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The rapid growth of the Chinese auto market has also stimulated the expansion plans of major auto groups. As a result, the voice of auto overcapacity has been heard. In order to really strengthen and expand the Chinese auto industry, the relevant national departments have also been promoting the merger and reorganization of the automotive industry. At present, the “four big and four small” pattern has been formed. From the current point of view, this pattern is still expected to continue to adjust.

For a country, independent brands bear the important task of making the auto industry bigger and stronger. However, the innate deficiencies of China's auto independent brands and the impact of the large environment in the latter period have made it impossible for the development to become truly independent. In the current context of the country’s reorganization of the automobile industry, how independent brands should break into the focus of the industry’s attention.

At the time of the ebb tide, I learned who was nude. This famous quote describes the current domestic auto brand as appropriate.

Under the catalysis of several stimulus policies in the past two years, domestic self-owned brand car companies ushered in a collective revelry, but after several bad policies, they fell into a situation of total loss. Standing at the node where the overall tone of the Chinese auto industry has grown from strong to strong, it remains to be seen how the weak self-owned brand car companies have become a problem to be solved.

Policy pressures again

Following the exit of the old-fashioned trade-in policy and the purchase tax rebate policy at the beginning of the year, due to the rapid decline of micro-faceted sales, Chinese self-owned brand car companies began to lose market share. At the same time, Beijing and other places have successively introduced the policy of controlling blockage, which has once again brought heavy blows to automakers with independent brands.

Dong Yang, Secretary-General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, has called for more than one time and he hopes that no policies will be introduced that are not conducive to the development of the auto industry. Even before today, there were rumors that the government was considering the introduction of relevant policies to boost the auto market, based on the unfavorable situation of the overall decline in the domestic automobile market.

However, the voice did not drop, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a voice saying that it focused on the eight industries, such as automobiles, steel, cement, and machinery manufacturing, and promoted the combination of powerful companies, regional mergers and acquisitions, overseas mergers and acquisitions, and investment cooperation to increase industrial concentration. This time, the automotive industry was ranked first, which shows the importance of policy promotion.

Under such a background, domestic auto brands have once again faced the choice between life and death.

The results of a joint survey conducted by the "First Financial Daily" and Gasgoo.com on the prospects for the development of independent brands shows that over 28% of the 2,818 industry insiders voted that independent brands are threatened with extinction.

Among them, 20% believe that there is a high probability that an independent brand will be “annihilated”. Another 52% of people believe that some independent brands will gradually withdraw from the stage of history, but not all will die. In contrast, only 23% of those who are completely optimistic about their independent brands expect it to be independent. This group of people believes that there is no possibility that the independent brands will be “annihilated”, and the development prospects of independent brands are bright.

According to the current development model, domestic self-owned brands are basically divided into three categories. One is the self-owned brands of large groups represented by the above steam “Roewe”, FAW “Pentium” and Dongfeng “Aeolus”; the other is the government’s intention. Promote the joint ventures such as SAIC-GM-Wuling “Baojun”, Dongfeng Nissan “Kaichen” and GAC Honda “Idea”, and the third category is represented by private enterprises such as Chery, Geely, Great Wall, and BYD. Independent brand.

Regarding the definition of self-owned brands, Chen Jianguo, deputy director of the Industry Coordination Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in an interview with this newspaper that to identify what is called an independent brand is not complicated, it depends on who the LOGO and LOGO of the vehicle body is and which capital it belongs to.

In fact, no matter what kind of attributes of the independent brands, with the joint venture product line continues to explore, the independent brands are faced with the problem of how to rescue themselves from the government support problems.

In this survey, the biggest development dilemma that the current independent brands are encountering is that the voting rate of the “Comprehensive competitive advantage of Sino-foreign joint ventures has become even more apparent” reached 33%; secondly, 24% believe that due to large automotive groups and foreign capital The influence of the government's formulation of policies is enormous, making it difficult for some industrial policies to tilt toward independent brands, and thus cannot really enjoy the positive stimulus brought by the policies.

In addition, the unfavorable environment of the consumer and the dilemma that the demographic dividend gradually disappeared led to an increase in the absolute cost of the company. It obtained 22% and 14% respectively.

