The dispute over China's auto brands has been long-standing. Regardless of how it is said, the current weakness of China's self-owned brand cars, especially cars, is an indisputable fact. Although the self-owned brand car began to gradually rise in 2005 and achieved some successes, high-speed growth still cannot cover up the unbalanced development. Now when we talk about our own-brand cars, people can't help but think of Chery, Geely, etc. They are building their own brand cars at an astonishing rate and are among the “Top 10 in China,†and they are the FAW and SAIC that are the “regular forces of the Chinese car industryâ€. Dongfeng, the three major groups, people can think of only the old face of the red flag and Xiali. When these three major groups made efforts to build their own brands, the Chinese people have high hopes for them.
FAW Group General Manager Yan Yanfeng
"In a country, no nuclear force cannot be called a big country; a country without an autonomous automobile industry cannot have all-round development of industry, nor can it be called a big country."
“A large country with a huge potential in the automotive market, without an autonomous auto industry system with dominant power, cannot be called a powerful industrial modernization country and can only be called a manufacturing power. The development of independent brands is the flag of FAW and the soul of FAW. And cultural connotation. 'Red Flag' carries the dedication and dreams of several generations of FAW. We have the ability to make it bigger and stronger."
"The development of independent models must 'till loneliness for 20 years'."
"In the 11th Five-Year Plan period, FAW will achieve full autonomy in the Class B sedans, and autonomous sedans will achieve second-rate or higher, and truck products will be guaranteed to rise to the top of the world. After the 11th Five-Year Plan, a complete truck and mid-range will be established. The autonomous system of the car."
Xu Feng, General Manager of Dongfeng Motor Company
“Developing independent brands is a tireless pursuit of Dongfeng over the years. To build a Dongfeng company that is independently developed in the open is one of the three positions in the overall development of the company.â€
“In 2006, Dongfeng will enhance its independent innovation capabilities and accelerate its own brand building. Through improving its own brand product R&D system and operating mechanism, it will improve and strengthen its R&D capabilities, innovate its R&D model, and capitalise on the R&D resources of its subsidiaries (including joint ventures). , Consolidate and maintain the market leading position of independent brands of commercial vehicles; actively develop a new round of independent brand product development of passenger cars, and constantly improve the position of independent brands of passenger cars in the market.â€
Former Dongfeng Motor Corporation General Manager Miao Wei
"There is still a long way to go for China's auto industry to take its own brand. It takes several generations and decades of hard work to make a difference."
President of SAIC Corporation Chen Hong
"Individual brands have significant implications for the sustainable development of SAIC Motor. They are both the main vehicle for us to establish an independent innovation system and the key to whether we can become a major automobile group with core competitiveness and status. And the development of other domestic independent brands at present. Different strategies, our own brand is based on many years of international cooperation experience and technology accumulation, starting from a higher starting point, using a broad world perspective, make full use of domestic and foreign resources and two markets under open conditions. Take the differentiated competition road, focus on improving the integration capability of the vehicle and key subsystems, form a sustainable low-cost advantage, and gradually establish competitiveness in all links.This year, SAIC's first self-branded mid-to-high-class sedan will go offline. At the same time, according to the needs of domestic and foreign markets, we are striving to create a wide range of products ranging from high to medium-level, medium to low-level to compact, and we plan to begin bulk export of SAIC's own-brand vehicles to the European market by the end of next year."
The three major groups face strong pressure
FAW, SAIC, and Dongfeng, the three major auto groups, play an important role in the Chinese auto industry, once occupying more than 60% of the domestic auto market share. They were once the country’s key support targets, and their development level basically represents the Chinese auto industry’s The level of development.
According to the statistics of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2005 China's automobiles produced and sold 5,707,700 vehicles and 575.82 vehicles. Among the top ten sales companies, FAW, SAIC, and Dongfeng continued to rank the top three, reaching 983,100 and 917,500 respectively. With 720,900 units, sales of the “big three†accounted for 45.7% of the total sales of cars in the country. Statistics from the Automobile Industry Association show that last year China's basic passenger cars (cars) had a total of 2,767,700 vehicles and 2,787.4 million vehicles. Although FAW, SAIC, and Dongfeng's products are also among the best, most of them are joint-venture branded products. The "big three" self-owned brand sedan products can only rely on Xiali's 180,000 individual support facades, and a small number of red flags also account for the total. 1/15 of the amount is extremely disproportionate to their industry status.
At the 2005 Shanghai Auto Show, Chery took out five new cars at a glance. Six new cars have been launched this year. Chery also displayed six self-branded engines that represent real power, and Chery has set up factories to sell overseas. The move of the car also demonstrated to the world the potential power of China's own-brand cars. In terms of production and sales, Chery had nearly 190,000 vehicles in 2005. In addition to Chery, JAC displayed its own concept car, Vision. Geely launched its own "Castle" concept car, as well as the BYD ET concept car, Hafei concept car, and Cheetah concept car. Last year, Lifan also joined the camp of its own-brand car. Great Wall Motor also eagerly tried the car, and small-displacement autonomous brand models will be launched at the end of this year.
At the beginning of this year, Geely’s “Free-Ship†sedan with completely independent intellectual property rights debuted at the North American International Auto Show and attracted the attention of all parties. Changan Automobile’s new coach, Xu Liuping, recently stated that Chang’an will launch CV6, CV7, CV9, CV11, etc. with independent intellectual property rights this year. A series of new models. By 2010, Changan’s independent intellectual property rights auto production and sales volume will strive for more than 50%, with more than 6 vehicle platform platforms.
