Shanghai GM to fight back to return to the first: Wang Yongqing first battle SUV

The new general manager of Shanghai GM Wang Yongqing is brewing a "counterattack."
Since being taken over by the public as the "first" throne last year, Shanghai GM has secretly made efforts to win 823,000 units in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 7.5%. However, "returning to the top" is not so simple. Volkswagen's two joint venture companies in China are doing their best. In the first half of this year, Shanghai Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen sold 940,000 units and 902,600 units respectively, far more than Shanghai GM.
In the face of the aggressive offensive of the general public in China, Shanghai GM chose to fight back after a brief personnel adjustment. For this reason, Shanghai GM will simultaneously exert its strength in the A-class and SUV markets. Soon, the Shanghai General Motors strategic model - a new generation of Chevrolet Cruze will be officially listed; in the second half of this year, Shanghai General Motors will launch two new SUV models and a variety of SUV variant models.
“In terms of brands, Chevrolet’s sales base is large, and the product line still has a lot of room to fill, and it has the greatest development potential. In terms of products, this year is a big year of Shanghai GM’s products, introduced in the A-Class and SUV market. The products will be very rich.” Zhang Zhiyong, an auto industry analyst, analyzed in an interview with the Economic Observer.
From this point of view, this “counterattack” in which the three major brands go hand in hand through product strategy adjustments and internal changes will be the key to whether Wang Yongqing can lead Shanghai GM to return to the top spot in domestic auto sales.
Complementing brand shortcomings Prior to this, Shanghai General Motors had been building a mid-to-high end framework for the Chevrolet brand to achieve the vision of “Chevrolet will be the low-, mid-to-high-end models that go hand in hand with the Buick brand”.
Although Chevrolet sales are still acceptable, the relatively popular models such as Cruze, New Sail, and Love CD are all low-end models, making Chevrolet difficult to get rid of the low-end brand image.
After Wang Yongqing took office, Chevrolet's change has begun, and the new generation of Cruze is an example. "The new generation of Cruze is Chevrolet's first launch of the global model on the Chinese market, which reflects the importance of general headquarters and the Chinese market to Cruze." Shanghai General Motors Chevrolet Marketing Minister Wu Bing told reporters.
“Pan Asia made a preliminary market and crowd survey with the global design team during the entire R&D phase of the new Cruze, including the positioning of the entire product. The new Cruze will meet the expectations of Chinese consumers.” Pan Asia Automotive Technology Center Design Department Huang Bin, executive deputy director, said in an interview with the Economic Observer reporter.
According to the Shanghai GM plan, the new Cruze position will be higher than the sale of Cruze. It is reported that the entire new generation of Cruze will be sold on the same platform as the old ones and adopt differential pricing to form differentiated competition. The two generations of Cruze plus the Cruze hatchback, Shanghai GM will create a product matrix to emulate the "Lang Yi family" to create "Cruz family."
Relatively speaking, Shanghai Volkswagen's new LaVida and the new Santana monthly sales of nearly 30,000 were staggering, while the largest contribution to the FAW-Volkswagen models Jetta and Sagitar monthly sales of nearly 30,000.
Zhang Zhiyong believes that “as long as new Cruz with new powertrains sells tens of thousands per month, it can bring Shanghai General Motors an annual growth of 120,000 sales. This is exactly what Shanghai GM has lost to the competitor's 'missing points'”.
In addition to complementing the weakness of Shanghai GM in the A-Class segment, the Chevrolet brand will enter a new "replacement period." Ken Parkinson, executive director of global design, said in an interview with reporters that from the start of the new Cruze, Chevrolet's products will be completely replaced by 2018.
Comprehensive force SUV
In addition to achieving the growth trend of the three major brands, Shanghai GM is strongly promoting the SUV strategy.
On July 1, Shanghai GM announced that the Buick brand will soon launch a new medium-sized SUV Envision (ENVISION) in the second half of this year.
In fact, Shanghai GM more hopes to be able to come in behind the SUV segment.
As the first SUV model that the GM Buick put into operation in China, Angola was not officially listed until the end of 2012. People in the industry believe that this time-to-market is not only far behind the China-made SUVs such as Tiguan and CR-V that have earned "full coverage". The positioning of Angola over miniaturization will limit its development.
On the contrary, Shanghai GM gained a good harvest through Angola. In 2013, Ancora’s annual sales reached 62,968 units. With differentiated competition and out-of-position marketing, in the first half of 2014, Angola's sales reached 40,678 units, an increase of 58.6% year-on-year. In addition to Angkola, Shanghai GM also introduced Chevrolet Creo. Chevrolet Creo was launched in April this year. Its current sales volume has reached more than 4,000 units and its performance has been remarkable.
Data show that the cumulative sales volume of the SUV market in the first half of 2014 was 1,823,400 units, an increase of 37.12% year-on-year, accounting for 18.93% of the narrow-sale passenger vehicles. Facing the rapid growth of the SUV market, Cai Bin, deputy general manager of Shanghai GM, stated that Shanghai GM's SUV strategy will not give up any market opportunities. Shanghai GM understands that the performance of small SUVs alone is difficult to gain an advantage in the highly competitive SUV market. It is necessary to introduce large-to-medium-sized SUVs in time to market.
For Shanghai GM’s medium-sized SUV Angkewei that will be explicitly introduced into the Chinese market, Cao He, an auto industry analyst, believes that once Angkewei is made domestically, it will make up for the shortcomings of Shanghai GM on medium-sized SUVs and will also be linked to Angkola. Angkola FAW will improve the overall product layout of the Buick brand in the SUV market."
In addition, the Chevrolet brand will further enrich the SUV product line and launch two SUV models to cover all levels. Informed sources said, "Chevrolet will be the first introduction of a medium and large SUV in the next model introduction, this product is named Traverse in the Chevrolet overseas product line, this full-size SUV model will be introduced to the Chinese market to explore with Ford Competition."