Korean cars in the early years of the domestic auto market is still very popular with consumers, taking Hyundai and Kia as examples, they are more cost-effective and pragmatic than Japanese cars, but what people didn't expect is that 2016 is a watershed, especially for Kia cars, it is the beginning of a decline.
2016 was Kia's most glorious year in the Chinese auto market, achieving 650,000 units throughout the year, setting a record for sales in the domestic auto market, and since 2017, Kia Motors has begun to decline rapidly in the Chinese market, on the one hand, because of the impact of the THAAD incident, on the other hand, the rapid development of its own brand. In 2017, sales of Kia Motors fell to 360,000 units, in 2020 to 250,000 units, and in 2021 only 160,000 units remained. Last year was even worse, according to retail data, Kia sold only 83,875 units in the Chinese market for the whole year, down 1140%, ranking 49th among all automobile brands in China.
Although Asia still has a certain competitiveness in the global market, after all, its global sales reached 3,085,771 units last year, a year-on-year increase of 63%, while also setting a new annual global sales record, but in the Chinese market, now Kia, is almost on the verge of delisting.
It is worth noting that as of the end of the third quarter, the total liabilities of Jiangsu Yueda Kia Automobile, a joint venture company in China, have reached 266 trillion won, total assets of 193 trillion won. According to this calculation, Jiangsu Yueda Kia has become insolvent, with an asset-liability ratio of 1379%。What's more, Dongfeng Motor Group has been insolvent since the company withdrew from the joint venture. Is Kia really going to be "rotten" like this?
In fact, the Chinese market is no longer important to Kia, at present, independent brands and new car-making forces have shown strong explosive power, even in the early years of the Japanese popular Japanese system, German cars are now a significant decline in competitiveness, not to mention Kia, which no one cares about, but it is reluctant to completely abandon Kia.
Kia's executives have publicly stated that they will not withdraw from the Chinese market, and their attitude is very resolute, so we can see that Kia has chosen to accelerate the layout of electrification in order to save the market. According to Kia's plan, it will launch at least one pure electric vehicle in the Chinese market every year based on the e-GMP global modular platform for electrification. This year, Kia will bring its flagship SUV model EV9, and will also launch an entry-level pure electric SUV, a high-end electric sedan and a mid-size pure electric SUV in the future, which can be said to be very intensive, but can Kia rely on new energy ** to succeed?
The author believes that it is very difficult, first of all, it is very late to enter the game at this time, the domestic new energy vehicle market has formed two camps led by traditional independent brands and new car-making brands, joint venture brands and luxury brands are trying to survive in the cracks, not to mention that there is no stable base brand in the fuel vehicle market like Kia, giving people a feeling that they have disappeared, and it is not easy to have a place in the new energy vehicle market.
I wonder if that speech at the beginning seems to be blindly confident now? "I earned $2.1 billion globally in the first quarter of this year, which is affordable for the Chinese market. You burn it first, and I'll wait to come in and grab the market later, and I can ...... later”
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