Nanchen Observation: The “Inflection Point of Mind” in Chinese Auto Market is More Important

According to the statistics of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in May of this year, the production and sales of domestic automobiles showed a trend of sluggish growth, which continued to decline month-on-month, and the decline over the same period last year. In the first five months, the year-on-year increase in automobile production and sales continued to decline from the previous April, with commercial vehicles showing negative growth year-on-year. Previously, due to multiple factors such as the withdrawal of encouraged policies, high oil prices, and the earthquake in Japan, the growth rate of the domestic automobile market fell sharply. In April, the first negative growth occurred in 27 months. The China Automobile Association expects that the growth rate of domestic automobile production and sales this year may be lower than expected.

Experts in the industry believe that all indications are that with the 2011 industry as a whole, the “blowout” type rapid growth of the Chinese car industry has continued for 10 years has come to an end.

The reporter believes that regardless of whether the April sales figures are true long-term inflection points in the Chinese auto market, the Chinese auto industry should quickly correct the “inflection point of mind”: that is, the development mode of ultra-high speed, single copy number growth has come to an end. Auto companies should Rationally forecast the scale of the automobile market at the end of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”, reasonably control the scale of production capacity, face up to increasingly severe market competition, and actively seek breakthroughs in upgrading products, service quality, and accelerating the development of new energy vehicles, with limited space for growth. In the period of time, the transition from an auto country to a car powerhouse will be promoted through industrial restructuring and upgrading.

For a long time, China's auto industry has been immersed in a kind of inertia that is based on the expansion of quantity. The main background is that domestic demand for automobiles has been booming in the past ten years, causing the production and sales volume of the automotive market to hit record highs. The second, third, fourth, and fifth factories of the automakers were successively launched. Corporate planning was not able to catch up with the "explosion of demand," and production capacity could not keep pace with the market. This makes many auto companies have become accustomed to using a high-speed growth of linear thinking to "bet", hoping to step on the pace of changes in the automotive market.

We must also realize that this kind of development model based on quantitative expansion is the driving force of the “abscissa” in fact the expansion of production capacity of the multinational automobile giants such as Volkswagen, General Motors, Toyota, Nissan and so on; “ordinate” The driving force is the expansion of GDP and employment of major automobile groups such as SAIC, FAW, and Dongfeng in their respective provinces and regions.

The reporter believes that the explosion of growth in the analysis of the decade has hidden great hidden dangers behind the lively appearance. For example, the control of core technologies and the creation of high-end brands by independent brands are not ideal. The continuous expansion of market demand has become a decompression valve for market competition. Both the rise of the ship and the interest have become market characteristics. However, the survival of the fittest and the large-scale integration of enterprises have not yet emerged. The lagging standards of China's auto industry and the lagging of laws and regulations have not been fundamentally reversed in the past decade, and the consumer environment is still unsatisfactory.

Especially in this round of international financial crisis, the Chinese auto market has become a safe haven and savior for the global auto giants. China's performance has become an indispensable highlight in the future planning of major auto giants. Under this background, the production and sales targets set by automobile manufacturers at the end of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” in the Chinese market are becoming more and more ambitious. In reality, however, the negative effects of energy supply, land supply shortages, environmental pollution, and traffic jams that have been brought about by the explosive growth of the domestic automobile market for many years have also reached the point where time must be faced.

The reporter noted that when it comes to the future development prospects of the Chinese auto market, many people use the data of the number of vehicles owned by thousands of people and the gap between the developed countries to prove the promising prospects of the Chinese auto market. From the reporter’s point of view, the prediction of the future of China’s auto market cannot rely entirely on this linear growth indicator, because how much water a bucket can hold does not depend on the longest piece of wood on the wall, but it depends on the shortest time. That piece. Compared with the long-term positive development of Chinese cities such as per capita income, China's crude oil dependence on foreign markets, the traffic environment of major cities, and air quality are the decisive factors for the future capacity of the Chinese auto market.

This will lead to a disagreement: The auto company should use the number of thousands of cars as a reference to formulate future production and sales targets, or should rationally consider such restrictive factors as energy, land, and traffic conditions to set targets. This is a game of optimism and rationality. What kind of game is more suitable for China's development model?