Obviously, in the field of self-owned brand cars, the three major automobile groups have been trapped by many other companies.
The status quo of self-owned brands of passenger cars is unsatisfactory
For the First Automobile Group, which is known as the “Elder First Son of the Republicâ€, the weight of its own-brand sedan is still plausible in the three major cars: the Red Flag sedan brand built through the hard work of several generations of people in nearly 50 years is called the self-owned brand sedan. Flags, brand value has reached 5.656 billion yuan. However, the sales of Hongqi have been declining in recent years: it was 28,500 units in 2002, 27,000 units in 2003, 15,000 units in 2004, and 12,000 units in 2005. Some even asked the question "How long can the red flag still be?"
In 2002, “Tianyi Reorganization†made the Xiali brand, popular among the common people, fall under the name of FAW, which added a bit of fighting power to FAW’s own “brand†car. According to statistics from FAW, during the “10th Five-Year Plan†period, the auto industry’s total market for auto products was 8.909 million, and the number of autonomous products reached 1.217 million, accounting for 15% of the market share, of which FAW’s auto sedan products were 614,000, which was in the total number of domestic cars. It accounted for 50.4%.
The Dongfeng Citroen "Triumph" sedan that was recently unveiled was viewed by Liu Weidong, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Motor Co. and general manager of Shenlong Co., Ltd., whose intellectual property rights belong to Shenlong. The reason is that China has participated in the design and manufacture of "Triumph" throughout the entire process. From the viewpoint of intellectual property rights and independent innovation, once the French side produces "triumphal" in the country and puts it on the market, it must in turn pay "the technological innovation fee" to the Chinese side. This is the "eastern style" model of independent innovation.
In fact, Dongfeng Motor Company has no shortage of its own branded products. Compared with many commercial vehicles of its own brand, Dongfeng Motor Company’s passenger vehicles are mostly joint venture products. The “10 categories of basic passenger cars under the “Dongfeng†brand name are only “ The Dongfeng Little Prince, approved by the State Economic and Trade Commission in 2002, has an annual output of only 4,5000 vehicles, and has barely exposed his face in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Another independent brand "Dongfeng Nova" sedan is expected to be produced this year.
As a representative large-scale enterprise group in China's auto industry, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (Group) Corp. was among the Fortune 500 companies in the world in 2004. In 2005, SAIC Motor sold a total of more than 1.05 million complete vehicles, of which passenger vehicles sold more than 740,000 vehicles, but it was hard to see the shadow of its own brand cars.
As early as 2002, SAIC put forward the goal of “production of 50,000 self-owned brand cars in 2007â€. In early 2004, SAIC set up its own brand working group and handed over the project to Shanghai Auto, its listed company, as its main business entity for R&D. In July last year, Shanghai Auto's Board of Directors passed a resolution that SAIC Motor and SAIC Motor Co., Ltd. jointly established SAIC Luwi Motor Co., Ltd. as one of SAIC's own-brand automobile production bases and plans to produce its own brand cars using Ssangyong and Rover technologies.
Independent research and development began to fully promote
With the rapid development of the Chinese automotive industry in recent years, almost all automobile groups in China have formulated their own brand development plans. It has been asserted that the road for self-owned brands of Chinese autos will grow wider and wider in the future. However, when will the self-owned brand sedan products from the Big Three Group enter the tens of millions of households on a large scale?
According to the plan, the new Hongqi sedan C301 independently developed by FAW will be put on the market this year, and another economic sedan with the independent intellectual property rights codenamed “C1†will also be launched in the near future. The Hongqi HQ3 and HQE are also the main models for FAW to advance into high-end self-owned brand cars during the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan†period. It is reported that C301 is a B-class car; Hongqi HQ3 is a luxury car using integrated technical resources to create a luxury car; Hongqi HQE is a self-developed top-level red flag high-end luxury car by FAW, and its position is the national car. In addition, after Liberation, Hongqi, Xiali and Jiabao, FAW Group will launch another self-owned brand, which is a self-owned brand car produced by FAW Haima that is expected to be launched at the end of this year. It is expected that by 2010, FAW will achieve an overall production and sales of 2 million vehicles, of which the self-owned brand will achieve production and sales of 1 million vehicles, accounting for 50% of the total sales, and the market share will exceed 20%, and the sales revenue will exceed 200 billion yuan. At the same time, the car below the mid-level achieves full autonomy during the “11th Five-Year Plan†period.
After obtaining approval from the National Development and Reform Commission, the specific plans for SAIC's own brand projects were released at the end of February. According to the approval, SAIC Motor officially established SAIC Motor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. to take full responsibility for the construction of its own brand passenger car system. According to reports, SAIC Motor's initial investment was 3.68 billion yuan. In the “Eleventh Five-Year Planâ€, SAIC set a goal of producing 600,000 self-owned brand cars, including 200,000 passenger cars. SAIC Motor’s first self-owned brand sedan is based on a second-generation innovative luxury car developed on the Rover75 platform and is expected to be officially released in the second half of this year.
If the Dongfeng Citroen Triumph car is regarded as a real step taken by Dongfeng Motor Company after years of exploring the development of self-owned brand cars, then the future direction of Dongfeng's development of self-owned brand cars has surfaced. According to the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan†of Dongfeng Motor Corporation, the construction of self-owned brands is in an important position, and the development of self-owned mid-size cars will be accelerated. It is understood that Dongfeng will focus on the development of self-owned brand cars with a displacement of 1.6 liters or more, but did not disclose the amount of investment in the self-owned brand mid-size cars during the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan†period and the specific model content.
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