See 2020： Half seawater and half flame.

2020 |Issue 271

The decline in sales for two years in a row will bring China cars to a dark moment, but the epidemic that swept through in early 2020 will make the industry worse. In this year, the automobile market has never been so ups and downs, from the suspension of production at the beginning to the nationwide marketing and policy rescue, and then to the triumphant progress in the second half of the year. This year, not only did car companies go bankrupt, but the market value of the stock market ringing bells soared. Looking back on the eight key words of the automobile market in 2020, sadness and joy coexist, and joy and sorrow go hand in hand. As the saying goes, half of the sea water is cold and half is burning like a flame.

The epidemic at the beginning of the year not only restricted our life and travel, but also directly affected the marketing model. Facing the market pressure, how to seize the new demand and new opportunities behind the epidemic has become an urgent need for car manufacturers and dealers. As a result, we have seen many car companies and dealers turn to online marketing one after another, hoping to drive sales as much as possible in the months affected by the epidemic through online forms such as live broadcast, online exhibition halls and online orders.

In addition to selling cars live in Luo Yonghao together with the Great Wall, executives from Li Bin, Li Xiang, Yu Jingmin and other car companies all turned into anchors to bring goods on the spot, and Li Shufu called for his own products with the help of CCTV interviews. According to the data of the "2020 Auto Live Ecological Report" released by china automobile dealers association United Auto Emperor, in the first three months of this year, the maximum number of people watching the live car broadcast reached 5 million, and the number of users watching the broadcast increased by 6.1 times; The number of broadcasts increased by 15 times, and the highest number of broadcasts per day exceeded 7000; The number of broadcast anchors increased by 12 times, and the new anchor day increased by 10%.

In the two months after the opening of the year in 2020, the production and sales of passenger cars suffered "ankle chop". With the gradual improvement of the epidemic situation, in March, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 23 departments jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting Consumption Expansion, Upgrading and Accelerating the Formation of a Strong Domestic Market". Subsequently, local governments also introduced practical policies to promote automobile consumption.

Under this series of rescue measures, since March, the decline in passenger car production and sales has begun to narrow; By May this year, the retail sales of passenger car market reached 1.609 million, up 1.8% year-on-year, ending the 22-month decline since June 2018, and the year-on-year growth rate finally returned to positive. In the second half of the year, the long-lost "Golden September and Silver 10" once again ignited the enthusiasm of the auto market. From January to November this year, China’s automobile production and sales reached 22.372 million and 22.47 million, respectively, down 3% and 2.9% year-on-year. The China Automobile Association predicts that the annual automobile production and sales volume is expected to reach about 25 million this year, with the decline narrowed to less than 2%.

On June 28th, CCTV Financial Channel named Baiteng "Burning 8.4 billion yuan can’t make a mass production car". As a member of the new forces, Baiteng and Baiteng, Sai Lin and Bo County successively declared bankruptcy, leaving only a feather in the ground. If it is said that it was the price of more than 800 million yuan paid for obtaining production qualification before, then the first batch of Yangtze River EVs with dual qualifications have not been spared from the end of bankruptcy liquidation.

In fact, under the "cold winter", the bankrupt brands are not only the "exclusive" of the new forces, and even the traditional established car companies such as Cheetah, Lifan, Zotye and even Huachen, which was a smash hit, went bankrupt; In addition, among the joint venture brands, Dongfeng Renault announced the dissolution, leaving only commercial vehicles and new energy Renault out of the China market.

The cold car market has further prompted car companies to hold each other. In May, China Bingzhuang Group, China FAW, Changan Automobile and Dongfeng Motor jointly invested 16 billion yuan to establish Zhongqi Chuangzhi Technology Co., Ltd., the legal representative of which is Li Fengjun, president of FAW Group Intelligent Networking Development Institute, and the registered place is Jiangning Economic and Technological Development Zone in Nanjing. This is another big move of FAW, Dongfeng and Changan’s three "national teams" following the joint establishment of T3 travel in 2019.

