AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)12/31 Report--

On December 30th, the Dongfeng Nissan Qichen brand announced at the Guangzhou Auto Show that it will no longer develop new pure fuel cars, and will launch no less than two new new energy models each year, creating a system capacity of selling 300000 vehicles a year. The medium-and long-term goal is to sell 500000 vehicles a year.

In fact, at the end of September this year, Zhang Jihui, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan Automobile sales Co., Ltd., revealed in an interview that the existing Qichen V is the last oil car, and Qichen will launch two trams a year starting from 2023, including plug-in and pure electricity. Chen Hao, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd., said that Qichen has a light burden and does not have too many negative assets, so it has the conditions to go first and try first. The achievements under Qichen's new positioning can even be fed back to the shareholders of Nissan and Dongfeng Motor, promoting the faster electrification process of Nissan Global and Dongfeng.

In order to open up the situation in the new battlefield, Qichen chose a number of technological routes to go hand in hand. In terms of pure electric, Qichen has created a V-π primary pure electric platform, developed DD-i super-hybrid technology, and laid out FCV hydrogen energy technology. In terms of products, Qichen displayed two models at the Guangzhou Auto Show, and plans to keep two new cars on sale every year in the future.

In June this year, Dongfeng Nissan released "he." Get together. Nissan, Qichen and Infiniti officially meet the market competition with a new positioning and strategy. Specifically, Dongfeng Nissan takes the Nissan brand as the backbone of consolidating technology, the Qichen brand as the intelligent, electric and younger vanguard, and the Infiniti brand to further tap the opportunities in the luxury car market. According to the plan, in the next five years, Dongfeng Nissan's Nissan, Qichen and Infiniti brands will launch more than 20 new cars, covering traditional fuel vehicles and new energy models. By 2025, Dongfeng Nissan will deploy electric drive technology, including Zero Emission pure electricity and e-POWER hybrid, in nine models, making electrified models account for 40 per cent of sales.

Qichen is a special product of China's automobile market. In 2008, out of concern about the hollowing out of China's automotive technology, Chen Jianguo, then deputy director of the Industrial Coordination Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, proposed that joint venture car enterprises must meet two conditions in order to build factories in other places: one is to have new energy vehicle planning; the other is to set up joint venture independent brands. In this context, Chinese joint venture car companies have launched their own joint venture brands, the first of which is the "concept" of Guangzhou Automobile and Honda. After that, many joint venture companies, such as brilliance BMW "Zino", Beijing Hyundai "Shouwang", Dongfeng Honda "Siming" and so on, launched their own joint venture brands, and Dongfeng Nissan also launched the Qichen brand during this period.

In September 2010, Dongfeng Nissan passenger car Company officially launched its own brand "Qichen". The English name Venucia originates from Greek and originally means "Qichen". In April 2012, Qichen brand launched its first volume production car, the Qichen D50, which is based on Xida and Yida for the prototype car, with nearly the same body size as Panda, equipped with Nissan HR16DE engine, and its price is only 6.78-83800 yuan, this model has instantly become a hot spot in the market. Subsequently, the Qichen brand launched the Qichen T70 model based on Xiaoke, with a price of 898-127800 yuan, which also became the sales responsibility of the Qichen brand.

These two models also make Qichen brand quickly become a dark horse in the car market, and sales channels also rely on Dongfeng Nissan to spread out rapidly, completely "copy and paste" Nissan's brand positioning. At the 2016 Beijing Auto Show, Qichen Brand released its new five-year business plan, the "V+" strategy, covering Qichen's development plans at the four levels of products, channels, services and digitalization, in order to accelerate the overall upgrading of its second five-year business. Qichen brand said that in the future, a total of 2 billion yuan will be invested in product research and development to speed up the expansion of Qichen's product line; in the next five years, Qichen will launch eight new cars, keeping no less than one new car on the market each year.

However, or extremely confident about the brand, Qichen brand suddenly declared its independence in February 2017, leaving Dongfeng Nissan to report directly to Dongfeng Automobile Co., Ltd., and set up Dongfeng Qichen Automobile Company, referred to as Dongfeng Qichen, on a par with Dongfeng Nissan. After the declaration of independence, coupled with the early strategic "big cake", Qichen brand ushered in its own sales peak in 2017, with cumulative annual sales reaching 140500 vehicles. However, Qichen, which founded an independent company, did not achieve further sales results. Four models such as T90, M50EV, D60 and T60 were launched in 2018. Instead of bringing growth, the four new models have become a drag on Qichen brand. Data show that cumulative Dongfeng car sales fell 5.99% year-on-year to 132100 in 2018 and 9.01% to 120200 in 2019.

In order to recover from the decline, Qichen brand launched Qichen Star, a model responsible for brand revival in early 2020, hoping to return to market attention through Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi technological advantages. However, the market gave Qichen another loud slap in the face, with sales of only 80400 vehicles in 2020. For Qichen's "hip-pulling" performance, the reason is also very simple, the product is old, there is no core technology to speak of, coupled with the head independent brand upward, joint venture brand sinking market pattern.

In December 2020, Dongfeng Co., Ltd. issued an integration announcement, announcing that Dongfeng Qichen would be included in the management of Dongfeng Nissan, changed into a second brand under Dongfeng Nissan, and changed from a branch office of Dongfeng Co., Ltd. to a headquarters-level organization under Dongfeng Nissan, contributing to Dongfeng's transformation and development towards intelligence, networking, electrification and sharing.

In August 2021, Dongfeng Nissan Qichen Big V officially went on sale, which is the first model launched after the Qichen brand returned to the embrace of Dongfeng Nissan, with a price range of 9.98-128800 yuan. In terms of power, the Qichen V is equipped with a 1.5T engine of A415TD with a maximum power of 190hp and a peak torque of 260N ·m, which is matched by a 7DCT dry double clutch gearbox.

According to the official website, Qichen brand models currently on sale include D60 series / D60 EV/D60 PLUS EV, T60/T60 EV, Qichen Star and Qichen Big V. According to the number of new car traffic insurance purchases, Qichen brand sold a total of 82100 vehicles from January to November 2022, an increase of 16.72% over the same period last year, of which the highest sales were Qichen D60, with a cumulative sales of 41600, followed by Qichen V, with a cumulative sales of 30400.

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