In fact, in the camp of self-owned brands that are still operating independently and independently, with the exception of a few state-owned enterprises such as Chery and Brilliance, most of them are private enterprises. If Geely Automobile, which has completed 100% annexation of Volvo, is established by relying on batteries, it will be able to make significant progress in the automobile field. The development of BYD Auto, in addition to Great Wall Motors, Lifan Motors, etc., are all private capital-controlled vehicle companies, and most of these companies are involved in the automotive industry in the past decade, compared to some in the 1980s and 1990s. Entering the Chinese market, or large-scale central SOEs such as SAIC Motor, FAW, and Dongfeng, which have deeper foundations, have been weak in terms of their power and influence in policy formulation.

As the joint venture's market share in the Chinese market continues to be consolidated, the brand and quality of the product are more deeply rooted in people's minds, and after-sales service and other aspects have been further improved, and the comprehensive competitive advantage has been fully demonstrated. Not only has the independent brands been hindered from advancing towards the mid- to high-end market, but it also intends to explore the low-end market through joint-venture autonomous models and small cars, further squeezing the living space of independent brands.

Focus on breaking through

It is worth noting that the merger and restructuring of the auto industry that the government is leading to has brought certain challenges to the survival of independent brands. In our joint survey, 27% of people were concerned that independent brands were annexed by large SOEs in the process of mergers and reorganizations. Another 53% of people affirmed this possibility, but they believe that comprehensive strength is expected to be avoided.

Objectively speaking, several companies in the first camp of independent brands have already become very competitive, and the market scale is also rising year by year. For example, in March of last year, Chery achieved the offline of the 2 millionth vehicle, and formed a complete product planning system from complete vehicle powertrains, key spare parts development, trial production, and cars with completely independent intellectual property rights. The R&D system was basically completed; after Geely took DSI and Volvo in the bag, its own R&D system and brand influence were effectively consolidated, and the end market started to open up a new situation with the successful launch of the Dorsett car series; likewise, Buffett was favored, and afterwards he worked hand in hand with Daimler. The development of BYD also won a good market share.

In addition, there are Great Wall Motors, which have gradually gained a firm foothold in overseas markets and have strong profitability. It seems that these independent brands do not have any signs of disappearing.

However, the need for government support is still the biggest voice of self-owned car makers. Xie Zhihong, deputy general manager of Guangqi Motor Vehicle Company, said in an interview with this newspaper that during the past 30 years, GAC has shortened its own time to make cars through joint ventures, but the market did not completely transfer technology, and it is particularly regrettable that the high-end passenger vehicle industry The products have been occupied by multinational corporations. In fact, all domestic automobile enterprises are wage earners and earn some hard-earned money.

“The gap between us and other people in research and development, standard equipment, and electrical technology is not the slightest. We hope that the government will provide policy support.” Xie Zhihong bluntly.

The survey shows that 81% of people believe that independent brands are worthy of government support.

In fact, the independent brand holds the core independent research and development technology, has an effective continuation ability for the brand development, and can dominate the brand's future development direction, and at the same time it can autonomously control and make decisions on the economic benefits generated by the brand. Not only is it beneficial to prevent profits from being captured on a large scale by foreign capital, but more importantly it can enhance the core competitiveness of the entire automobile industry in China. This is the basis and the only way for a country to truly strengthen the auto industry.

Xu Changming, director of the Resource Development Department of the State Information Center, pointed out in an interview with this newspaper that he should subvert the inherent stereotypes of the low cost of self-owned brands. "The proportion used by Toyota Motor Corporation in the use of universal parts is very high. One component is It is used on various models. Under this circumstance, the cost of the scale expansion is very obvious, and our own brand has no cost advantage."

As the maturity of China's auto market increases, the increasing concentration of the entire industry will be the trend. There are both mergers and reorganizations arising from free competition at the market level, as well as intervention and intervention by government administrative forces. In the foreseeable future, it will be inevitable for some vehicle companies that have no competitive advantage to be acquired and consolidated.

In the increasingly severe living environment, where are the outlets for independent brands? "For group companies, such as FAW, Dongfeng, SAIC, BAIC, including GAC, the financial strength is very strong, we must set the strength of the entire group to do its own brand, relying solely on the establishment of an independent brand company, the probability of success is very small. Xu Changming said frankly.