In addition, audi ag invested more than 2 billion euros in JAC Holdings and Guoxuan Hi-Tech, and obtained 26% equity of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, 50% equity of JAC Holdings and 75% equity of JAC Volkswagen respectively. JAC Volkswagen changed its name to Volkswagen (Anhui) as promised. In December, SAIC, FAW, Dongfeng and Chang ‘an, as well as private vehicle manufacturers such as Geely Automobile, Great Wall and BYD, joined forces with 67 institutions in universities such as Tsinghua, Tongji, Xi ‘an Jiaotong University and Shanghai Jiaotong University to establish the "Powertrain Alliance" to seek technological breakthroughs in power.

It has always been the dream of China Automobile to upgrade its brand and hit the high end of its products. This year, with Hongqi completing the annual task of 200,000 vehicles ahead of schedule, it not only doubled its sales volume, but also became a leader in the second-tier luxury market. In addition, under the tide of new energy, Tucki P7, Weilai EC6, Li ONE and BYD Han are selling well one after another, and the market price is no less than Tesla Model3. The price of the first product launched by Chinese Express this year is as high as 800,000.

At the same time, a large number of new brands with high-end positioning have emerged in the automobile industry this year. BAIC officially launched ARCFOX, while Dongfeng showed its bright sword and blue map. After this year’s independent R brand, SAIC jointly established Zhiji Automobile with Ali and Pudong New Area. In addition, Changan has reached cooperation agreements with Huawei and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited to jointly build new high-end brands. In 2020, China Auto set off a mad wolf that hit the high end.

Wang Kai, CTO of LI, previously proposed that 2020 will be the first year of smart cars in China. On the one hand, the underlying technical architecture of smart cars has been basically completed, and electrification, network communication and chip computing power have accumulated for more than ten years, approaching the critical point of quantitative change to qualitative change; On the other hand, the market cultivation has been initially completed, and consumers have a clearer understanding of smart cars.

Shouted out "Can you survive next year?" Great Wall Motor announced its transformation into a global technology travel company in July. Tucki, Ideal and Weilai are launching new competitions in the field of intelligent driving; In addition, Huawei, Ali, Tencent, Baidu, Foxconn and other enterprises have also increased their automobile industry … Nowadays, with the rapid development of electrification, intelligence and networking, functions such as voice control, face recognition, automatic parking assistance and L3-level automatic driving have almost become standard, and cars are no longer a single means of transportation, but a carrier for the integration of artificial intelligence and travel.

Ten years ago, facing the impact of the global subprime mortgage crisis, cars going to the countryside became an important policy to revitalize cars in China. In July 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the General Office of the Ministry of Commerce, jointly issued the Notice on Launching Activities of New Energy Vehicles to the Countryside, which means that "automobiles going to the countryside" once again plays the role of saving the market.

Subsequently, more than 60 products from dozens of companies including SAIC-GM-Wuling, BAIC New Energy, Great Wall Euler and BYD participated. According to the preliminary statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the past four months, the cumulative sales volume of new energy vehicles involved has exceeded 180,000, which has contributed positively to the recovery of the automobile market. According to the latest data of the Federation, the wholesale volume of new energy passenger cars in China reached 180,300 in November, an increase of 129% compared with 79,000 in November 2019 and an increase of 24.8% from the previous month.

With Tesla’s market value soaring to $600 billion, surpassing the sum of the market values of nine global auto companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai, the market value of China auto companies has also exploded this year. The market value of Weilai, which landed on Nasdaq, rose 12 times, while Tucki and Ideal rose 3 times in less than half a year. Great Wall and BYD, domestic A-share listed companies, also increased nearly fourfold during the year, and the market value of Wuling listed in Hong Kong stocks increased more than 10 times.

The data shows that by the first ten days of December, the new energy vehicle sector had increased by 94.02% during the year. Excluding the new shares listed this year, there were 95 new energy vehicle concept stocks that increased by more than 50% during the year, and 33 stocks increased by over 100% annually. BYD, Weilai, Tucki and Ideality rank among the TOP15 in the list of global automobile market value, among which BYD and Weilai rank fourth and fifth after Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen in terms of market value.

On the side of the boat, Qian fan contest; At the head of the diseased tree, ten thousand mufengchun. After the reshuffle in 2020, it will definitely be warm after the cold winter.