The Chinese car has gradually become the two major camps domestically squeezed by Rio Tinto's overseas markets

Standard & Poor's downgraded the US sovereign credit rating and hit the global economy. Affected by this, GM, Ford and other vehicle manufacturers as well as the largest US car dealership group share prices have fallen. This triggered pessimism in the car sales market. Correspondingly, the debt crisis in Europe also caused great fluctuations in the European automotive market.

With the macroeconomic and political environment unstable, the sales growth of the Chinese auto market continues to decline. According to the statistics of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the cumulative production and sales volume of passenger cars in the first 7 months of 2011 were 6,826,400 and 6,333,000, respectively, with an increase of 9.9% and 9.3% respectively. It is expected that the performance of the market next is still not optimistic.

As the increase in the Chinese auto market fell, the volatility of the Chinese car brands was particularly evident. According to the data, in the first half of this year, a total of 3.615 million passenger cars sold under the brand of Chinese cars were sold, a year-on-year decrease of 0.82%, accounting for 44.39% of the total sales of passenger cars, and the occupancy rate decreased by 2.96 percentage points from the same period. Among them, sales of mainstream independent brands such as Chery, BYD, Brilliance, Chang'an, and SAIC passenger cars all experienced declines in varying degrees.

At present, the Chinese cars gradually form two camps, the independent brands owned by the group represented by the above-mentioned steam Roewe, FAW Pentium, and Dongfeng Fengshen, and the independent brands mainly including Chery, BYD, and Geely. Together with the joint-venture vehicle manufacturers that have successively launched their own joint venture brands, Chinese domestic brands have become more complex.

In the face of changing markets, what are the prospects for the Chinese car? From August 2 to August 8, 2011, the Auto Research Institute of the newspaper conducted a joint investigation with Gasgoo. 2219 people in the industry participated in the survey. They gave a prejudgement to the trend of the Chinese car brand.

The Lost Years On July 7, 2011, the 2011 Fortune Global 500 list was officially released: Dongfeng Motor had revenue of USD 55.748 billion and net profit of USD 2.48 billion, ranking 145th; Shanghai Automotive’s operating revenue was US$54.457 billion and net profit of US$1.914 billion, ranking 151; FAW Group’s operating income of US$43.434 billion and net profit of US$2.126 billion, ranking No. 197; Chang’an Automobile’s operating revenue of US$37.996 billion and net profit of US$225 million. In 226. Although GAC, BAIC, etc. have not ranked in the world's top 500, but the good performance of profit growth also makes these large-scale state-owned enterprises have sufficient capital investment in the development of their own brand business.

In the "12th Five-Year Plan" announced by SAIC, it is proposed that after investing more than 10 billion yuan in the early stage for self-development, it will invest more than 20 billion yuan in the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" and a total of 37 billion yuan will be invested in independent research and development. Strive to produce and sell independent brands and localized R&D cars to achieve an annual breakthrough of 40%. FAW is equally generous in its own brand investment. During the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, FAW invested an additional RMB 19 billion in the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” investment of approximately RMB 13 billion for its own brand R&D, aiming to comprehensively upgrade autonomous cars, medium and heavy trucks, light vehicles, and mini-vehicles. Bus market competitiveness. Dongfeng, Chang'an, GAC, and Beiqi groups have all set large-scale investment plans for the promotion of self-owned brand businesses.

However, the survey results show that 40% of the respondents believe that the Chinese brands represented by Chery, BYD, and Geely are much more tolerant in the market than their own brands owned by major auto groups.

Thirty-one percent blamed the large-scale auto groups for their too-competitive competitive environment and the lack of entrepreneurial spirit required for independent brand building. It has been widely questioned that satisfying the huge profits brought by the joint ventures, the lagging development of self-owned brand businesses of several major groups has been criticized by the industry. Leaders pay attention to performance evaluation, and they are hard to make decisions on the independent business with huge uncertain short-term prospects. The lack of entrepreneurial spirit causes the entire team to lose the enthusiasm and innovation ability to develop independent brands. After the central government showed its willingness and determination to develop its own brand, these groups began to really value this business but missed the golden decade of development.

Inward or outward As China's auto market fluctuates, the establishment of production plants in Chinese markets outside of China, such as JAC, Chery, Geely, etc., sparked global debate.

On July 19, 2011, Chery Automobile invested USD 400 million in Brazil to establish a new plant with a planned production capacity of 150,000 vehicles. Chery has positioned itself as an important base for the radiation of the South American market.

On August 1, 2011, JAC decided to invest 600 million U.S. dollars to establish a production plant in Brazil. The new production plant has a planned production capacity of 100,000 vehicles and is expected to start production in 2014.

On August 3, 2011, Geely revealed the establishment of a production plant in Indonesia. According to overseas media reports, Geely plans to invest 2 billion U.S. dollars in Indonesia to establish a production base. Covers markets in Southeast Asia and Australia. By 2014, its planned production capacity will be 30,000 vehicles. Afterwards, Geely Automobile stated that it did have plans to build a plant in Indonesia, but the specific details have not yet been determined.

Corresponding to this situation, China's state-owned large-scale automobile group has been far more stretched in this aspect. Among them, the self-owned brand of BAIC Group has been the most questioned. BAIC hopes to use the Saab-related intellectual property acquired in 2009 to develop high-end self-owned brands, but the industry generally believes that such a brand is not suitable for the current status of BAIC development: short time for brand incubation, shortage of funds for network construction, marketing Risks such as underestimation are all problems that they must face.

Among the self-owned brands of the state-owned large-scale auto group, Shanghai Automotive's Roewe and the MG brand received more support. 57% of respondents believe that SAIC's own brands have a certain degree of competitiveness, but also face difficulties in technology, network development, and brand promotion.

In the development of the Chinese market and the expansion of overseas markets, Chinese cars have gradually formed two different ideas. In terms of expanding into overseas markets, most of the world’s multinational car manufacturers also have similar experiences.