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A few days ago, FAW-Volkswagen announced that from October 8, 2023, Li Fenggang succeeded Sun Huibin as executive deputy general manager of FAW Audi sales Co., Ltd. fully responsible for FAW Audi in China all domestic and imported cars sales, after-sales service, network and brand marketing.

It is worth mentioning that before Li Fenggang succeeded Sun Huibin, FAW Audi had just experienced a "coach change". On November 1st, 2022, Michael Arndt succeeded Ashutosh Dixit as general manager of FAW Audi sales Co., Ltd., and was jointly responsible for the sales, after-sales service, network and brand building of FAW Audi domestic and imported cars with Executive Deputy General Manager Sun Huibin.

According to the data, Li Fenggang joined FAW-Volkswagen in 2003 and served as Director of Strategy and Operations Management of FAW-Volkswagen Audi sales Division, General Manager of Northeast District, General Manager of Eastern District, and Deputy General Manager of FAW-Audi sales Co., Ltd.

Sun Huibin is also a veteran in the automobile industry. he has more than 30 years of working experience in FAW, joining FAW Plant Design Institute in 1990, and has held many positions in FAW-Volkswagen and FAW Capital since then. In May 2017, Sun Huibin became the executive deputy general manager of FAW-Volkswagen sales Company, responsible for the marketing of the Volkswagen brand. Two years later, in November 2019, Sun Huibin was appointed Executive Deputy General Manager of FAW-Volkswagen Audi sales Division. It is understood that Sun Huibin will be transferred back to the Ministry of Strategy and Cooperation of FAW, whose specific position is unknown.

Although Sun Huibin made reasonable achievements when he was in charge of FAW Audi, he dominated the introduction and listing of Audi e-tron, Q4 e-tron, RS e-tron GT, e-tron GT and other electric vehicle products, but it is also somewhat "ugly" compared to BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Data show that from 2020 to 2022, FAW-Volkswagen Audi brand sales of 726300 vehicles, 701300 vehicles, 635600 vehicles, sales decline for three consecutive years.

In the first half of 2023, FAW Audi brand sales of 317000 vehicles, basically the same as in the first half of last year. For comparison, BMW (including MINI) sold 392600 vehicles in China in the first half, up 3.7 per cent from a year earlier, while Mercedes-Benz (including smart) delivered 377200 vehicles in China, up 7.0 per cent from a year earlier.

Of course, Sun Huibin serves as the executive deputy general manager of FAW-Volkswagen Audi sales department, which is not "friendly" in terms of time. The global epidemic spread and the impact of spare parts supply in early 2020, but in the same context, whether it is looking at its own sales growth or looking at the growing lead of competitors, Audi has lagged behind the other two competitors in terms of sales volume and development momentum.

Audi's sales performance is also lacklustre, especially on the track of new energy vehicles. At present, Audi's new energy vehicles sold in China include Q2L e-tron, A6L e-tron, Q4 e-tron, e-tron, Q5L e-tron and so on, but the sales performance is not excellent. In the first eight months of 2023, the cumulative sales of Q4 e-tron, Q5 e-tron and A6L plug-in hybrid were 13786, 2901 and 1469, respectively. Oliver Blume, chief executive of Volkswagen Group, has publicly admitted that Audi's lineup "lags behind its competitors", particularly in electric cars. After being named and criticized by Bloom, Audi's CEO replaced it with Gernot D ö llner, which came into effect on September 1st.

Electric vehicles have become the focus of Audi's future development, but the pressure for Audi is huge. In March, Audi China's official Wechat released future-oriented production plans. Starting from 2026, Audi will only launch pure electric vehicles for the global market. By 2033, the production of internal combustion engine models will be phased out, when Audi's own production base around the world will be put into the production of electric vehicles.

At the 2023 Shanghai Auto Show, Wen Zeyue, president of Audi China, said, "from this year, Audi will launch the largest product offensive in global history, which is also the most important offensive for future transformation." According to the plan, Audi will launch 20 models worldwide in the next three years, 10 of which are pure electric vehicles.

Many factors, such as the backwardness of intelligence, the slow transformation of electrification, the rise of Chinese national brands, the change of consumption concept and so on, have led to the failure of luxury brands which were originally unfavorable in the automobile market. Industry insiders said that the impact of more and more price competition has led to a substantial squeeze of bicycle profits in various market segments, and many car companies that used to make money in the past realize that the market situation has been broken, and then they will either be eliminated or carry out subversive transformation and change.

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