AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)09/30 Report--

Two days ago, it was reported that Beijing Hyundai plans to optimize personnel in two batches, the first of which will be completed around November this year, and the second batch may be completed by February next year, accounting for about 30% of the total number of employees of Hyundai in Beijing. In response to this news, Beijing Hyundai told the media yesterday: "there is no talk of layoffs in batches. Every company will normally assess its employees according to their performance every year and introduce young talents at the same time. This year's goal is to recruit more than 100 people."

As one of the earliest joint venture brands, Beijing Hyundai also had an admirable highlight moment in the domestic market. With its high performance-to-price ratio, Beijing Hyundai has quickly become the fastest carmaker in China to reach millions of production and sales. Figures show that Beijing Hyundai sold more than 1 million vehicles for four consecutive years from 2013 to 2016, and reached an all-time peak in 2016, joining the "million Club". However, sales began to shrink from 2019, leaving only 685000, 385000 and 360000, respectively, between 2019 and 2021. Retail sales fell to 236000 in 2023, up from 114200 in the first eight months of this year. The continued decline in sales has directly led to a serious underutilization of capacity in Hyundai's factories in Beijing. Beijing Hyundai, which once had five production bases, now has only one Renhe factory in Beijing.

There are many reasons why Beijing Hyundai lags behind, but the main reason is that many internal problems have not been properly solved, including unclear market positioning, delayed product replacement, lack of competitiveness of fuel vehicles compared with products of the same class, in addition, its slow action in electrification transformation, lack of localization measures, and so on. With the rapid rise of domestic brands and the background of "price war", it is extremely difficult for Beijing Hyundai to return to the mainstream track and peak era.

In fact, Beijing Hyundai's loneliness is only one of the representatives of the current "dilemma" of joint venture brands in China's auto market. Since 2024, market stock competition and price war have made a number of joint venture brands miserable. In August, for example, according to statistics, among the top 10 brands in retail sales of joint venture car companies, with the exception of a joint venture company of SAIC GM Wuling, the other nine joint ventures showed a decline, of which Guangzhou Auto Toyota fell 21.0% compared with the same period last year.

According to the plan, Beijing Hyundai will return to its annual sales target of more than 500000 vehicles by 2025 and build a complete electric vehicle product matrix by 2027. It should be noted that the period from 2024 to 2025 will be the fierce survival knockout stage for Chinese car companies, the competition pattern may further intensify, and the life of traditional joint venture brands will become more and more difficult, under this background, it will also be more difficult for Beijing Hyundai to achieve its annual sales target of more than 500000 vehicles on schedule. Industry insiders believe that if Beijing Hyundai wants to make a comeback in the fierce car market, there is an urgent need to make more efforts in products and sales strategies to keep up with the mainstream of the market in time.

Up to now, the models on sale in Beijing Hyundai include Elantra, Sonata, Festa, Tusheng, Shengda, Musa and so on, but except Elantra, the sales of other models are very mediocre. Retail data show that Beijing Hyundai sold 114200 vehicles from January to August this year, with the highest sales model being the Elantra with 59700, followed by Tusheng L and Beijing Hyundai ix35 with 22700 and 12500 respectively, with less than 7, 000 of the rest.

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