AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/07 Report--

On November 4th, at the launch site of the new Hyundai Tusheng L / new Hyundai Festa N Line, Beijing Hyundai officially launched the "2025 to New Program", which plans to return to its annual sales target of more than 500000 vehicles by 2025 through product transformation, brand innovation and service innovation. Among them, Beijing Hyundai will achieve full hybrid fuel vehicles in 2025, and build a hybrid product matrix of one MPV, two cars and three SUV models in the next 3-5 years, reaching the annual production and sales scale of 300000 hybrid products.

In addition, Beijing Hyundai will speed up the introduction of pure electricity brand IONIQ, with plans to launch its first model in 2023 and 4-5 models in the next three years, further enhancing the brand's product matrix, enriching consumers' choices and increasing brand sales, and strive to achieve annual production and sales of 200000 vehicles.

As one of the earliest joint venture brands, it took only five years for Beijing Hyundai to fall from peak to trough, and with the accelerated transformation of the auto industry and the rapid rise of Chinese car brands, can Beijing Hyundai return to annual sales of 500000 vehicles?

In October 2002, Hyundai Group and BAIC Group jointly established Beijing Hyundai Automobile Co., Ltd., which became the first Sino-foreign joint venture project in the field of automobile production after China's entry into WTO. Sonata was put on the market as the first mass production car the following year, and then ushered in explosive growth. At the beginning of the 21 century, the per capita income of our country was less than 3000 yuan, and the best-selling models in the market were still Jetta, Pusan, Xiali, etc., while Beijing Hyundai opened this blank market with the positioning of a joint venture car with a performance-to-price ratio. It has become the fastest car manufacturer in China to produce and sell millions of dollars.

With its high performance-to-price ratio, Beijing Hyundai quickly occupied the domestic passenger car market, with sales of 1.03 million, 1.16 million, 1.06 million and 1.14 million respectively from 2013 to 2016, reaching an all-time peak in 2016 and joining the "million Club". However, the change in the international situation in 2017 has had a certain impact on Beijing Hyundai, but this incident is not the main factor in the rapid decline of Beijing Hyundai. However, due to the rapid rise of Chinese car brands and the disorderly development of products, Beijing Hyundai's sales fell directly to 756000 in 2017, then slightly increased to 782000 in 2018, and the cumulative sales from 2018 to 2021 were 685000, 385000 and 360000, respectively. According to the latest wholesale sales, Beijing Hyundai sold a total of 177100 vehicles in the first three quarters of 2022, down 32.13% from a year earlier.

Beijing Hyundai lags behind to a large extent because many internal problems have not been properly solved, and the disorderly development of products has led to the loss of clear market positioning of Beijing Hyundai.

Many people know Hyundai brands from Sonata and Elantra. 20 years ago, the Sonata, as the first production car of Beijing Hyundai, was highly sought after by the Chinese people because of its high performance-to-price ratio and unique design style, but it has been "overturned" several times since then. In 2005, the sixth-generation Sonata was introduced into China, but the car did not directly replace the fifth-generation Sonata, but was named "Yuxiang" to impact the higher-end market, while the seventh-generation Sonata was also the same. as an upgraded version of the sixth generation, it was introduced into domestic production, and then renamed "leading Xiang", which ended badly.

In 2011, Beijing Hyundai introduced the eighth-generation Sonata into China and became the most successful generation of Sonata models. Sonata, Kia K5 and Mailibao were once referred to as the "three treasures of losers". It does reflect the cost-effective and well-known characteristics of Sonata in the minds of consumers, selling more than 100000 vehicles in 2012 and 2013, but has declined since then.

In March 2015, the ninth generation Sonata officially went on sale, with a price range of 17.48 yuan to 249800 yuan. In July 2020, the 10th generation Sonata was officially launched, with a price range of 16.18-205800 yuan. Although the ninth and tenth generation Sonata products have improved, they have been unable to attract the attention of the market, and even fell into the doubt of "double bids".

In 2021, the tenth generation Sonata won the TSP Best Safety Award with 47 G ratings and 3 A ratings in IIHS. However, when the 10th generation Sonata was tested in the front 40% offset collision test of the China Automobile Research C-NCAP, the A column on the main driving side was obviously bent or even almost broken. Sonata sold 8323 vehicles in 2021 and 2247 in the first three quarters of this year, down 54.61 percent from a year earlier, according to the data.

In the Chinese market, Hyundai and even Kia do not have more impressive selling points except the ratio of performance to price, which is the main reason for the failure of Korean brands in the Chinese market. In the early stage, due to the weak technology reserve of independent brands, product quality stability, fuel economy and driving experience lagged far behind joint venture cars, and consumers were more inclined to joint venture brands, but as independent brands showed initial results in research and development for many years, the gap between independent brands and joint venture brands became smaller and smaller, and consumers gradually turned their attention to their own brands.

Today, China is still the largest and fastest-growing automobile market in the world, and at the same time, it is also growing into a powerful car manufacturing power. Hyundai is naturally unwilling to give up such a market. When the market is a good time, how to restore the Chinese market has become a top priority.

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