If foreign carmakers are responding to falling sales by switching to electrification, Chinese carmakers trying to overtake on curves in the new energy market are focusing on the mid-to-high end.

First, BaiC New Energy ARCFOX, which has been silent for nearly four years, finally launched its first truly high-end new energy product T this year. At the same time, with the establishment of ARCFOX Business Division, personnel adjustment and the launch of numerous RESEARCH and development results, people finally saw the changes made by BAIC New Energy for the high-end market behind this series of intensive actions.

On this side, Beijing Auto New Energy is working hard to make up for lost time, while on the other side, Modo'S SAIC is not relaxing. From February 29 "double good" suggestibility posters, carrying a new R in late April to mark "aurora", live to cut in on May 7, 1 hour, parsing R mark design concept, and finally to May 10th, roewe brand day, R marking its first mass-produced CheRongWei MARVEL, R and launch roewe R mark ER6 formal appearance, also like the roewe moves has been point accelerators, from R available to the production car's appearance, only took less than three months.

While BAIC and SAIC are busy promoting their products in advance, Dongfeng group's H division has finally made a move.

Independent Operation wants to make "New Strength" of Chinese made cars

Since May 2019, it has been reported that Dongfeng Group is preparing a high-end new energy project code-named "Plan H", which is particularly mysterious. In the year of its establishment, except for a few marginal news, Dongfeng motor has never made any official statement and publicly disclosed the progress.

However, after a year's silence, on May 6 this year, an open letter from Zhu Yanfeng, chairman and Party secretary of Dongfeng Motor Group, to the employees of H Division was exposed, and the high-end new energy brand of Dongfeng motor group appeared in front of the public again.

Although the letter does not reveal much substantive content, it clearly reveals the following information: H Business Unit is the market of high-end new energy vehicles and bears the heavy responsibility of promoting dongfeng brand. Meanwhile, H Business Unit will have a new organization, a new mechanism and a new business model.

In the interview with The first Electric network, You Zheng, deputy general manager and member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee of Dongfeng Motor Group, further explained the new organization, new mechanism and new business model.

In terms of organization, H Business Unit will operate independently and not be affiliated to any existing subsidiaries of Dongfeng Group. In terms of mechanism, H brand will explore an innovative and integrated development mode of "mature automobile enterprise + new force of vehicle manufacturing". OKR (Goals and key achievements) target management mode of the Internet will be adopted, and the project development will also adopt a matrix parallel development mode. Meanwhile, in terms of business model, H Business Unit will take digitalization as the cornerstone and strive to create a unique brand image and new sales model for users, so as to bring new experience to customers.

Just a few lines of content, you Zheng has shown all the development priorities of H business unit. In particular, compared with other high-end brands launched by traditional auto companies, H Business Division has achieved a rare situation of completely independent operation. This will also represent that, as an independent sub-brand of Dongfeng Motor, H Business Unit will be easier to distinguish and improve its product line positioning, and at the same time, it will be easier to get rid of the impression left on consumers by dongfeng Auto's own brand, slowly get rid of low-end hats, and achieve the goal of impacting the high-end market.

In fact, the innovation of system and mechanism is also the biggest advantage for a new brand separated from the traditional automobile enterprise. Just as You Zheng said, "H Business Unit is positioned as the new strength of China's auto manufacturing industry, with efficient, innovative, pragmatic and flat management and operation mode. We believe that it is a very important aspect to develop the independent brand business.

From this point of view, Dongfeng Automobile has a firm confidence in the upward road of the brand this time.

Well - off can't save the east wind

But after the infrastructure has been built, how can H business Unit stand out from a group of brands?

Speaking of advantages, You zheng believes that the most important thing is the 50 years of experience and accumulation of Dongfeng Group. He said that H Business Unit will fully integrate and make use of dongfeng's core resource advantages, including more than 50 years of dongfeng automobile manufacturing experience, the world's top supply chain system, steady development of strength, the world's leading intelligent manufacturing system, the new five chemical technology accumulation, to create a new high-end new energy brand.

Judging from the current situation, the 50 years' accumulation may not be useful in H sector. For one thing, the length of its years doesn't seem to convince the market or product power, or Tesla, founded only in 2003, wouldn't have reinvented the electric-car sales myth again and again around the world. Regardless of time, the sales volume of new energy products under the independent brand of Dongfeng is negligible.

