When the auto market entered the downward channel, geely, the leader of its own brand, was not without anxiety, and how the laggard should pass the hesitation period.

The elegy of 2019 car market, in this cold winter day, seems particularly harsh.

Not surprisingly, the monthly auto production and sales figures released as scheduled by the passenger association or the China association of automobile manufacturers all point to year-on-year declines. In the first 11 months, passenger car production and sales in the narrow sense fell by more than 10% year-on-year. On that basis, gasoline-automotive research has estimated that the overall decline in passenger cars this year is expected to be between 8% and 9%.

While the "nine for gold and ten for silver" failed to illuminate the bleak auto market, autobots may have to hope for a year-end "warp tail" effect. However, in November, both in terms of terminal sales and the dealer inventory warning index, this "warp tail" effect is significantly weaker than in the past. Fortunately, the Spring Festival came early this year, so the autobots are looking forward to a bumper harvest in December.

Whether the last month "harvest" or not, the pattern of this year's car market and the ranking of the car companies, the probability has been "fixed". Geely, Great Wall and chang 'an are among the top three automakers in terms of sales in the january-november period.

A decade of ups and downs, geely again led the way

In fact, throughout the development of the three independent companies in the past ten years, the ups and downs of their sales in the passenger vehicle sector reflect the direction of their respective product strategies. As early as 2010, geely automobile's annual sales reached 400, 000; At the time, Great Wall, which focused on suvs, relied on the harvard brand to sell 300,000 passenger cars a year. Changan, which has been transforming from commercial vehicles to passenger vehicles, is still at a disadvantage.

In 2013, SUV ushered in explosive growth, and Great Wall enjoyed the market dividend brought by SUV and jumped to the first place of its own brand in the passenger car field. This year, chang 'an automobile in the passenger car field growth rate is also relatively fast. That year, chang 'an's cumulative sales of passenger cars reached 500,000 for the first time, with a year-on-year growth rate of 61.89% compared with 2012.

In 2014, chang 'an surpassed geely and Great Wall in annual sales volume of 710,000, leading the sales list of self-owned passenger car enterprises.

Since then, chang 'an continued this advantage for three years.

Three years later, in 2017, geely, which had been dormant in the passenger car sector for three years, finally made its move. Thanks to its balanced distribution of cars and suvs, geely sold 1.248 million vehicles in 2017, making it a leader in autonomous passenger vehicles for the first time.

In 2018, geely achieved positive growth again with annual sales of 1.5 million. The difference is that among the three independent companies, Great Wall began to take up more market share than chang 'an, while chang 'an, its former big brother, fell into the third place.

The market is down, anxiety and hesitation go hand in hand

In the first 11 months of this year, geely's sales exceeded 1.23 million units, down 12.5 percent year on year. The performance of the passenger car segment of Great Wall and chang 'an was not the same, with Great Wall's cumulative sales volume of 820,000 units rising against the trend of the winter, while chang 'an's sales volume of 708,000 units ranked the third among its own brands.

In terms of volume, geely still leads the pack this year. But compared with last year, it is still relatively bleak. However, in the passenger car market into the downward channel, how many of the head car companies can still maintain growth trend?

At present, among the three independent companies, geely's product layout and market performance are still the most balanced. In addition to its presence in cars and suvs, this year's entry into the market fills a gap geely has been missing in the MPV space for years.

Even so, in the face of the market downturn and the huge changes brought by industrial restructuring, the front-runners are not immune to anxiety.

In the first half of this year, faced with a 15 per cent year-on-year decline in the mid-year report, geely executives decided to take the initiative to adjust the annual sales target. As it released its midyear sales figures, geely also said it had cut its full-year 2019 sales target by 10 percent to 1.36 million vehicles.

This adjustment, is obviously geely industry downward pressure to turn around. And from the product advancement speed, geely did not turn around, but go all out.

In the car market, geely cloth emgrand, Emgrand GL, vision, Bin Rui, and borui; In the SUV field, in addition to Boyue, vistas X6, Emgrand GS and other old models, Bin Yue, starcom and the newly arrived geely icon are also added. Under the circumstance that the market is in increment, the same kind of product is densely packed, as long as control good price difference, can share a slice of market in different segment; Now, the market is entering a phase of stock competition, only the well-known, good reputation of the model is likely to be remembered by users, and thus maintain sales. But geely now in cars and suvs so intensive products, on the one hand may cause the brothers of the same door to each other, on the other hand, internal friction of similar products, the stability of the terminal price will also have a certain impact.

Industry analysis believes that the rapid pace of geely's product launch, product density, just reflect the car market down the environment, the head of the car anxiety.

Geely's "greed" is not an isolated case, Great Wall also has this tendency.

Great Wall, which is still focused on suvs, has expanded the range of harvard's suvs from small to medium to large segments. In the compact SUV segment, harvard has eight models, but only the harvard H6 and harvard F7 are popular.

In fact, with the gradual contraction of the SUV, the overall sales of the harvard brand is also shrinking. In 2017, it sold 850,000 vehicles annually. In 2018, it sold 766,000 vehicles, down 10 percent from a year earlier. In the january-november period, harvard sold a total of 690,000 vehicles, but that was up slightly by 4.9 per cent compared with the same period last year. This slight increase, in addition to the harvard H6 sales trend, but also due to the harvard F7 and harvard M6 incremental. However, of the more than a dozen existing models of the harvard brand, only those mentioned above can be truly known by consumers and support sales.

In addition, Great Wall's growth in passenger vehicles this year has also been linked to the steady trend of the new energy brand euler. From January to November this year, euler brand with two pure electric subcompact vehicles, the cumulative sales volume has reached 36,000.

The independent three strong, chang 'an, the current should be the most in need of efforts.

Chang 'an's 2018 sales fell 19.2 per cent year on year, down from a sales peak of one million units. In the first 11 months of this year, it sold 708,000 units, down 12.3 percent year on year.

This year, chang 'an also honed its product strength on the original models, and launched a series of updated models under the name of PLUS, such as chang 'an CS55PLUS, chang 'an CS75PLUS, etc. Fortunately, in the second half of the year, with the addition of chang 'an CS75PLUS, chang 'an auto terminal sales recovered significantly, a month-on-month surge.

Unfortunately, its former flagship, ruicheng CC, is still underperforming. In the second half of this year, ruicheng CC became ruicheng CC, which added smart configuration and further lowered the price to reach more audiences. In November, the sales volume of ruicheng CC reached 3,626 units per month, which is an improvement over the performance of ruicheng CC in the past.

Industry analysis that in the independent brand, chang 'an's research and development strength is relatively strong, especially in the power train has made outstanding contributions. In the last two years, with the launch of blue whale series small displacement engine, its product power has also increased. In the technology-intensive automotive industry, "as long as r&d, technology and technology can stand firm, it is impossible not to produce good products". In terms of the design that consumers value more, chang 'an automobile is also verifying the popularity of its new design concept through series products such as the new CS75PLUS.

Chang 'an automobile, which has accumulated certain accumulation in research and development and design, needs to sort out its product line and concentrate its advantageous resources to build the next "hot style".

We believe that in the future, chang 'an has the strength to go through the hesitation period and return to the peak state of selling millions of units annually.