High-end competition is endowed by The Times with more meaning of interpretation and contrast.

     In May this year, SAIC Roewe officially launched the "dual-standard strategy". The new R standard will be used in all its mid-to-high-end new-energy pure electric vehicles, while the new Libiao will continue to carry out the mission of internet-oriented and youth strategy.

       Vertically, this is roewe's third foray upmarket. In the past, Roewe promoted the Roewe 750, Roewe 950 and roewe W5 in the high-end market. However, the roewe 350, which is aimed at the economy market, was the most popular product. Later, the listing of Roewe Marvel X was another new attempt by SAIC to attack the high-end market by itself. Unfortunately, high-end models including the RX8 of roewe did not meet the ideal market expectations.

      Saic, the first two attempts to use roewe challenge high-end market, in the mission faw independent high-end red flag of the situation is not so good, in a long period of time, as the eldest son of the republic of the red flag was the doubt, from the technical research and development, to the marketing strategy, to the terminal sales, covered with "official" coat, market performance has been disappointing.

       Times have changed, this red flag is no longer that red flag. After two years of hard work, the new Red Flag has finally been transformed from a "national car" to a "national car" in terms of brand building and product positioning, which has set a milestone for the high-end road of FAW Group.

       High-end has always been the only way for China's auto industry to change from "big" to "strong". On the contrary, Tesla and Nextev are also leading the transformation of the inherent meaning of high-end in the direction of technology and new trend in the new era, and high-end competition is endowed by The Times with more interpretation angles and significance of comparison. Faw and SAIC, competing in the multi-dimensional high-end competition, are constantly evolving and changing.

The keeper

Standing in the arena of the new round of competition, the keeper is SAIC.

        Cadillac has long shouldered saic's share of the market for high-end cars, especially luxury cars, but the brand has struggled to make headway. As we all know, although the domestic car market in 2019 presents a general trend of decline, the performance of the luxury car group is eye-catching. The first-tier echelon represented by ABB rises against the trend, and most of the second-tier luxury brands also have a good result of year-on-year growth. But in the same year, Cadillac sales continued to decline.

       The reasons for Cadillac's failure are very complicated. Among them, the deep discount sales of ATs-L and other models hurt the brand premium and directly affected the terminal sales. When China 5 switched to China 6, Cadillac also failed to seize the opportunity to launch Country 6 models and lost the important opportunity to recover the failure.

       And SAIC-Audi, which has attracted much attention in the industry, frequently broke the news of faW-Audi dealers' protests before it "settled in Shanghai", which made the progress of the project repeatedly caused waves. Then the dispute finally came to an end, and the delay of the business and the slowness of the process became the focus of a new "tug of war". Even when everything is officially declared to be "proceeding normally according to plan", it is still unknown when Audi remarried SAIC will bring good sales volume dimension to Southern Volkswagen from the perspective of current product layout.

       On the other hand, SAIC-GM-Wuling's Baojun also officially launched a new LOGO in 2019, trying to tear off the label of "low price and high match", hoping to gain a share of the market from the higher-end segment. As the highest point of SAIC-GM-Wuling brand matrix, Baojun's new logo is first used on the RS-5 built by Baojun based on the new R platform. However, since the implementation of the high-end strategy, we find that Baojun seems to compromise with the former in terms of "seizing market share" and "brand high-end".

      According to the "car commune" thick line observation, new baojun in the second half of 2019 there has been a terminal for the trend of "going down", such as the only listed in October last year new baojun RS - 3, in the part of the city has low to 7 ~ 80000 yuan, and in the first half of this year is to the market of mini electric car E300, directly back to the 60000 yuan is the minimum price line.

