Car Things (public account: chedongxi)
Author ｜Mumi
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"Do we really have a killer weapon to win the future?"
At that time, Wei Jianjun used "life hanging on a line" to describe the situation in which the Great Wall was located, but for the Great Wall at that time, such a statement was still a bit too much - in 2020, Great Wall Motor's operating income was 103.307 billion yuan and its net profit was 5.363 billion yuan, which was still a year that set a new record.
At this stage, Great Wall Motors has really encountered a certain crisis, at least in terms of new energy, it has lagged too much behind its competitors.
Since the beginning of this year, Great Wall's total sales growth has been very difficult. Since February, it has been overtaken by BYD . From January to July this year, Great Wall Motor's cumulative sales were 620,000, while BYD's total sales were 803,000.
. In terms of new energy vehicles, Great Wall Motors' performance is even worse. In the first half of this year, Great Wall's monthly sales of new energy basically remained at a level of just over 10,000, and in one or two months, it even performed only a few thousand units. In the first half of , Great Wall's new energy sales were 74,000 units, only one-tenth of BYD's. There is no need to say how sad Great Wall is. The sales volume of
is one of the most evident evidence. These numbers are nakedly putting the crisis facing Great Wall electric vehicles on the table. The
crisis also affected the stock price of Great Wall Motors. Since the second half of 2020, Great Wall Motors' stock price has been rising all the way, hitting a stock price high of 69.80 yuan in October last year, with a total market value of 644.6 billion yuan, becoming the second domestic car company with market value. But it has been falling all the way since then. As of August 11 this year, Great Wall Motors' closed at 31.86 yuan, down 54.4% from a higher point.
's stock price reflects market expectations and has certain uncertainties, but to a certain extent it also reflects the capital market's disapproval of the long-term development of Great Wall.
And just at the beginning of last month, another wave of senior executives' blood exchanges were encountered within the Great Wall - the former second-in-command Wang Fengying resigned as general manager. This may also reflect that Great Wall Motors is facing difficulties. After all, in companies with smooth sailing conditions, such core personnel changes rarely occur.
All signs seem to prove that the Great Wall's electric cars have reached the moment of fighting to the death.
1. It is difficult to break through the proportion of new energy. Open the gap with competitors.
. Look at the data first.
According to statistics from car and earth, from January last year to July this year, Great Wall New Energy's best monthly sales performance was 22,354 units in December 2021, and the worst performance was 3,870 units in April this year. In the remaining months, it basically remained at around 10,000 units.
Great Wall sales data
In terms of the proportion of new energy, August 2021 was the month with the highest proportion of Great Wall new energy, reaching 16.38%; while May 2021 was the lowest, only 4.14%. Overall, Great Wall's new energy share still fluctuates around 10%.
Great Wall New Energy Proportion Curve
Summary, Great Wall's new energy share is relatively low overall, but from the figure, we can see that the proportion curve fluctuates relatively largely and cannot be stabilized at the same level, which means that Great Wall has not found a path suitable for it in new energy, so it can only stand still.
But the opponents of Great Wall are running with all their might.
Since January this year, the gap in the new energy development of the three independent top: Geely , Great Wall and BYD has been widening. The Great Wall is unfortunately the bad guy at the bottom.
Self-owned Three New Energy Sales Data Comparison
From the chart, we can see intuitively that Great Wall's new energy sales are at a maximum of about 15,000 units, and there is still a downward trend in the past three months. Geely achieved a relatively large breakthrough in June and July, with new energy sales exceeding the 30,000 Taiwan mark for the first time.BYD is far ahead. After announcing the complete suspension of fuel vehicles at the end of March, the monthly sales of new energy have remained above 100,000 units. In July just now, it achieved a monthly sales of more than 160,000, almost aiming to achieve a monthly sales of 200,000 units.
Let’s take a look at the market in the auto market. Except for February and April, due to the Spring Festival holiday and the Shanghai epidemic, which did not exceed 300,000 units, the remaining months were basically maintained at more than 300,000 or even 400,000 or 500,000 units.
Therefore, from the overall situation of new energy, the entire market is still in a stage of rapid growth. Whoever runs faster can eat meat, and whoever runs slower can only wait to drink soup. The experience of Tesla and BYD also proves that new energy vehicles alone can continue to make breakthroughs in the market, and Great Wall obviously has not realized this.
2. The multi-brand strategy failed to work Ora brand was in trouble
behind the bleak sales, it is actually the dilemma of the main force of Great Wall New Energy.
At this stage, new energy vehicles are nothing more than plug-in hybrid, hybrid and pure electric. Great Wall has actually implemented a strategy of parallelizing multiple brands. For example, its WEY and Haval brands all have plug-in hybrid models, but their performance is a bit bleak, with monthly sales only at the level of hundreds of units, and the situation is in a difficult situation.
