SAIC General Shou Shou Sales Three: Wang Yongqing Hao Throw 80 Billion Bets The Next Five Years.

Before there is interception, there are soldiers behind.

SAIC, which is in the period of product switching, has not only opened up the gap between the north and the south, but has been overtaken by the "latecomers".

The recent data released by the Joint Conference on passenger car market show that in November, the comprehensive sales volume of the narrow passenger car of SAIC general was 128 thousand, which was squeezed out of the first three of the 140 thousand vehicles sold by Geely Automobile. And from the wholesale sales volume, beyond the SAIC GM, in addition to Geely Automobile, and this year's momentum has been good Dongfeng Nissan.

SAIC wants to bid farewell to the top three? Although the performance in November is not ideal, but from the annual sales volume, SAIC is not likely to be overtaken by Geely Automobile. As of the end of November, the sales volume of the two vehicles was 1 million 357 thousand vehicles and 1 million 177 thousand vehicles respectively, and there were still 180 thousand vehicles.

Even for SAIC, once a sales champion, it is not easy to become a top three player. Five years ago, when Wang Yongqing was just appointed general manager of SAIC, he declared that "the future must maintain the position of the top three companies". Obviously, this is the bottom line rather than the goal. But at present, the car market is like sailing against the current, there is no excellent product strength and brand strength. The past achievements will become a burden.

Although SAIC, another joint venture giant of SAIC, is also facing challenges, it is no accident that this year's annual sales crown is handed over to others, but compared with SAIC, the impact of SAIC is even greater. By the end of November, its total sales volume had fallen by 13.4%, not only inferior to its competitors, but also lost the market.

"From a large perspective, China's automobile market has experienced several decades of incremental development and may enter stock competition in recent years." 2019 on the eve of the Guangzhou auto show, Shi Hong, deputy general manager of SAIC GM, admitted that "the luxury brand of the entire auto industry is expanding rapidly, and its own brand is rising again. If the joint venture brand is slightly careless, it will be caught up. This is a very realistic situation."

Shi Hong also said: "in the second half of last year, the market gave a vivid lesson to SAIC GM's entire team: many of the ways that used to be considered effective were probably not right. Some of the past budgetary resources were probably not working."

However, it is now the end of SAIC's current cycle. According to the plan, the company will complete the landing of the new product in the first half of next year, and launch more than 10 new or modified models to the market, covering the market segments of cars, SUV, MPV, luxury cars and new energy vehicles. After the product was completed, Wang Yongqing thought that he was confident that he would win the market.

Combined with the current market situation and its own situation, SAIC's general management team has also launched a new round of product layout. Wang Yongqing said that from 2020-2024 years' five years, SAIC's investment in technology research and development, plant construction and other aspects will reach 80 billion yuan, of which 30 billion yuan will be invested in electrification.

"Chaos" terminal

Over the past year, GM's brand has entered a dense product replacement period. Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac have launched many new products. Take Buick, the first year of the new round of product cycle, as an example. This year, we have listed Velite 6 and new generation of new cars such as oncola.

There are many reasons for the decline of SAIC's general sales volume. One of the reasons is that the market environment is not improving. In the cold winter market, the demand for product strength and brand power is obviously higher, but the brand of General Motors fails to do enough in these respects.

One of the problems that the general brand has been widely criticized in the Chinese market is that the product layout is not reasonable enough. There is often competition between the same brand and different brands. A Chevrolet dealer told reporters on twenty-first Century economic report that the creation of this year's listing is "up and down, not down". It's downhill and cool. It's very embarrassing to have an upward trend, and it's hard to sell.

Another problem is price control and evacuation. "Now that all brands have gone on sale, they have cut prices too fast, and we can't accept them." The dealers said that compared with other car companies, SAIC GM's three brands fluctuated more rapidly, and the speed of their decline was very fast. Sometimes, the price of new cars just went on sale for a month.

One of the reasons why GM's brand is cutting prices quickly is due to its sales habits. In the overall market is not good, dealers through online channels to release more preferential ways to attract more consumers, regional "price war", but the industry and the host plant has not been effective control, price war intensified.

