Building a car is like sailing against the current, and if you don't advance, you will retreat!
Under the impact of the new energy wave, independent brands are catching up and collectively rising, not only comparable to joint venture brands in terms of quality, but even in the mid-to-high-end field has been able to compete with luxury brands.
However, among these car companies, we have not found the figure of Besturn Motors.
In the new energy vehicle sales list, Besturn is not on the list;In the field of fuel vehicles, many models of Besturn even sell less than 1,000 units per month, becoming a real marginal brand.
The "first brother" who sits and eats the empty mountain
In 2006, FAW Besturn was established.
In the same year, the Besturn B70 was officially launched. Although before the listing, the outside world has ** new cars or will be unveiled as a "red flag". However, considering that the positioning of the car does not match the Hongqi brand, Besturn did not adopt it, but regarded itself as "Besturn". At that time, the first batch of new cars unveiled adopted the "1" shaped car logo, which was quite like a small red flag waving in the wind, which was quite textured.
As the first independent mid-to-high-end sedan under Besturn, B70 has won the favor of many consumers with its outstanding appearance and good cabin space.
In fact, the "three major parts" of the Besturn B70 are not independently developed, the chassis, engine and gearbox of the car are common to the Mazda6, and even some parts can be common. It can be said that the Besturn B70 was developed by FAW Car through years of digestion and absorption of Mazda technology.
At that time, there was nothing wrong with such a design, after all, almost all independent brands had done it by imitating or directly borrowing the advanced technology of others;And from the point of view of product quality and stability, the Besturn B70 was still good at the time.
Since then, with the launch of the Besturn B50, it has formed a product matrix with the Besturn B70. At that time, when the model was lackluster, Besturn products had a certain competitiveness in appearance design, interior configuration and power performance, which played a key role in occupying a place in the market for FAW Besturn.
In 2013, Besturn's first compact SUV, the Besturn X80, was launched. The car adopted the popular fastback design at the time, coupled with the advanced technological experience, which won the hearts of young consumers. In 2014, the second-generation Besturn B70 was released, although the SUV had shown a "stellar fire" trend, but under the leadership of the Besturn B70, FAW Besturn sales also continued to hit new highs, and the cumulative sales in 2014 were 18560,000 units, up 46% year-on-year.
However, the biggest crisis of Besturn is also coming.
In 2015, Besturn sold 15 new cars130,000 units. In 2016, under the established target of 170,000 units, the Besturn brand, which did not have a new car on the market, only achieved sales of 1070,000 units, down 293%。In 2017, Besturn lowered its sales target for the year to 150,000 units, but for the whole year 11The actual performance of 540,000 units is still far from the target.
In this environment, in 2018, FAW Besturn immediately announced the launch of the new logo of "Window of the World" and announced the new brand positioning of "Internet of Things Vehicle Pioneer". In the same year, the Besturn T77 was launched, and I don't know if the new logo played a role, or the new brand positioning opened the door.
In 2019, Besturn sold a total of 12 new cars throughout the year050,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 33%. This is also the first time that Besturn has felt the magic brought by the rebranding.
But magic is only magic, and then Gallop completely fell into a trough. For the full year of 2020, sales volume increased to 7320,000 units;The cumulative sales volume in 2021 is only 5780,000 vehicles, completely lost in the whirlpool of self-reflection.
Perhaps, it would not be the case if Besturn started from the new energy track earlier.
In fact, as early as 2008, FAW Besturn launched its first petrol-electric hybrid car, the Besturn B70 HEV. In 2010, the Besturn brand officially entered the pure electric vehicle market and launched the Besturn B50 pure electric car. At this time, the vast majority of independent car companies have not yet set foot in the field of new energy.
It's a pity that Pentium still hasn't been able to get rid of the "criticism" of getting up early in the morning and catching up with the evening set.
In the next few years, perhaps it is the hot sales of fuel vehicles that have made Besturn Motors taste the sweetness, or perhaps it is its own slackness, Besturn has never made achievements in the field of new energy.
In 2018, the Besturn B30 EV finally arrived, but this oil-to-electric model did not make much waves. It wasn't until 2019 that the Besturn E01, which was built on the FME pure electric exclusive platform, finally came out, but the sales were still miserable.
At the same time, BYD sold a total of 451,246 new vehicles in 2019, of which 219,353 were new energy vehicles, and EV models increased by 42% year-on-year5%。It is worth mentioning that at this time, BYD's total production and sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 730,000 units, compared with Besturn.
The Besturn car is not without its struggles.
But now, it still doesn't help.
Galloping without control of the "core".
There are thousands of paths to success, but there are only two reasons for failure - internal and external.
Besturn Motors has not been able to convert its sales advantage into brand voice, and the key is that it does not have its own core technology.
From the initial backing of Mazda's "three major pieces", to the rapid "topping" of the Besturn brand. Besturn Automobile indulged in the technical dividends of the joint venture car, and gradually lost its desire to master the core technology. At the same time, as Mazda is declining in the Chinese market, Besturn has lost its own technical resources.