For example, the Dongfeng Fengshen E70, whose sales surged 82.34 percent last year, sold just 59 units in May and 251 units in the first five months of this year. Last year's sales, up 82.34% from a year earlier, were just 14,900. Meanwhile, most of the 14,900 cars were sold to the b-end market, which is dominated by enterprises and online ride-hailing vehicles, while the C-end users were few and far between.

The experience accumulated in the early stage is basically useless, and who will supply technical blood to H Business Unit in the later stage?

According to the current known information, Jinkang New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd. will be the most important technology source of H Business Unit in the future. At the end of April, dongfeng automobile and chongqing well-off industrial group co., LTD. Signed a "dongfeng and off the whole industry chain to deepen strategic cooperation agreement, the two sides will conduct all aspects of research and development together, from the vehicle platforms, powertrain, SanDian new energy, four areas take the lead in the implementation of electronic architecture, further extend to other research and development.

Among all the treaties, there is a very eye-catching agreement, which is to authorize Jinkang New Energy to use the "Dongfeng Cyrus" brand in high-end new energy vehicles, and the two parties will jointly use the "Cyrus" brand in the future. The first 100 Syris 5s were delivered just ten days before the deal was signed.

No matter what the relationship between "Dongfeng Siris" and H Business Unit is in the future, it is certain that Dongfeng has taken a fancy to the research and development achievements of Jinkang New Energy in high-end products. It is said that the first model of H Division is developed by using the chassis technology of Cyrus 5.

The first step to the high-end, Dongfeng still seems to want to rely on "fetch doctrine" to achieve. Jinkang New Energy was founded by Xiaokang in Silicon Valley as SF MOTORS. SF MOTORS is in the spotlight because Well-off bought a battery development company, InEVit, for $33 million, and Now comes into contact with Martin Eberhard, tesla's co-founder and first CEO. As a result, jinkang New Energy after the name is not polite to challenge Tesla.

But from the streets of xiaokang truck to the starting price of 339,000 yuan pure electric sedan SUV, even with a good product, it is still difficult to convince the market in a short time. There are even reports that mass production plans for the Selis 5 in the US have been halted as the parent company Xiaokang Is facing a complex domestic car market environment, making it untimely to launch new products in the US in the short term.

From the current situation, it is indeed the same. In the domestic market, Syris 5 is far behind Nextev, Ideo, Xiaopeng and other new forces, not to mention tesla. Meanwhile, delivery of the first vehicles, originally scheduled for September 2019, was delayed until April this year. Moreover, unlike the high-profile announcement at that time that the number of customer orders had exceeded 10,000 units, the delay was nearly half a year, and the initial delivery quantity was only 100 units.

Therefore, jinkang New Energy is obviously still in the stage of self-care, and its product strength has yet to be tested by the market. The H Division, which tries to gain experience in manufacturing high-end new energy products here, may not achieve the desired effect.

However, h division is now facing a more serious problem, Dongfeng motor brand power is declining across the board. Dongfeng Renault has been delisted and Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen is in a precarious position. With the strategy of "exchanging quantity for price" for many years, Dongfeng Yueda Kia has already become the cheapest joint venture brand in the hearts of Chinese consumers. Dongfeng Honda in recent years the development of the situation and Guangzhou Honda increasingly open the gap; Infiniti, which is a Japanese high-end brand like Lexus, has a very different performance in The Chinese market...

Dongfeng's joint ventures are in decline, while its own brands are in decline. Qichen, vogue, fengshen, beauty and charm, has let a person listen to name some distinction does not open, and the five major brands of main products, basic it is an entry-level low-end market, product positioning, price range, and late propaganda are similar, so products overlap between internal friction is very serious, finally no one can truly achieve breakthrough. In addition, of the more than 40 models under the independent brand, there are only less than 10 new energy passenger cars, and the market positioning is very vague, the product layout is not clear.

Obviously, it is not an easy thing for Dongfeng Automobile, which has been lagging behind for several times, to break through the encirclements upward. However, the good news is that Dongfeng has an online ride-hailing brand named Dongfeng Chuxing. Even if the final effect is really unsatisfactory, using resources to open the b-end high-end car market may be a way out.