This is not a good thing for the terminal market. Although it attracts consumers, dealers are selling cars for profit. This way is not sustainable. The dealer told reporters frankly, "selling a car and losing a car" is not exaggerated. On the other hand, after frequent price cuts, consumers will have psychological expectations of price cuts. When new cars come into the market, they will take a wait-and-see attitude and enter a vicious circle. In the long run, brands will also be hurt.

The main engine factory did not shy away from this problem. When Wang Yongqing mentioned the price war, he said: "when the car market is growing at a high speed, in order to grab a share, sometimes it is useful to fight price war, but when the environment is negative growth, it is useless to fight price war."

As a matter of fact, the main engine factory is seldom relaxed in the manufacturer's guidance price, but when it comes to the terminal market, the situation of price war is widespread in order to increase sales volume. Other brand dealers told the twenty-first Century business news reporter that they had a dealer price alliance, which would agree on a common pricing range, but not strictly enforce it is normal.

However, the above Chevrolet dealer told reporters that compared with the first half of the past two months, the situation is much better. "Now that online prices are monitored by each other, they are fed back to the district master when they have problems, and they are handling faster and more timely." However, he is not optimistic about the future and believes that the situation of changing the market by price will appear intermittently.

The market gave us a vivid lesson.

SAIC's management also believes that the situation is not optimistic. From Wang Yongqing and Shi Hong to the three department heads of its brand, the SAIC GM management team approached a product cycle in the company's executives, but they stressed at this time that "all businesses return to their origin and start again".

Shi Hong said that at this stage, we must further make the basic skills solid, and adjust the structure of traditional products quickly, and the marketing side should rearrange the needs of customer experience.

According to the plan, SAIC will complete the layout of the product in the first half of next year, and in the next two or three years, it will make more perfect product layout according to customer demand and market changes. There are two key words, one is SUV and two is consumption upgrading.

SUV is the focus of the general brand. Taking Buick as an example, this year's Guangzhou auto show has launched a new generation of Buick SUV family lineup, including the 2020 new models of the new family of Buick, including the new products, the new generation of ang Cora GX and ang Kola, and so on, which have achieved a comprehensive coverage from small, compact models, medium to medium and large mainstream SUV markets.

SUV has been developing brilliantly in the Chinese market in the past few years, but SAIC's layout in the SUV field is "slow human step". After the launch of Buick's corkola and ang Kewei in the market, it hasn't been upgraded for many years, and the Chevrolet exploration company with Chevrolet on the same platform only went to the market in 2017. Industry analysts believe that the slow product planning allowed SAIC to miss the development bonus period of SUV.

This is also the reason why it vigorously promotes SUV products. However, from the time of product listing, the whole is not a very good rhythm. For example, this year, Buick's GX and Chevrolet, and Chevrolet's Chuang Chuang and Chuang Jie, which are listed this year, need more energy based on similar platforms, and similar situations also appear on Buick's ang Ke banner and Cadillac XT6.

In terms of brand marketing, SAIC's three brands need to spend more time, especially when it comes to a series of adjustments around consumption upgrading.

In recent years, whether Chevrolet or Buick, there are many "upgrading" initiatives in the brand. Chevrolet car SEO withdrew from the market last year and rebuilt the brand through upgrading of products. Buick has even been called "atypical luxury brand" as more flagship models come into the market.

This brings the problem to SAIC GM: same quality, how to distinguish between the three brands?

Prior to that, automotive industry analysts told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that SAIC's brand power is embodied by every specific vehicle, but its own brand strength is not strong, so this is the main direction for SAIC to take the next step. Soon after entering 2020, SAIC general seems to need to continue to answer this question.

Brand building is not simple. If you can remember a car by one or two brand slogans, brand power will take a long time to build. On the eve of the Guangzhou motor show, there were still media questions: what words would the company use to describe its three brands?