Even the 20T+6AT powertrain, its maximum power is 224PS, and the fuel consumption per 100 kilometers in urban areas is 11L. To be honest, there is almost no representation among the current domestic brands.
For another example, FAW Besturn claims to have spent billions of yuan to develop the Besturn T77, and its chassis is actually Volkswagen's PQ34, that is, the chassis of Volkswagen's old Bora 20 years ago, and no major innovations have been found.
Even the Besturn has an FMA infinite equation architecture with a thermal efficiency of up to 3906% of the Zhiqing Rubik's Cube engine and other technologies are actually embarrassing. The former does not have any advantages over the architecture of other independent brands, and the Zhiqing Rubik's Cube engine is not completely autonomous, but is born on the basis of Toyota's technology.
Car companies without core technology often have such a common problem, that is, quality problems.
Taking the Besturn B70 as an example, the 2021 model has as many as 251 quality complaints on the car quality network. Among them, not only problems with the engine and gearbox, but also problems such as tire cracking, air conditioning not refrigerating, vehicle abnormal noise, etc., accounted for more than 50% of the total number of complaints. Almost every imaginable glitch can be found in the Besturn B70.
Compared with sedans, SUVs also have more than 100 complaints, Besturn T77 and Besturn T99 have more than 100, and I don't know how FAW Besturn grasps quality control. Even in the service field, the number of complaints of the Besturn brand is far ahead of other independent brands.
Of course, the quality complaints of the Besturn brand in the past two years have shown a sharp downward trend, which is also very understandable, the car cannot be sold, and there will be fewer complaints. In fact, in 2018, the complaint sales ratio of Besturn Motors has been quite high, with its 272 is twice the domestic passenger car average.
The overall configuration seems to be very high, but the actual experience is more crotch-pulling, and the cost performance is average. Perhaps it is a true portrayal of the current Besturn products.
Especially for today's rational consumers, it is difficult for them to empathize with products with mediocre product power. Spend the same amount of money to choose Pentium, why not consider BYD, Changan or Geely?This may be the common idea of most consumers after seeing Pentium products.
To say that it has become a marginal brand in the auto market is all Besturn's own fault, and it is not entirely correct.
After all, as an independent brand under FAW Group, the importance of Besturn Automobile is not as important as that of the Hongqi brand. Brand new platform, Hongqi first arrangement;New powertrain, Hongqi test station. Even the first generation of engineers in the early days of Pentium are basically serving the Red Flag system.
In terms of model resources, the product line that originally belonged to Besturn was also assigned to Hongqi Automobile under the instruction of FAW. As a result, the Hongqi brand has achieved an all-round improvement, but Besturn Motors has lost the opportunity for brand improvement.
The introduction of war investment may be difficult to turn around
It is said that the new forces burn money very much, but the speed of burning money of "old car companies" is not bad.
From 2020 to the first five months of 2023, FAW Besturn's operating income was 855.2 billion yuan, 601.6 billion yuan, 603.3 billion yuan, 283.8 billion yuan, while the corresponding net profit was -485.9 billion yuan, -375.7 billion yuan, -209.7 billion yuan, -99.7 billion yuan, although the overall loss is narrowing, but the cumulative loss in more than three years still reached 117As much as 100 million yuan.
In terms of sales, in 2021, FAW Besturn sold 6 new cars760,000 units;In 2022, the sales volume reached 7440,000 units;In the first half of 2023, FAW Besturn sold a total of 57,077 new vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 113%, but it still cannot get out of the downturn.
There is no doubt that if it were not for the big tree of FAW Group, it would be difficult for FAW Besturn to survive until now.
In September 2023, FAW Besturn, which continues to lose money, ushered in a strategic investment from Jiangsu Yueda Automobile Group. The amount of this capital increase is 1663.2 billion yuan, FAW shares, FAW equity investment (Tianjin)** and Jiangsu Yueda Automobile Group *** shareholding ratios respectively. 8691% and 19741%。
According to the plan, FAW Besturn will no longer launch new fuel models. According to the announced plan, Besturn will build seven new energy models on the FMA and FME platforms in the next three years.
The cooperation between the two sides is probably more in the field of new energy.
You know, FAW Group's accumulation in the field of new energy is not deep at all, and the Besturn brand is even more "down", and the cooperation with Yueda Automobile is not the new energy technology of Kia Motors?
Although Hyundai Group has a complete range of new energy technologies and products, neither Hyundai nor Kia has been able to create a suitable product for the Chinese people, which can be described as self-care. On the other hand, Yueda Automobile Group is not having a good time, not only facing great pressure on profitability, but also its key investment in Yueda Kia and Human Horizons also need to continue to transfuse, and the prospects of these two brands are not clear.
Whether it is a fuel vehicle or a new energy, FAW Besturn is self-reliant or looking for foreign aid, and the tower will face greater challenges and tests next.
Perhaps, today's situation is no longer under the control of the Besturn brand itself!