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On July 16, Great Wall Automobile's tank brand issued a factory shutdown announcement. The announcement shows that the tank factory in Chongqing will stop production from July 23 to July 31, the tank Xushui plant will stop production from July 24 to July 31, and the tank Jingmen plant will stop production from July 25 to July 31. The three major factories are responsible for producing tank 300, tank 700, tank 400 and tank 500 models respectively.

As for the reasons for the shutdown, the tank brand explained in the announcement: "the temperature continues to rise in summer. In order to effectively ensure production safety and ensure the stable operation of equipment, it is planned to carry out safety inspection and overhaul of tank factory equipment in late July 2024."

In view of the inconvenience caused by the shutdown to some users of tank models, the tank brand apologized and promised to take effective measures to shorten the maintenance cycle. If the order fails to complete the production before the high temperature holiday, the tank brand will give priority to production and distribution after resuming production. In addition, the suspension of production does not affect the normal shipment of offline vehicles.

Great Wall Motor owns five major vehicle brands: Harvard, Wei Brand, Euler, Tank and Great Wall pickup truck. Among them, the tank brand is the high-end off-road brand of Great Wall Automobile. At the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, the tank brand announced that it would separate from the Wei brand and operate independently, and continue to cultivate the SUV market. Among them, the tank 300 is the first model under the tank brand, which actually belongs to the Great Wall Wei brand, hanging the WEY logo, until Great Wall Automobile officially released the tank brand, Tank 300 left WEY into the tank brand and replaced its logo with the tank mark, and the original "WEY" mark was also replaced with the "TANK" mark. It is worth mentioning that the launch of Tank 300 has lowered the threshold for domestic consumers to get hard off-road SUV, so the car has been concerned by the market since it was put on the market, even in short supply in the early days, and almost assumed the important task of tank brand sales. Take the retail sales in 2023 as an example, the cumulative sales of tank brands in 2023 are 137425, of which 92921 are tanks, accounting for 67.62% of the total sales; tanks 10511, 22753 and 11240 respectively.

So far, the tank brand has a total of tank 300, tank 400, tank 500 and tank 700 models on sale, of which tank 300 is still the main sales responsibility of the tank brand. Data show that in the first half of this year, the cumulative sales of Great Wall Motor was 559700, an increase of 7.79% over the same period last year. Among them, the cumulative sales of the tank brand was 116000, an increase of 98.94% over the same period last year, making it the brand under Great Wall with the highest growth rate. Among them, the sales volume of tank 300 is the highest, at 41800, while the sales of the rest are more than 10,000.

As a high-end off-road brand of Great Wall, the follow-up tank brand will also launch tank 800 and other models. It should be noted that according to the announcement of the suspension of production of the tank brand, the production of its three major factories has been closed for more than a week, and the tank brand is one of the main growth forces of Great Wall car sales. It is not clear whether this suspension will have an impact on Great Wall car sales.

According to the plan, Great Wall has an annual sales target of 1.6 million vehicles this year, and only 35 per cent of Great Wall cars have been completed in terms of sales delivered in the first half of the year. In short, it is still difficult for Great Wall, which is in a critical stage of new energy transformation, to achieve its annual sales target of 1.6 million vehicles.

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