"Cadillac, all the greatness comes from the beginning of bravery. Buick, calm down and go all the way, Chevrolet, dreams create the future." Shi Hong gave his answer. And when he answered this question, he said, "the market has taught us a vivid lesson": many very effective methods used in the past may be wrong.

"When SAIC is facing a breakthrough again, we must be in team spirit." Shi Hong added. For SAIC, not only the product spectrum should be changed, but also the way of marketing.

In fact, the change of SAIC is intuitive. After rearranging the customer experience, brand activities are different. Taking Chevrolet's brand night this year as an example, it is no longer a big show in the luxury stadium. Chevrolet arranged its activities in a 4S store in Anhui, showing Chevrolet's services, technology, culture and other elements in the way of sitcom, and was rated as "more grounded".

Layout next five years

SAIC's layout in the electrification field is also considered to be conservative. Although GM headquarters emphasizes the "zero emissions" vision all the year round, the action of China's joint venture is quite cautious.

Up to now, SAIC has only Buick and Chevrolet launched pure electric vehicle Velite 6 and pure electric intercity car running patrolling respectively. Among them, Chang patrolling is expected to be listed early next year, and this year's low-end Velite 6 initial mileage is only about 300 km, which has little advantage in the pure electric vehicle market, and its sales volume is not outstanding.

SAIC's view of pure electric vehicles is relatively conservative. On the one hand, it is safety, on the other hand, it is cost. "New energy vehicles do not install a battery, plus several electrical appliances are so simple." Wang Yongqing explained that there are several key factors in the new energy vehicle, including the battery system and the security of the network system.

On the issue of cost, Wang Yongqing made it clear that pure electric vehicles are not the real demand of consumers. Making electric cars is far from a profitable business. He disclosed that at present, most of the sales of pure electric vehicles are B end users, such as network platform, and so on.

However, SAIC has not abandoned its investment in the electric field. In the next five years (2020-2014 years) plan, SAIC is expected to invest 30 billion yuan in new energy vehicles.

With the acceleration of China's market electrification process, SAIC also plans to launch more than 9 plug-in and pure electric vehicles from the 2019 to 2023 in the light of the 6 light mix, full hybrid, plug-in hybrid and enhanced mode hybrid vehicles that have been launched, covering many market segments including sedan, SUV and Howard SUV. Wang Yongqing pointed out that the company is also actively developing the next generation of pure electric vehicles to further enhance the proportion of motorized products.

"New energy vehicles are the future direction of development of automobiles. In recent years, great progress has been made in product categories, product quality, battery life and intelligent configuration." Wang Yongqing said, "at present, the new energy vehicle market is indeed facing a great challenge, but it will also promote enterprises to further optimize products and services and move towards high-quality development." He also stressed that as for profitability, in fact, it is also a process of accumulation, and the situation of each enterprise is not quite the same.

It is worth mentioning that, in the development of new energy vehicles, SAIC is also vigorously promoting the three cylinder engine. Before the commercialization of electric vehicles, the three cylinder engine has smaller displacement and has advantages in energy consumption, so SAIC will use the three cylinder as a transitional solution.

This year, SAIC has increased the promotion of the three cylinder engine. The new generation of Buick's new Buick, Chevrolet, Chevrolet, Chevrolet and Chuang Wan launched the second half of the year.

However, the three cylinder machine is not highly recognized in the market at present, and at the consumer level, many people think that the three cylinder jitter is strong and the use experience is not good. Despite the fact that Buick dealers in Shanghai have told reporters that the three cylinder machine has not significantly affected the sales volume, many market analysts believe that the three cylinder machine will make Buick and Chevrolet "add insult to injury".

Technical experts say that the three cylinder engine is indeed more energy efficient, but the disadvantage is that it is prone to vibration and noise. However, these drawbacks can be optimized by technology.

SAIC GM insists on the strategy of three cylinder engine. In order to reduce the concerns of the three cylinder engine, SAIC has provided 8 years' 160 thousand km warranty for the three cylinder car, which is superior to the three package regulation of the automobile for 3 years and 60 thousand kilometers.