AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/05 Report--

In recent years, due to the intensification of market competition and strategic mistakes of DPCA, PAS's market share in China continues to decline, until it falls into an unfavorable situation in dire straits. The marginalization of PSA in China has a lot to do with mistakes in decision-making at the top level of the Dragon, and Tang Weishi, chief executive of PSA, mentioned the topic of the Chinese market in a recent interview with overseas media, saying bluntly: "in our joint venture, the decision-making mechanism is unbearably slow."

Tang Weishi revealed in the interview that China was seen as PSA's last hope, but it was not China that saved PSA in the end, saying that when he joined PSA in 2013, the Chinese market was seen as the company's last hope. But in fact, the carmaker now accounts for 80% of its sales in Europe.

Tang Weishi also said that it is very difficult for PSA to expand into the Chinese market, and the company is trying to understand the market, customer expectations and the way of thinking with state-owned partners.

Obviously, not only can China become the savior of PSA, but China, the world's largest market, has been dragging its feet in recent years. Since its glory in 2014, DPCA is going downhill, especially in 2017 and 2018. First, there are rumors of "selling the factory", followed by frequent complaints and recalls of products, rumors of dealers withdrawing from the network, and so on. Although the Dragon Group has repeatedly carried out internal and high-level personnel changes, but to no avail.

After DPCA created a sales volume of more than 4 million in China in 2014, it set an annual sales target of millions to accelerate the development of the group, but this is the beginning of DPCA's stepping off the altar of French cars.

PSA Group's sales in China fell 34.2% in 2018, of which the joint venture DPCA sold only 253400 vehicles, down 31.88% from a year earlier. In January, Dongfeng Citroen and Dongfeng Peugeot sold less than 20, 000 vehicles in China, compared with 7755 for Middle East Citroen and 10458 for Dongfeng Peugeot. The sales target of 235000 vehicles set by DPCA in 2019 is the lowest target for DPCA over the years.

Citroen has "today", and the group's market response has been slow to make a "great contribution". When major automakers cater to the domestic SUV trend to launch relevant models, such as Volkswagen's Tuguan, Audi's Q7 model, etc., Citroen Group still indulges in the French romance of the past when sales were brilliant. Citroen did not launch SUV in the past few years when SUV was very prosperous, but only one or two models came out after the rise of SUV in recent years.

In fact, PSA is also aware of the group's problems in the Chinese market. As Tang Weishi said recently, joint venture decisions in China cannot keep up with the pace of the market, and it takes great determination and action to pull PSA out of the quagmire, otherwise, the situation of PSA in China will only become more and more dangerous.

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