AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/21 Report--

With the rise of independent brands and the upsurge of new energy, the survival space of GAC Honda, Dongfeng Honda, Dongfeng Nissan and other Japanese joint venture brands has been squeezed, while Korean joint venture brands are even more serious. Beijing Hyundai, which once sold millions of dollars a year, is also struggling.

In order to understand the current sales situation of Hyundai in Beijing, the media visited the Beijing Hyundai 4S store located in a map logo in Beijing area and found that the exhibition hall of Beijing Hyundai 4S store in Shenghongdu, located on the North Fifth Ring Road, has now become other brand stores of car companies. Nearby staff said that there were Guangzhou Automobile Toyota and Beijing Hyundai 4S stores in the area. Beijing Hyundai did not sell well and has been transferred to Tesla, leaving only a small part of the area for after-sale. If you want to buy a car, you have to go to a store more than ten kilometers away.

The media came to the Beijing Hyundai 4S store in a district of Beijing, where there were displays of all brand models, all of which were fuel models, and the advertisement slogan opposite the entrance read, "Hyundai ranks third in global sales." The store features the Elantra, Beijing Hyundai's best-selling model, followed by Kusto, Beijing Hyundai's first MPV model, as well as Sonata, Tusheng, Shengda and ix35 models. According to the staff, some configuration models are not available, and if it takes longer to book a car, it mainly depends on which configuration model the consumer wants. The model is produced in the Shunyi factory, and if it is fast, it will almost arrive at the store in a month or so.

To sum up, Beijing Hyundai has been developing in the Chinese market for 21 years, and the Gao Guang period was once known as the "King of Korean cars". Beijing Hyundai was founded on October 18, 2002, jointly funded by Beijing Automobile Investment Co., Ltd. and Korea Hyundai Automotive Co., Ltd., with a joint venture period of 30 years. Its establishment is of great significance. It is the first Sino-foreign joint venture project in the field of automobile production approved after China's accession to the WTO. At that time, it was also identified as a leading project and demonstration project for revitalizing Beijing's modern manufacturing industry and developing the capital's economy.

Later, the rapid development of Beijing Hyundai did not disappoint everyone. After more than a decade of slow climbing, the brand exceeded 1 million vehicles for the first time in 2013, and reached a sales peak of 1.14 million vehicles in 2016, ranking fourth in the domestic passenger car sales list, vaguely with the strength of Volkswagen battle in the north and south. However, the brand has been adjusting since 2017, with sales plunging 31 per cent in 2017 and falling for five years in a row, leaving only 250000 vehicles in 2022, returning to 2007 levels.

From the perspective of the market environment, independent brands continue to rise, joint venture brands continue to explore, resulting in the Korean car used to belong to the living space has been squeezed, so that the present situation. When Beijing Hyundai sold more than 1 million vehicles a year at its peak, Beijing Hyundai frantically set up factories in China, and falling sales led to serious overcapacity. Official data show that Beijing Hyundai's production base is located in Beijing, Hebei, and Chongqing, with an annual production capacity of more than one million vehicles. Following the sale of the first factory to ideal cars and the suspension of production in Chongqing, the Beijing Hyundai Cangzhou plant will also stop production in June. At present, surrounding accessories companies are already laying off staff and evacuating, but this news has not been confirmed.

After trying to change coach frequently, marketing adjustment, product rejuvenation and other ways, Beijing Hyundai is still not completely out of the sales dilemma. From January to April 2023, Beijing Hyundai sold a total of 80135 vehicles, of which the highest selling model was the Elantra, which was 32056, while the ix35 and Tusheng were also above 10,000, with 15618 and 13178 respectively.

In order to seek new market increment, Beijing Hyundai released the "2025 to New Plan", which plans to return to the 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.

However, the transformation is not easy. In terms of new energy vehicles, especially in the pure electric market, Beijing Hyundai has few products to sell, only Mingtu pure electric, and this model is essentially a gas-to-electric model, with cumulative sales of only 24 vehicles from January to April 2023. No consumers are willing to choose such a product.

It is undeniable that Hyundai Motor Group does have a certain strength in the global market, second only to Toyota and Volkswagen, but there is still a long way to go to restore its image in the Chinese market.

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