Sales target shrinks Jianghuai car want to break

On April 10, with the participation of 32 exhibitors and core powertrains, in the face of 130 media that day, Jianghuai Automobile, a 50-year old independent car company, announced its ambition to occupy China’s autonomous highland.

In the past year, JAC Motor sold 203,355 passenger cars, a year-on-year increase of 0.68%, while in the commercial vehicle market, JAC completed sales of 308240 vehicles, an increase of 9.33% over the same period of last year. Sales growth exceeded the national average. In the past two years, JAC has implemented a “dual brand” strategy in the passenger vehicle market, while commercial vehicles have gradually focused on urban logistics development. Equal emphasis was placed on the use of merchants and there was a slight division of labor. Obviously, JAC intends to promote its overall performance in the automotive market.

In the morning, Jianghuai Automotive opened its 1.5TGDI engine plant to the media. The brand's daily event and the debut of the new car can be seen as the results of its 50th anniversary.

“After half a century of wind and rain, Jianghuai Automobile has now formed a strong product structure. In the face of increasingly fierce market competition and a more stringent consumer environment, Jianghuai Automobile timely adjusted its development strategy and grasped the good timing of transformation and upgrading. Technology-driven, with energy-saving, environmental protection, safety, intelligence, and comfort as R&D directions, increasing investment in key links and building a core competitive advantage for the future.” In the face of hundreds of media, Jianghuai Automobile General Manager Xiang Xingchu Do not hide its expectations for the JAC brand.

Increase SUV product offensive

April 10, Hefei, Jianghuai Automobile Headquarters Building. As a preview of the Beijing Auto Show, Jianghuai Automobile held its JAC brand day event for the first time. The activity site is divided into five zones: sedans, SUVs, MPVs, engines, and commercial vehicles. Among them, there are 7 new second-generation passenger car products for the first time. As a representative of the new Jianghuai models, the new and Yue S30 will start pre-sales at the Beijing Auto Show, marking JAC's formal entry into the small SUV market. At the same time, the compact SUV Refine S5 launched a new power combination of 1.5GDIT+6DCT on the original basis, and the JAC SUV offensive continues.

In the debut of the new car, a new mid-class car that has never been shown before has attracted considerable attention from the industry. The new generation of C-class car, officially code-named C, is positioned as a replacement model for the Bentley, but it exceeds Binyue in terms of platform technology and body size. According to the new naming convention for the Jianghuai passenger car, the new car is named Ruifeng A6. . Previously, as the main car product of Jianghuai, Binyue was listed in 2007, and it has been 7 years. Although there have been changes in the mid-term, the mid-level car market in the business sector has not been able to open up the situation for a long time, which has limited effect on improving JAC sales and brand.

The appearance of Refine A6 is the latest action of JAC in the mid-size car market. As early as the 2008 Beijing Auto Show, Jianghuai once released a mid- to high-level concept car named “Vision III”, but this time the A6 is completely different from the former in terms of exterior style and body structure. In addition, as the leader of independent MPV, based on the brand-new MPV Refine M5, the Jianghuai Automobile also demonstrated a higher-level M6 model. The car is designed by the JAC Italian Design Center to position the high-end business market.

So far, the Ruifeng M series MPV family and Ruifeng S series SUV series, Ruifeng A series of public business cars, Ruifeng brand three large spectrum will be completed. At the same time, as a traditional strength of JAC, its new series of commercial vehicle series also appeared collectively. Including Gehl Fat Heavy Truck, Shuailing Light Truck Series, pickup trucks, and European-style multi-functional commercial vehicles such as Xing Rui, 12 high-end commercial vehicles have become the focus of media attention. In addition, JAC also brought in the new energy model iEV5 and the concept model SC-9 built by the JAC Italian Design Center.

Prior to this, in the 12th Five-Year Plan, Jianghuai Automobile proposed the strategic goal of “strengthening and expanding commercial vehicles, and doing fine and excellent passenger vehicles”, replacing the pursuit of scale with the pursuit of efficiency. “Commercial vehicles are production materials, and passenger vehicles are the necessary conditions for companies to expand their scale.” Regarding the equal emphasis on commercial and commercial development, Yan Gang, general manager of Jianghuai Automobile Passenger Vehicle Marketing Corporation, gave his opinion. The general manager Xiang Xingchu made it clear that, in line with the strategic objective of “strengthening and expanding commercial vehicles, and doing fine and excellent passenger vehicles”, Jianghuai Automobile will pursue the pursuit of efficiency instead of pursuing scale, and strive to achieve connotative growth. In his view, the Beijing Auto Show became the stage to examine this strategic outcome.

Market orientation and strategic adjustment

The establishment of 50 years will not be the capital of JAC. From the start of imitation to the breakthrough of the chassis, benefiting from light trucks and commercial operators, JAC witnessed and participated in the development of Chinese autos. Facing the current highly competitive Chinese auto market, how to break the development plight of self-owned brands and achieve self-owned brands to become bigger and stronger will become the most important exploration of Jianghuai Automobile in the new 50 years.

Some time ago, Jianghuai Automobile announced that it had lowered its strategic target, and adjusted the “1,600,000 vehicle sales” at the end of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” to the “completed one million vehicles in 2017”. The target gap is obvious. According to the latest data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China’s automobile production and sales have maintained a steady growth in the first quarter, but the market share of self-owned brand cars has declined for seven consecutive months.

Therefore, there are people in the industry who believe that the goal of Jianghuai Automobile to reduce its sales target is to clearly understand and reposition the passenger car market and its own development. According to the data, in 2013, sales of JAC sedan cars were 115,387, a year-on-year decline of 16.55%. The negative impact of the “rusted gate” incident that was exposed for 315 last year is still in effect. Therefore, for JAC, adjustment may be the most pragmatic approach. Including strategic objectives, but also including the entire operating system.

"The development of JAC from commercial vehicles to passenger vehicles has always been partial administrative. The core of our adjustment is to adjust to marketization." Yan Gang said that Jianghuai's adjustments are based on this. Before this, Jianghuai also experienced a big change in the personnel of the passenger car. "Decentralization of nearly 70 ministers," Yan Gang, Jianghuai passenger car marketing company's management structure gradually flattened.

In fact, the contraction adjustment of Jianghuai Automobile also reflects the dilemma of the development of independent brand enterprises to some extent. Since 2012, the Chinese auto market has bid farewell to the “blowout” era and is gradually returning to rational growth. In the face of a fierce competitive environment, the joint venture brands are aggressively competitive, and the independent brands have to face the challenge and respond to the current difficulties through self-adjustment and change. To seek a breakthrough. JAC's adjustment is obviously also reasonable.

On the day of the Jianghuai brand, Xiang Xingchu revealed that in the first quarter of 2014, Jianghuai Automobile sold 119,000 units of various products and sales revenue was RMB 9.04 billion. In his words, Jianghuai has already taken the first step in achieving an intrinsic growth approach of “profit over income and income over sales”.