.

Coincidentally, Honda's two joint ventures, Dongfeng Honda and Guangzhou Automobile Honda, also achieved double-digit growth. Among them, Dongfeng Honda's sales in September increased by 20.2% year-on-year to 87,203 vehicles, and Guangqi Honda's sales increased by 24.6% year-on-year to 81,669 vehicles, both setting a record high in single-month sales. Guangqi Honda has even achieved double-digit positive monthly sales growth for 4 consecutive months, and has set the highest monthly terminal car sales record in the past for 5 consecutive months. Dongfeng Honda has set the highest monthly terminal car sales record in the past 3 consecutive months. .

Mazda’s sales in China also increased in September, but there was a huge contrast in the sales performance of its two joint ventures. Specifically, Changan Mazda's sales in September increased by 28.93% year-on-year to 14,311 vehicles, while FAW Mazda's sales fell by 30.53% year-on-year to 6,611 vehicles. Obviously, compared with the development of Japanese joint ventures such as Toyota and Honda in China, Mazda's "lame" phenomenon has become more and more serious. Especially in the face of many powerful German and Japanese rivals, Mazda's survival situation is obviously in dire straits.

Generally speaking, the domestic market share of Japanese brands continues to increase, and has even approached the position of German brands in China.

As the American system picks up steam, it’s not too late to “fix the situation”

There is another phenomenon that has attracted a lot of public attention. After experiencing the "pain period" of decline in the past three years, the sales of the two major American joint venture brands, SAIC-GM and Changan Ford, have begun to recover recently.

GM’s retail sales in the third quarter exceeded 771,400 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 12%, marking the first time that GM’s quarterly sales in the Chinese market achieved positive growth in two years. General Motors China said that as China's overall auto market gradually recovers, all its brands have shown a strong upward trend, with overall year-on-year and month-on-month improvements in the third quarter. In particular, the market performance of mid-size SUVs, mid-to-large SUVs and MPV models, led by Cadillac XT5, Buick Envision and Buick GL8, is relatively impressive.

In this regard, Alan Kang (Alan Kang), a senior analyst at LMC Automotive, a global data analysis company, said, “General Motors’ compact models have reused four-cylinder engines, and Cadillac’s lineup is also more complete. , which all contributes to sales growth."

As for Changan Ford, retail sales in September reached 20,495 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 10.1% and a month-on-month increase of 19.7%. It can be seen that with the continuous empowerment of the "Ford China 2.0" strategy, Changan Ford has accelerated product updates to impact sales. From last year's Ruiji to this year's Explorer to the 2020 Mondeo facelift, it has launched intensively Brand new models are launched. In addition, the pricing strategy of stable terminal prices and the business strategy combination of "determining production according to sales" and never depleting inventory are also one of the means by which Changan Ford has achieved rapid growth for many months.

It can be said that "one learns from one's mistakes". Similar to SAIC-GM's restart of four-cylinder engines, Changan Ford's acceleration of new models also has the meaning of "making amends". It is understood that Changan Ford's most popular new sixth-generation Ford Explorer continues to be in short supply. Orders exceeded 10,000 within 100 days of its launch, and it also achieved a month-on-month growth of 39.3% in September. In the short term, with its main-selling models maintaining its late-mover advantage, Changan Ford's sales in the fourth quarter may be further boosted, giving greater market confidence in its full-year sales.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.