AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)01/22 Report--

According to media reports, the equity ratio of Guangzhou Auto-Mitsubishi, a joint venture between GAC GROUP and Mitsubishi of Japan, has changed, with GAC GROUP's shareholding falling from 50 per cent to 6.3431 per cent, Mitsubishi Commercial Co., Ltd. from 20 per cent to 92.4705 per cent and Mitsubishi Automotive Industry Co., Ltd. from 30 per cent to 1.1864 per cent.

In response to the above reports, GAC GROUP related sources said that "(the above news) is a media report error." As of press time, the automobile industry paid attention to the inquiry of Tianyan check and other platforms, and did not find the equity changes in the above reports, while "(the above news) is a media report error" refers to the "equity change" news report error, or refers to the "equity change three-party shareholding ratio" this information report error, we do not know.

Data show that Guangzhou Auto-Mitsubishi was founded on May 10, 2012. GAC GROUP, Mitsubishi Automotive Industry Co., Ltd., and Mitsubishi Commercial Co., Ltd. hold 50%, 9.35% and 40.65% of the shares respectively. According to the official website of GAC-Mitsubishi, there are seven models on sale under the brand at present, including pure electric SUV Artuco, Olander, Xinjin Hyun, Yige and three original imported cars. Atuco is the first pure electric SUV of GAC-Mitsubishi. The new car adopts a design similar to GAC's Eian AION V model, but at the same time adds Mitsubishi family design style and integrated mileage 520km. The pre-sale price of the new car is 21-240000 yuan, and the fresh price of the hard-core version is 233800 yuan.

As one of the Japanese car companies, Mitsubishi's development in the domestic market is far lower than that of Toyota and Honda, and the poor market performance in recent years has something to do with the changes of its local development strategy. As early as the 1970s, Mitsubishi entered the Chinese market by exporting medium-sized trucks, earlier than Volkswagen. In 1996, Mitsubishi cooperated with Hunan Changfeng Group, resulting from Changfeng's military background and its own demand for SUV. In the early days, Mitsubishi introduced the technology of Pajero V31 to China, giving birth to Cheetah SUV, and achieved a peak performance of 145000 vehicles in 2003, but failed to grasp the market development trend.

In 2006, under the lead of Taiwan's China Motor, Mitsubishi invested in Southeast Mitsubishi and established Southeast Mitsubishi, handing over the R & D, manufacturing, sales and after-sales business of imported Mitsubishi cars to Southeast Motor. After obtaining the support of Mitsubishi Automobile, Southeast Mitsubishi successively launched Lanser, Goran, Yishen, Junge, Fengdisi and other models, and the excellent technical reserves brought short-term glory to Mitsubishi sales. However, compared with Toyota found FAW and GAC, Honda found Dongfeng and GAC, Southeast Motor has obvious disadvantages both in terms of assets and production strength, which also limits Mitsubishi's further breakthrough in the Chinese market.

In May 2012, GAC-Mitsubishi Automobile Co., Ltd. was officially established. After the establishment of the GAC-Mitsubishi joint venture, Mitsubishi Motors will focus on GAC-Mitsubishi, and the Southeast Mitsubishi joint venture models will gradually withdraw from the market. However, although Mitsubishi found GAC GROUP, there was no obvious qualitative change for Mitsubishi. For a long time, Guangzhou Auto Mitsubishi has a weak sense of presence in GAC GROUP. According to GAC GROUP's sales data, GAC-Mitsubishi sold 66006 vehicles in 2021, down 11.99% from the same period last year, second only to GAC Fick.

From the history of Mitsubishi's development in China, apart from strategic mistakes that led to missing the golden decade of domestic development and the failure to find a more powerful partner, Mitsubishi's product power, brand power and channel vendors are also very worrying. According to the FIFA data, the cumulative sales of Olander in 2021 was 55856 vehicles, accounting for more than 80% of GAC-Mitsubishi's total sales.

As the main selling model of GAC-Mitsubishi, the first generation of Olander, which was first introduced and manufactured from Mitsubishi in Beijing in January 2004, has been launched in the Chinese market after three vehicle upgrades. However, as GAC-Mitsubishi was not established until 2012, Mitsubishi did not achieve domestic sales of the Outlander in 2015, while also officially attracting medium-term changes to the third-generation models. From a time point of view, this generation of models have been sold in China for seven years, and although relevant documents show that the new generation of Outlander will be put into production, officials have not yet confirmed the launch of the new car.

In addition, rumors about Mitsubishi's withdrawal from the Chinese market have been fermenting in recent years. Whether Mitsubishi and GAC will continue to cooperate in the future or withdraw like Dongfeng Renault and Changan Suzuki, perhaps the market will give the answer. GAC GROUP said earlier that the biggest problem facing Mitsubishi is its single product, which will speed up the upgrading of its models in 2022, and GAC will strengthen its joint venture cooperation and communication with Mitsubishi to promote the development of GAC-Mitsubishi in two to three years.

The lukewarm market performance of GAC-Mitsubishi is related to the slow progress of product renewal and the inactive introduction of technology. For GAC-Mitsubishi, which is suffering from a decline in sales, the update progress of its products needs to be accelerated.

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