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On January 10, Great Wall Motor released its production and sales figures for December and the whole year of 2022. Data show that Great Wall car sales in December 2022 were 77400, down 52.30 from the same period last year, and the cumulative sales for the whole year were 1.0675 million, down 16.66% from the same period last year, achieving only 56.19% of the annual sales of 1.9 million vehicles, a far cry from the annual sales target.

Subdivided into various brands, the five major brands of Great Wall Motor all showed a downward trend to varying degrees in December, with Harvard, Wei Brand and Euler brands all falling by more than 50%. The brand with the highest decline was Wei Brand, which fell by 86.39%. The Harvard brand, the main driver of Great Wall car sales, suffered the biggest decline of the year in December, falling 53.04 per cent from a year earlier to 44300 vehicles, while cumulative sales for the year also fell 19.93 per cent to 616600 vehicles. According to the official website, the current models of the Harvard brand include Harvard H6, Harvard Dog, Harvard Divine Beast, Harvard Red Rabbit, Harvard first Love and Harvard H9, among which Harvard H6 is the most important volume model of the Harvard brand. taking the data of new car traffic insurance from January to November 2022 as an example, the model with the highest sales in the previous November was 206400, accounting for about 36% of the total sales of the Harvard brand in the previous November. A single model accounts for most of the brand's sales.

According to the latest data from the Federation of passengers, in December, 13149 Harvard H6 and 7001 Harvard Dog were sold, while the rest of the models were mediocre, such as Harvard M6 4943, Harvard H6 New Energy 2814, Harvard Divine Beast 1418, Harvard H9 805, Harvard Red Rabbit 769, and Harvard Cool Dog sold only 249 as a new model.

The sales of the new energy vehicle brand Euler brand in December was 6927, down 66.90% from the same period last year. Previously, the models sold by the Euler brand included black cat, white cat and good cat, of which black cat was the best selling model of the Euler brand. Later, due to cost pressure and other factors, Euler stopped production and sale of two miniature pure electric vehicles, black cat and white cat, which directly led to a sharp decline in sales of the Euler brand. As of the end of December, Euler brand sales totaled 104000 vehicles, down 22.98 per cent from a year earlier.

At present, the Euler brand has a total of three models: Euler good cat, ballet cat and lightning cat, among which ballet cat and lightning cat are new models, the price of ballet cat is 19.3-223000 yuan, and the price of lightning cat is 18.98-269800 yuan. These two new cars will inherit the discontinued position of black cat and white cat, but considering that black cat and white cat are mainly 100000-class models. The newly listed ballet cats and lightning cats sell for about 200000. From the point of view of the price, it is expected that it will be very difficult to become the new main sales product of Euler. Take December sales as an example, lightning cats sold 3011 units. There are 2264 good cats and only 108 ballet cats.

As for Wei, data show that sales of Wei in December were only 1380, down 86.39 per cent from a year earlier, while sales in 2022 totaled 36400, down 37.66 per cent from a year earlier. Judging from the sales of the five major brands announced by Great Wall Motors, Wei Brand has become a drag on the sales of Great Wall Motors, both monthly and annual, and has become the biggest decline in sales of Great Wall brands for two consecutive years.

At the 2022 Guangzhou Auto Show, Wei Brand debuted a new six-seat flagship SUV model, the new car named "Blue Mountain DHT-PHEV", built based on the "coffee intelligence" technology platform, the new car has a relatively big change in the appearance design using a new style of front face design, which is more fashionable and concise than the original declaration chart as a whole, using plug-in hybrid power, and the price may be between 350000 and 400000 yuan. As for whether the new car can reverse the depressed market performance of Wei Brand after the launch, it is worth paying attention to.

Sales of tank brands also declined slightly, with sales of 11000 vehicles in December, down 7.83 from a year earlier, although unlike other brands, tanks were the only brands that achieved year-on-year growth in 2022, with cumulative sales up 46.45 per cent to 123900 vehicles. So far, tank brands include tank 300 and tank 500. according to new car traffic insurance data, tank 300 sold a total of 93600 in the first 11 months, up 40.03% from the same period last year, while tank 500 has sold a total of 15800 since it went on sale in March. as a newly launched model, it is OK to have such sales performance. In fact, since the Great Wall's tank brand launched the PHEV model, tank brand models have been unveiled at the Guangzhou Motor Show, after which the tank brand will also launch tank 300,400,700 and 800 tank models, the future products will cover the compact, medium-and full-size "high-end off-road SUVs" market.

Affected by the decline in sales of various brands, in early December 2022, Great Wall announced adjustments to the organizational structure of all its brands, including the management teams of Euler and Sharon, Wei Brand and Tank, which were managed and co-ordinated by a new leader to implement the dual-brand operation under their respective systems, focusing on the pure electricity market. Salon brand CEO Wenfei served as salon and Euler dual-brand CEO. Tank brand CEO Liu Yanzhao also serves as Wei brand CEO, while Harvard brand and Great Wall pickup brand continue to operate independently. This adjustment and update means that Great Wall will end the multi-brand development strategy established since 2020 and shift to a new direction. Of course, the auto industry is concerned that Great Wall will make this decision based on the current development situation.

Data show that from 2011 to 2021, Harvard H6 became the top SUV seller in China for 11 consecutive years, thanks to the excellent market performance of the "National Miracle car" Harvard H6. Great Wall sold more than 1 million vehicles in 2016. By 2021, Great Wall sales reached 1.28 million, a record high. It is also the sixth year in a row that Great Wall has sold more than one million vehicles, and its seventh year this year has sold more than one million vehicles. But judging from the annual sales performance of the major brands of Great Wall, the market position of the Harvard brand, which is responsible for the sales growth of Great Wall, is changing. As a reference, Harvard achieved a sales record of 938000 vehicles in 2016, and then maintained sales of about 770000 vehicles from 2018 to 2021. By 2022, Harvard accumulated sales of only 616600 vehicles, although annual sales accounted for 57.76% of the total sales of Great Wall. However, compared with the same period last year, the decline is 19.93%, which has a far-reaching impact on the total sales of Great Wall.

Looking into the reasons for the decline of the Harvard brand, in addition to the epidemic and external factors affecting the supply of spare parts in 2022, the most important thing may be related to its product layout. With the increase of products in the car market and the rise of new energy vehicles such as BYD Song and Yuan, the market has more choice, and the squeeze of Harvard H6 by other SUV products has become more and more obvious.

In addition, the slow transformation of new energy is also an urgent problem for Great Wall Motor. Great Wall Motor announced its "2025 Strategy" in 2021, and plans to sell 4 million vehicles annually by 2025, of which 80 percent are new energy vehicles, with operating income exceeding 600 billion yuan. For this reason, Great Wall Motor has also invested heavily in research and development, and plans to invest 100 billion yuan in research and development in the next five years. However, judging from the current sales, both Euler and Wei are in a marked decline, while the Harvard brand will not officially stop selling fuel cars until 2030. Compared with BYD, Great Wall Motor has obviously lagged behind in the transformation of new energy.

In view of the obvious decline in Great Wall car sales in 2022, Great Wall Motor announced a reduction in its annual sales target for 2023, which has been adjusted from no less than 2.8 million vehicles to no less than 1.6 million vehicles, compared with a decrease of 1.2 million vehicles, which also means that the "2025 Strategy" may not be achieved as scheduled, and in the context of increasingly fierce competition in the car market, Great Wall cars may become more difficult in the future.

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