AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)08/05 Report--

On August 5, Honda China announced its latest sales. Honda's terminal car sales in China in July 2024 were 52567, down 41.4% from the same period last year. Honda's cumulative terminal car sales in China from January to July 2024 were 468473, down 24.4% from the same period last year.

As one of the three giants of the Japanese system, Honda is in a far more difficult position in the Chinese market than expected. Fuel cars are becoming more and more difficult to sell, but electric cars are difficult to become great. It is understood that Honda China has two joint ventures, Guangzhou Automobile Honda and Dongfeng Honda. After reaching a sales peak of 1.627 million vehicles in 2020, Honda's sales declined sharply for three consecutive years. Honda's sales in China from 2021 to 2023 were 1.5615 million, 1.3731 million and 1.2342 million, respectively, down 4.0%, 12.07% and 10.12% respectively from 2021 to 2023. After entering 2024, Honda's sales decline in China has not been alleviated, falling 24.4% from January to July compared with the same period last year, with cumulative sales of 468500 vehicles.

Honda is increasingly lacklustre in the Chinese market, pinning its future on the electric car market.

On July 26, Honda China announced that it would close two factories. GAC Honda plans to close its fourth production line with an annual capacity of 50, 000 units in October 2024, while Dongfeng Honda plans to close its second production line with an annual capacity of 240000 units in November 2024. After the adjustment, Honda's total car production capacity in China has been changed from 1.49 million to 1.2 million. At the same time, Dongfeng Honda's new electric dedicated plant under construction will be put into production in September 2024, and Guangzhou Auto Honda's new new energy plant will be put into production in November 2024. It is understood that Honda plans to make up for the capacity reduction through two new electric car plants under construction and is expected to restore capacity to 1.44 million vehicles.

In July 2023, Honda China announced that it would achieve more than 50% electrification by 2025, no new fuel cars after 2027, and a total of more than 10 pure electric models by 2030. Today, the poor performance of Honda's new energy models in the Chinese market, this plan has to be said to be extremely risky.

Honda doesn't seem to have any ingenious methods or countermeasures, and the launch of the new brand has not yet been tested. On April 16, Honda China unveiled its new electric brand, Ye, which will be the first to carry a new logo, which will be based on the all-exclusive architecture of Architecture W, a pure electric car, and will launch a total of six new cars by 2027. At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, two Ye models, Ye S7 and Ye P7, will be mass-produced by Dongfeng Honda and Guangzhou Auto Honda respectively. In addition, with the help of Dongfeng electric vehicle platform, Dongfeng Honda launched the world's first joint venture independent electric brand, Lingzhi, in September 2023, and the first model, Lingzhi L pure electric sedan, is scheduled to launch in September.

At present, Honda's future development in China is not optimistic. With the continuous improvement of the competitiveness of independent brands of new energy, the share of Japanese joint venture brands in China is gradually decreasing. Japanese brands sold 1.466 million vehicles in China in the first half of the year, down 12.4 per cent from a year earlier, including 251900 in June, down 25.3 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Federation.

Since the beginning of this year, a number of Japanese car companies, including Honda, Toyota and Nissan, have been involved in a price war launched by BYD in China. Honda, Accord models this year did not launch annual changes, models on sale is still 2023 models, and the dealer terminal price has dropped 50, 000 yuan. In addition to Accord, including styling, Haoying, colorful Zhi, Guandao and other models with terminal prices of more than 30,000 yuan of substantial promotional offers.

In addition to the domestic market, Chinese new energy car companies are also increasing their offensive in overseas markets, including BYD, GAC Ean, Nezha Automobile, Deep Blue Automobile and other Chinese new energy car companies have put their factories into production in Thailand one after another, and overall sales rose steadily in the first half of the year. By contrast, Suzuki and Subaru announced in June that they would close factories in Thailand, and in July Honda announced that its annual production capacity in Thailand would more than halve from 270000 vehicles.

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