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Dongfeng Honda CR-V must be a very familiar model for everyone. As a "leader" in the domestic joint venture SUV market, its monthly sales remain at more than 20, 000 units, and its monthly sales rank first in the domestic joint venture SUV market many times. However, it is this compact positioning SUV model that has launched a seven-seat version.

A few days ago, overseas media exposed a set of live pictures of Honda's new CR-V, and the new car has been put on sale in some overseas markets. However, it is worth noting that the overall design of the exposed model is still the design shape of the current CR-V, not using the new design exposed by the domestic Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In addition, the model also uses a 2-seat 3 + 2 seven-seat layout design.

From the exposure pictures, the overseas version of the new CR-V continues the design of domestic cash models, except for minor adjustments to the front face, and does not change much. In terms of interior decoration, it also continues the overall design of the current CR-V, and the biggest change is that the new car adds two seats in the third row. In the case of the integration of two seats, the space in the back row has a certain storage capacity, so guess that the space in the third row must not be ample.

When it comes to the seven-seat SUV also has a certain domestic consumer market, but the Honda brand has never launched a seven-seat SUV, although Honda Crown Road and UR-V, which are located in the medium-sized SUV, still focus on five-seat models, and do not launch a seven-seat version like the same class of models.

If the new CR-V model that is about to be launched in China is going to launch a seven-seat version, it is obviously unlikely, according to the three major compact SUV brands of Japanese brands, only the seven-seat version launched by Nissan Qijun. However, from the overall market performance, it is obviously less than the performance of five-seater models, not only because the seven-seat version of the compact SUV has less space, but also because the third row space of the seven-seater model is extremely underutilized in China. Instead of spending more cost to choose two seats that do not have the ride experience, it is better to further expand the interior space of the car. After all, space is the king to improve ride comfort. What's more, positioning 7 SUV markets is more suitable for medium-sized SUV markets.

According to the data of a previous survey, only 17.8% of domestic families buy SUV models, while 82.2% of families of three buy SUV models. Among them, the number of families with seven SUV seats is slightly higher, reaching 33.9%, and the remaining 67.1% are families of three. This side reflects that consumers who choose 7-seat SUV models still occupy a small share, and secondly, even consumers who choose 7-seat SUV market do not often use the third row of seats.

On the contrary, seven-seater models may still have some performance in the Japanese market. after all, as a small car country in Japan, even the Feido series has launched MPV models to meet the use of "small body and large space" in Japan. This is mainly due to the smaller land area and roads in Japan.

Although Honda CR-V has performed extremely well in the domestic market, and the introduction of more versions of the layout will also help brands compete in the market, the seven compact SUV markets are not suitable for China, and even if mass production is achieved, the performance may not be well received.

According to data from the Federation of passengers, Dongfeng Honda CR-V sold a total of 211200 vehicles in 2019, an increase of 60.1% over the same period last year, ranking fourth in the domestic SUV market in 2019. Affected by the epidemic, a total of 32000 vehicles were sold in the first quarter of 2020, down 16.7% from the same period last year, still ranking fourth in the domestic SUV market and first in joint venture SUV.

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