With Honda's first official layoffs in China after 25 years in the country, the plight of Japanese automakers in China has once again attracted attention.
From a brand perspective, in addition to Honda's layoffs, Toyota has also announced layoffs and reduced production capacity in China, while Mitsubishi, like Mitsubishi, has directly announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market.
From the perspective of consumers, I don't know when Japanese brands lost their voices. You know, maybe just 5 years ago, if you ask someone for advice on buying a car, if not more than half of them, at least a small half of them will recommend buying a Japanese car. But now, if it weren't for layoffs and delisting, how many people would take the initiative to think of Japanese car brands?
From the perspective of market data, the market share of Japanese cars has increased from 241%, down to 17. in the first half of 20236%, a three-year decrease of 65%, which is the most significant decline of all categories.
These reference indicators of different dimensions all point to the fact that Japanese auto brands are lagging behind in the Chinese market.
So, how exactly did you fall behind?
Japanese brands lost the Chinese market
As 2023 draws to a close, the fate of the two major Japanese brands reveals the dilemma they are facing in the Chinese market today.
Honda Motor said on December 2 that it will lay off about 900 contract workers at its Chinese joint venture, Guangqi Honda, as the proportion of gasoline-powered vehicles sold will be significantly reduced due to the rapid shift to the electric vehicle market. It is worth noting that this layoff is the first official layoff in Honda's 25-year history in China.
On the other hand, FAW Toyota issued a letter to dealer partners, announcing that it will continue to significantly reduce its production distribution in the next three months, on the premise that production has been significantly reduced in the month. Earlier, in July, GAC Toyota, another Toyota joint venture in China, also suffered large-scale layoffs involving 1,000 people.
The reason why Japanese brands are falling behind in China is that the slow pace of electrification transformation has led to backward development conceptsIn terms of the current situation, it is a bet on the development speed of China's new energy market, resulting in a disjointed product matrixIn terms of products, the market competitiveness of hybrid vehicle products is insufficient. It is under the influence of these three forces that its market share, like a knife cutting meat, is infinitely swept away by independent brands and new power brands.
In terms of direction, in the process of electrification development, the original logic of relying on power to open the product level failed, and the vehicle began to fight for interior and intelligence, which is an important direction for domestic cars to break through in the past two years. But let's take a look at Japanese cars, which still stop at the stability brought by simple design, and continue the simplicity of the era of fuel vehicles in terms of interior and intelligent configuration.
In terms of the current situation, Japanese cars have been insisting on hybrids, betting that hybrid models can become popular after China's new energy subsidies are reduced. However, as a result, the new energy subsidy has not been completely abolished, and at the same time, consumers' acceptance of pure electric vehicles is also increasing, resulting in a sharp decline in the competitiveness of Japanese products.
In terms of product competitiveness, domestic hybrids have entered the 5-digit level, and they have been beaten down by BYD, Changan and the like, and these 5-digit domestic hybrids are still rolling up the interior and rolling intelligence. Not to mention that the Japanese brand is a cut higher, and the latter does not have any advantages over domestic production. Therefore, whether it is the guiding concept or product competitiveness, the rise of domestic cars has made Japanese brands very passive.
The direct manifestation of this is the declining market sales of Japanese cars. Putting down the layoffs of Honda and Toyota, look at Mazda, which fell 49 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year4％；Look at Lexus, which fell 20% year-on-year in the first half of the year;What about Nissan?Direct estimates are a 23% decline in China this year. To sum it up in a less accurate sentence, almost all Japanese brands that can be named are declining.
Pay the price of a hard mouth?
However, what is surprising is that despite the market decline, Japanese brands are still very "hard-mouthed".
Among them, Toyota is almost a representative. So far, Akio Toyoda is almost one of the few car companies in the market that still continues to export opposition to electric vehicles.
Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation, once said, "I think what needs to be improved is the engine, not the transformation to a new energy vehicle." Until recently, in the face of Toyota's declining development of electric vehicles, he said that the company's slowdown in sales just proved that he was right to resist electric vehicles.
