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With the cold winter trend of the car market, many marginal car companies in China are facing a feeling of "dying struggle". Recently, a bank internal email spread on the Internet has pushed Lifan, Zhongtai, Huatai and other independent car companies to the forefront of public opinion such as bankruptcy and suspension of work. Even CCTV reports on the above car companies one by one.

In the cold winter, China's automobile industry has passed the era when affordable products can be sold, and has entered the era of "high quality". In this environment, Lifan, which has always lagged behind other independent car companies, has encountered temporary difficulties. According to the investigation, the Lifan automobile production base has almost come to a standstill. There are two automobile production bases in Chongqing, and the Lifan automobile production base in Liangjiang New area has completely stopped production. the base was sold to the Liangjiang New area Land Reserve renovation Center in Chongqing in December last year for a purchase price of 3.315 billion yuan. Moreover, many workers said that the factory has been in a state of semi-shutdown so far this year and has owed employees nearly two months' wages. According to the latest financial report, Lifan shares lost 2.6 billion in the first three quarters.

As a matter of fact, recently, some media have conducted a field visit. Lifan's automobile production base in Caijiagang Town, Beibei District, Chongqing City, is called "three factories" inside Lifan, and a large number of employees wearing "Lifan Automobile" overalls can still be seen going in and out. And in the final assembly workshop, we can see that the production line is running, and the model on the line is Lifan X70, which is sold exclusively to overseas markets. It is understood that the X70 produced in this batch is for the Russian market.

A responsible person said, "since the beginning of this year, our production has indeed shrunk, but it has not stopped or stopped production." Although there are some difficulties in the domestic market, demand in overseas markets is still strong, especially in Russia, South America, the Middle East and other markets, where the X70 on the production line is produced for Russian orders. " The person in charge also said that when the current domestic market is facing difficulties, Lifan will give priority to the production of overseas main markets.

On November 8, there were media reports that Lifan would restart production at the car assembly plant in Uruguay, and Lifan had reached an agreement with brilliance, another Chinese car manufacturer, to assemble and export cars for the latter in Uruguay to meet the needs of the Brazilian and Argentine markets.

It is understood that the restart plan is due to the fact that in 2015, due to the decline in the overall economic situation in South America and the sharp devaluation of the Brazilian currency, Lifan Uruguay factory was forced to suspend production, but all Liangfan people were not discouraged, while maintaining local sales, do not give up, and finally announced in May 2017 to resume production and continue the journey. Lifan stopped production again for some reason.

Judging from the above, Lifan Motor seems to intend to focus on overseas markets in the face of the decline in the domestic market.

In fact, Lifan, which has been in a dilemma in the domestic market, is extremely popular abroad. since 2007, Lifan began to enter overseas markets, and its sales volume has continued to grow from nearly 5000 units to more than 60, 000 units in 2014. and its overseas sales have even surpassed domestic sales, so Lifan has become the only car company in China whose export sales far exceed domestic sales.

It has made use of the export channels accumulated over the years to sell cars abroad, and has built 10 CKD factories in Vietnam, Iran, Ethiopia, Russia, Egypt, West Asia, West Africa, Central and South America, the Middle East, South Asia and South Africa. Lifan is also the largest automobile factory in Uruguay. After obtaining the right of self-import and export in 1998, Lifan took "export" as one of its "three magic weapons".

Nowadays, in the highly competitive domestic market, it is obvious that Lifan does not have any absolute advantage, and Lifan itself is very clear, so it is undoubtedly wise to focus on the overseas market, which is also Lifan's advantage.

In addition, since the second-hand car window opened this year, Lifan has exported its first batch of used cars to overseas markets such as Russia and Ethiopia in September and October this year. Lifan official said that once the business has a firm foothold overseas, it will also usher in a huge incremental market for Lifan.

Of course, even if Lifan's overseas sales are very hot, it is facing a large number of debts at home, and the cumulative amount of litigation (arbitration) that has not been disclosed in the past 12 months has reached 1.423 billion yuan. litigation cases mainly include financial loan contracts, factoring contracts, financial leasing contracts and other disputes. In addition to debt, Lifan shares are facing financing difficulties, according to this year's cumulative loss of 2.6 billion yuan, can rely on overseas markets to fill can only wait and see.

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