Great Wall's main force Electric vehicle parameter
Therefore, in Great Wall's new energy vehicle product matrix, the Ora brand is undoubtedly the absolute main force. In 2021, the Ora brand sold a total of 135,000 cars, an increase of 139.9% year-on-year, helping Great Wall Motors' overall sales reach about 15% , which grew by year-on-year.
But Euler's recent performance is not good. It can be said that success or failure is Xiao He.
First of all, as the main new energy brand of Great Wall, Ora has been making efforts in the track of low-priced small cars for a long time, but looking at the entire micro car market, no one can break the sales myth of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV for the time being.
A very obvious example is that in the past year, Oula's main small car Black Cat has not shown its advantages in the micro car market. Compared with Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, Black Cat is still in a state of fierce competition with other pure electric cars at offline sales of 10,000 units.
Sales from January 2021 to January 2022
This has led to an embarrassing situation for Ora - as the only new energy brand that Great Wall can make outstanding achievements, its models are not sales well enough, and the price of bicycles is too low, so the overall profit margin is too small. For reference, BYD's new energy vehicle models cover more models with prices below 100,000 yuan to above 200,000 yuan, and the overall sales are far above Ora.
Ora is clearly aware of this problem - in mid-February this year, the two models of Great Wall Ora and brands, , were exposed to stop receiving new orders. Many users believe this is an important signal of production suspension. But then Oula responded to the official replies denied the rumor of suspension of production, but also admitted that "there are difficulties currently being encountered." According to the official statement given by Ora, the current net loss of a single unit of the Cat model is more than 10,000 yuan.
Oula Black Cat
Therefore, in the long run, if Eula wants to break the profit dilemma, it is destined to give up the pure electric market of less than 100,000 yuan. But if low-priced models such as Black Cat and White Cat are really stopped, Ora, which relies on these products to open up market popularity, is destined to harm the trust of a group of consumers.
On the other hand, Euler is still experiencing a crisis of trust.
In November last year, the Ora brand was exposed to false propaganda of the car chips - Haomao reported that the car system adopts Qualcomm's professional in-vehicle intelligent service platform and has a CPU core (the parameters are Qualcomm's latest 8155 chip). However, a technical expert found out through the car machine engineering mode that the vehicle was equipped with Intel chips that were released 5 years ago, with weaker performance and lower cost.
can be said to be a major crisis for Ora in brand integrity management, and it was also from that time that Great Wall's stock price began to decline all the way.
Great Wall's stock price trend in the past year
products, currently, the only pure electric models on sale in Great Wall are only three of Ora's cars, namely Good Cat, Good Cat GT and Ballet Cat. These three cars cover a price range of around 100,000 to 200,000 yuan, but the style is relatively single (unique) and is mainly aimed at female consumers. This year, Ora will also launch new models such as Punk Cat and Lightning Cat, but compared with the product iteration speed of its competitors BYD and other competitors, this pace is still a little slower.
Currently, Oula's sales basically support about 90% of Great Wall New Energy's sales. Therefore, from this perspective, Great Wall still needs to enrich its product camp in pure electric.
3. The transformation of new energy is not determined. Hydrogen energy is the true love
Back to the root of the problem, why did Great Wall not keep up with the market? Instead, they gradually fell behind?
In fact, Great Wall's new energy road has not started late. As early as the beginning of the new century, Great Wall Motors had a related layout in the new energy vehicle industry, and has successively launched a number of new energy vehicles such as Elf EV and Haval Strong Mix.
But in the past twenty years, Great Wall Motors seems to be a little unstable in new energy. In 2016, Wei Jianjun announced that Great Wall Motors only serves as a follower of new energy vehicles. He believes that China's power generation mainly relies on coal-fired power, so electric vehicles are not actually the real clean energy vehicle ; and it took a full 10 years from its debut in 2008 to its establishment in 2018...
It can be said that the transformation of new energy is not determined enough, too few product camps and too slow launch pace are the biggest problems facing Great Wall at present.
Previously, Great Wall Motors publicly announced at the 2025 strategic conference and the 8th Science and Technology Festival that it would launch more than 50 new energy vehicles by 2025, and the sales of Great Wall new energy vehicles will reach 80% by that time.
According to the plan, Great Wall's new energy technology routes mainly include pure electric, hybrid (PHEV+HEV), and hydrogen energy . Among them, Ora focuses on pure electric, salon focuses on hydrogen energy + pure electric, and Haval, WEY, tank brands focus on hybrid technology.
You can see that hydrogen energy is also a route that the Great Wall attaches great importance to. This is also one of the major reasons why Great Wall is hesitating on electric routes.
In 2015, Great Wall began to study the hydrogen energy industry. In 2018, Great Wall established a hydrogen energy technology center and acquired 51% stake in Shangran Power from energy storage battery manufacturer Mengshi Technology to complete a wholly-owned holding of Shangran Power, , and began to deeply deploy the hydrogen energy industry chain. In 2019, Great Wall established Weishi Energy Technology Co., Ltd. to be responsible for its hydrogen energy business.