       In the view of Automobile Commune, the most important thing for automobile group to promote its high-end development is to deal with the "span" and "breadth". The so-called "span" refers to the high-end product ladder, the new car launch dimension should be step by step, not too big step. Great Wall Motor launched the Haval H8 in order to push into the high-end SUV market, but its premium capacity was limited, and the final sales ended in a dismal end. Haval H7, which was launched in accordance with the plan with a lower positioning, also failed before H8, until the WEY brand was introduced. This is a classic example of not handling the "span" well. For SAIC and FAW, the "span" of the high-end product matrix is handled just fine.

      The so-called "breadth" involves the allocation of resources and strategic deployment. At its best, it is an intensive approach rather than one that is too big to concentrate on big tasks. Saic's "breadth" is to blame. The group structure is essentially a "combination" of SAIC-GM, SAIC-VOLKSWAGEN, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-Independent. It is difficult to focus resources on the process of high-end development, and it also fights on its own. Therefore, in the forward research and development strength, product construction ability, platform and other hardware facilities are not mature conditions, the resource allocation is scattered, high-end journey naturally has little effect.

The attacker, FAw

On the other side of the ring, faW.

      In 2019, Hongqi's sales volume broke through the 100,000 mark, with a year-on-year growth of more than 200%, fully one year ahead of the planned "sales volume of 100,000 in 2020". Even in 2020, when COVID-19 was at its peak, Hongqi's total sales exceeded 70,000 units from January to June, with a year-on-year increase of 111%. It was not easy for hongqi to rise against the market in an environment where the overall car market was affected by the epidemic and there was hardly any preferential treatment at the terminal.

      Undeniably, with the attitude of the attacker, the red flag in the road to high-end, "trend" has been up. The most core and key figure throughout the process of high-end of FAW is Xu Liuping. Since 2017, FAW has launched a comprehensive reform, integrating independent plates, setting up separate research and development institutions, and recruiting all employees for posts... In 2019, the gap between FAW and Dongfeng, the number two, was only 145,000, which was also significantly narrowed compared with SAIC, whose sales suffered a decline.

       At the same time, increase a series of measures such as factory expansion also reflect from the side, red flag to achieve higher annual sales target place shows the determination. Earlier, FAW Hongqi invested 7.8 billion yuan to build a new new energy vehicle plant in Jilin province, mainly producing Hongqi new energy vehicles and intelligent connected vehicles. The project is scheduled to be completed and put into operation in 2022, with an annual vehicle production capacity of 200,000 vehicles.

      Like SAIC's Cadillac, Audi also plays an important role in stabilizing high-end market segments within FAW. Due to limited space, the contribution of this brand to FAW's sales in the past cannot be detailed. However, it is worth mentioning that faW-VOLKSWAGEN Audi is obviously better prepared than Southern Volkswagen in the battle for the "new four modernization". In the second half of this year, e-tron domestic version, E-tron Sportback and other models will be introduced to the market, and the new energy field will continue to make efforts to further enhance its market advantage in the luxury car field.

      In addition, faW since Xu Liuping took office, almost lift the group's strength to develop the red flag. Let Red Flag positioning in the independent high-end brand, Pentium positioning in the economic passenger car brand, and jiefang focus on the commercial vehicle sector to get a piece of the cake, clear strategic deployment, as well as targeted brand operation, is faW independent high-end can quickly turn the situation.

     It is worth mentioning that after the independence of The Jetta brand under FAW-Volkswagen, it has shoulded the heavy responsibility of deeply developing the economy market. While consolidating the entry-level market business, it can also increase the premium of other brands under FAW, so that "brother brands" can focus on the high-end competition without any other attention.

      The high-end process of SAIC and FAW is just a mirror of the "upward trend" of the brands of large domestic automobile manufacturers. Although looked from the current fundamentals, through a lot of detours roewe with new energy, still have a high likelihood of success, and snaps up the flag of the "four modernizations" special inflection point turn ushered in the new development opportunity, but you felt, not to advance is to go back, including has sharply divided difference between the north and south of the masses, conservative or pride.

Only recognize the current, can catch up with the pace of The Times and the car market.