Akio Toyoda seems to have always believed that battery electric vehicles are just one of the ways to get to cleaner transportation in the future, and that hybrid and hydrogen-fueled vehicles will also play an important role. To put it simply, it is necessary to hold on to the signboard of the hybrid of oil and electricity. The results have also been seen, after all, language affects consciousness, consciousness affects behavior, and behavior affects results. Toyota has recently lowered its full-year electric vehicle sales forecast due to its lack of competitiveness in the market.
Seeing this, I don't know if everyone will think it is a little strange. It is actually normal for a brand to fall behind in the market. For example, like Toyota, a hard mouth is not betting on pure electricity, and it is normal for it to fall behind under the rapid development trend of electric cars, which is the price of a hard mouth. But what is the reason why brands from a certain country can collectively fall behind in a pure market environment?
In fact, the answer is also very simple, because others do not panic at all.
Contrary to everyone's intuition, the decline of Japanese cars is limited to the Chinese mainland market. Just this past November, the sales of Japan's four major car companies in the United States increased by 18%, Toyota rose 17%, Honda rose 33%, Subaru rose 6%, and Mazda rose 3%. For example, Toyota, the representative of Japanese cars, has not only achieved global sales growth, but more surprisingly, its profitability has surpassed Tesla in one fell swoop.
Therefore, this is the first reason why Japanese cars are slow in the face of new energy: car companies do not pay attention to it. Because the basic market of fuel vehicles is so stable that it can still achieve performance growth even though the Chinese market has almost collapsed.
At the same time, as a Japanese brand, it is also facing the constraints of development consciousness. In fact, one of the important theoretical supports for the development trend of electric vehicles is environmental protection. Japan, on the other hand, is a country with a lack of energy and a high level of social modernization, and its environmental awareness is also leading. As a result, not only are K-cars popular in Japan, but also hybrid vehicles are becoming popular in Japan. Therefore, whether it is from the perspective of use cost or environmental protection demand, it is as for the pure electric car to become popular in Japan very quickly. This is also the second reason why Japanese car companies are slow to develop new energy: the social atmosphere is not strong enough.
Perhaps the more critical reason is the lack of a vibrant Internet market in Japan.
In fact, the real jump between new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles is not a simple energy conversion. In fact, the core lies in the intelligent revolution driven by electrification after electrification. In the process of intelligent development of automobiles, the functional attributes of automobiles have also changed from the original means of transportation to a more unique scene space. In the past, almost no one wanted to spend too much time in the car, but today, it's clear that that impression is changing. The core driving force of intelligent development is actually the technological spillover of Internet development. But if we look at Japan today, there are almost no well-known local Internet companies, and the development and penetration of mobile Internet in society are far from being comparable to those in the United States and China. This also explains why companies like Toyota have actually spent more than $10 billion on autonomous driving, but the actual results are not good.
Write at the end:
In summary, Japanese brands are lagging behind in the Chinese market.
The reason for the lag is simple: its electrification is slow.
But at the same time, its position in the global market is still solid.
Japanese brands, the variables in the Chinese market, reveal at least two pieces of information:1The development rate of China's new energy vehicle market is much higher than the global average. So much so that these "rich second generations" of Japanese brands accidentally fell behind. 2.The development speed of Chinese brands is astonishing, and they have become the world's first-line force in the field of pure electric vehicles.
The reason why Japanese brands are developing new energy is slow. There are many reasons, first of all, from the perspective of the global market, there is still a buffer process for the transformation of fuel vehicles into new energy. Japanese brands have incomparable advantages in the field of fuel vehicles. Second, the cultural and technological industry chain of Japanese society determines that Japan does not have the opportunity to lead the world in the process of automobile electrification transformation. Because in the last round of the Internet revolution, Japan fell behind, which directly affected its competitiveness in the field of automotive intelligence.
Therefore, we have seen that in the reports of Japan's ** so far, although Toyota is slow to act, every time it has even a little action in the field of new energy, it will be interpreted as "full of crisis". Because, in addition to the Chinese market, the "new energy" game in other markets has actually just begun.
As for the future, it can be seen that Japanese brands are doing their best to recover the gap, and now they are also beginning to think seriously about the development of electric vehicles. But just like the left-handed and right-handed exchanges, one more electric car means one less profitable fuel car. Japanese brands, do they really have the determination to "break their wrists"?Let's leave the answer to time.