In March 2021, Great Wall Weishi Energy released the full-scene solution of the automotive-grade "hydrogen power system" "Hydrogen and Lime Technology". In the same year, the 100 49-ton hydrogen heavy truck projects of Weishi Energy were put into operation.
Great Wall Weishi Energy Fuel Cell
In terms of hydrogen energy passenger cars, there were also rumors at the end of May this year that Great Wall Motor's fuel cell passenger car brand and product internal are expected to be released by the end of this year. Missed the electric track, maybe the fuel cell track will be a different way for the Great Wall to take a look.
4. Electric intelligence is advancing. High-end brands are already on the way.
. Currently, the various problems in the new energy business are, and Great Wall is actually starting to change it.
Until 2020, Great Wall Motors had only one pure electric brand, Ora. Although Ora's performance was acceptable with its unique brand positioning and its market strategy of focusing on low-priced cars, Great Wall still had a large gap in the electric vehicle track, and at this time, players such as Tesla and BYD with first-mover advantages had already seized a large amount of market share in the market, and Great Wall began to realize its backwardness.
Therefore, in 2020, Great Wall began to plan a brand new smart electric luxury car brand, with the internal code name "SL Project" and later renamed "Salon Auto". In 2021, Salon Auto's first model, Mechron Dragon, was released at the Guangzhou Auto Show with a price of 488,000 yuan.
Salon's first car, Mechsaurus, is equipped with a large 115kWh battery pack, with a CLTC range of 802 kilometers and accelerating by 100 kilometers for 3.7 seconds. The data of the electric drive system is very strong.
Salon Car Mecha Dragon
At the same time, it is also equipped with a multi-screen intelligent cockpit with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 cockpit SoC as the core, as well as a high-speed and urban multi-scene L2 autonomous driving system, which also follows Tesla, Xiaopeng and other leading players in terms of intelligence. The backbone of the
salon is the old Great Wall people. For example, CTO Yang Yanqing has worked on the Great Wall for 14 years. Based on these backbone, Salon vigorously introduced a group of talents from Internet and technology companies. It can be said that the salon will be a trump card for Great Wall in high-end new energy, but it is unknown whether this car can make Great Wall famous in the high-end pure electric market.
. Great Wall is not to be outdone in terms of electrification and intelligent technology, and is constantly improving its layout.
For example, Great Wall Motor's DHT hybrid technology has a principle similar to BYD DM-i and Honda i-MMD. It adopts a pure electric mode at low speed, supporting two structures: series and parallel. In addition, it provides a two-speed reducer, which has a more complex structure, so it can bring a better driving texture when accelerating.
Urban NOH Road Test
In terms of intelligent driving, Great Wall Motors incubated with Haomo Intelligent Xing has successfully equipped 6 Great Wall star models, including Weipai Mocha, Weipai Macchiato, Weipai Latte, Haval Beast, Tank 300, and Tank 500, achieving the functional iteration of HWA high-speed intelligent driving system, NOH intelligent pilot assisted driving system, and urban NOH. Its driving scenario can cover 310,000 kilometers of highways and urban expressways across the country, and is extending to urban roads.
In addition, Great Wall also started reforming from internal blood exchange.
At the end of July this year, Wang Fengying, the former second-in-command of Great Wall Motors, resigned from his position as general manager and was taken over by technical executive Mu Feng. According to the latest news, some media reported that Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd.'s senior vice president and general manager of sales company, Weipai CEO O Li Ruifeng will be promoted to CGO (Chief Growth Officer) of Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. to manage the company's brand business. The latter's most popular one was to angrily criticize Huawei on Weibo .
Li Ruifeng spoke on Weibo
From the perspective of promoting Li Ruifeng to be responsible for brand marketing, Great Wall seems to be interested in changing its previous marketing style and strategy. From another perspective, the senior management of Great Wall also seems to think that there were also gaps in marketing in the past.
Indeed, whether it is compared with new car-making forces such as Wei Xiaoli or old rivals like BYD, Great Wall has been very few topics in electric vehicles in the past. This is also the point that Great Wall suffers more in electric vehicles.
Conclusion: Great Wall needs to accelerate embracing new energy
Last year, Wei Jianjun showed the outside world the five-year plan of Great Wall Motors - by 2025, global automobile sales will reach 4 million units, operating income will exceed 600 billion yuan, and the proportion of new energy vehicles will reach 80%.
But at the time when Wei Jianjun made this bold statement, we see that Great Wall is still facing the situation of new and old brands not meeting new and old brands, and has not made much achievements in the new energy market.
's five-year plan has passed a year in a blink of an eye. Judging from the past few months in 2022, the growth of Great Wall has not changed particularly significantly. There is no doubt that this year will be a challenging year for the Great Wall.
From the perspective of the overall environment, the entire automobile industry is being tested by the supply chain crisis ; and for Great Wall itself, how to change the product structure and fully embrace new energy is a proposition that must be considered in the next stage.
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