BYD pushes new brand local car companies to force "slow increase period"

Following on the 30th and Daimler co-published a joint venture brand "Tengshi" to focus on the development of electric vehicles, Shenzhen BYD Auto announced in Shenzhen on the 31st that its new car G61.5TIDDCT was officially launched. Due to the combination of turbocharger, direct injection in the cylinder, dual clutch and other technologies, this car is positioned as BYD's "highest flagship model." The industry estimates that this year will likely become the most popular year for the launch of new models of self-owned brands.

At the launch conference of the day, Hou Yan, general manager of BYD Auto Sales Co., Ltd., said that the high-tech used by the car was independently developed by the company, which improved the competitiveness of the product and was expected to win better performance in the market.

In the eyes of some market participants, BYD’s continued high-profile market moves demonstrate the strong desire of this local auto company to accelerate its pace of self-repair and meet the severe market test. This is also the common choice of other local auto companies in the near future.

Affected by changes in policies and other factors, China’s auto market began to “cool down” rapidly in 2011, causing almost all local auto makers to feel the pressure of the market. Taking BYD as an example, the annual report released at the end of February showed that the company's net profit in 2011 was 1.403 billion yuan, a decrease of 44.38% year-on-year. At the same time, Chery Automobiles, the sales champion of China's own independent brand, has experienced insufficient utilization of capacity for nine consecutive years. Falling situation.

Market participants believe that the local auto companies have suffered setbacks and have a direct relationship with many joint venture auto companies in vigorously promoting new low-end domestic brands and intensifying market competition. Xu Minfeng, an analyst in the auto industry of Zhongyuan Securities, believes that this has further narrowed the price gap between joint ventures and local manufacturers, resulting in the squeeze on the survival of local companies.

"As the competition in the low-end market becomes saturated, it is inevitable that independent brand car companies will move to second- and third-tier cities and enter the middle and high-level markets. To enter these markets, we must rely on strong products as a stepping stone." said Mei Songlin, an expert in the automotive industry consulting industry. .

According to market predictions, given that this year's overall domestic auto market will maintain a slow growth trend, auto companies, especially local auto makers, will pay more attention to increasing investment in technology research and development and improve their competitiveness in terms of management and product quality.

According to the person in charge of the BYD Auto Company, taking this company as an example, the model with the price of 4 to 60,000 yuan was the main force in the earlier period, and now it is the mid-range product of more than 100,000 yuan. The newly-listed G6 is equipped with a dual-clutch automatic transmission and a turbocharged direct-injection engine independently developed by the company, breaking the monopoly of technology in developed countries and "greatly increasing the weight of our competition with the joint-venture brand models."

“From the model point of view, we are in the stage of upgrading and transformation. In this process, we will lose some of the inherent market, but with the success of the transformation and upgrading, the market competitiveness and the development potential of the enterprise will be greatly enhanced.” He said .

It is worth noting that BYD is just a microcosm of the recent "carrying power" of local car companies. The market information that has been disclosed so far shows that before the Beijing Auto Show was held in April, there will be a new batch of new products on the domestic auto brand cars, and this year it will likely become the year when the new models of self-owned brands will be listed the most.

The market also responded well to this. According to the latest statistics from the China Automobile Association, in February this year, China's self-owned passenger car brands sold a total of 522,800 vehicles, accounting for 43.3% of the total sales of passenger cars, up 1.3 percentage points from the previous month. Among them, the sales of self-owned brand cars were 236,600, accounting for 28.5% of the total sales of cars, and the market share increased by 1.3 percentage points from the previous month.