After winning the first place in the industry in terms of total sales in January 2024, Geely Automobile's sales volume in February continued to maintain a steady performance, achieving a year-on-year increase of more than 3% against the trend. In contrast, BYD's sales fell 37% year-on-year in February after offering a price reduction strategy. From January to February, Geely Automobile sold 324885 units, once again ahead of BYD (BYD sold 302804 units from January to February 2024).
You must know that affected by the Spring Festival holiday, most car companies, like BYD, experienced a month-on-month decline of varying magnitudes in February. In the face of the impact of unfavorable factors such as the Spring Festival holiday and the increasingly involuted automobile market environment, Geely can continue to grow against the trend and release strong growth potential. Geely's contrarian growth fully verifies two points:
First, it can be proved that Geely did not choose to press the warehouse because of the impulse at the end of last year, which shows that Geely's channel system is very healthy; Second, the sentiment of car buyers during the Spring Festival generally cooled down, but Geely's sales volume further increased, which also proved that Geely Automobile has a strong market competitive advantage.
Gili "Empire", chasing BiaDeeBeat!
When we further analyze Geely's sales performance in February, "excellent and balanced" is undoubtedly the best comment on this report card.
First of all, Geely's most important growth stems from the continuous acceleration of the new energy vehicle business segment. According to the data, Geely's new energy sales (including Geely, Lynk & Co, and Zeekr) reached 33,508 vehicles in February, a year-on-year increase of about 48%, and the new energy penetration rate exceeded 30%.
Specifically, the Geely Geometry series, which is positioned in the mainstream mass market, sold 10,514 units in February, continuing to maintain a strong monthly sales of more than 10,000 units. The "Geely Galaxy", which is positioned as a mid-to-high-end new energy series, sold 9,120 units in February. It is worth mentioning that February 23 is the 1st anniversary of the release of Geely Galaxy. Since the launch of the first car, Geely Galaxy has achieved cumulative sales of more than 110,000 units in 9 months, and the average price of a single car has exceeded 160,000 yuan, creating the "Galaxy Speed" and "Galaxy Phenomenon" that have attracted attention in the industry.
The high-end ZEEKR brand delivered 7,510 units in February, a year-on-year increase of 38%, and 20,047 units from January to February 2024, a year-on-year increase of 134%. Not long ago, the new ZEEKR 001 has been listed, the new car is equipped with 800V+8295 chip + LiDAR as standard, known as "a car increases the hard cost of 50,000", the main thing is "increase the amount without increasing the price", with the arrival of the new car, and ZEEKR 007 to reach a "twin star combination", this year's sales performance of ZEEKR is undoubtedly more expected.
Different from the high-end pure electric route of ZEEKR, with the empowerment of EM-P hybrid technology, the Lynk & Co brand focuses on the high-end hybrid market segment. With the rapid growth of the hybrid track, Lynk & Co sold 13,209 vehicles in February, a year-on-year increase of more than 9%. In 2023, Lynk & Co's annual sales will reach 220,250 units, a year-on-year increase of more than 22%, becoming the fastest Chinese high-end car brand to exceed one million units.
As the most potential market segment at present, new energy vehicles can better reflect the space and potential of an enterprise's future development. Obviously, Geely not only has a rich in-depth layout of new energy brands and product sequences within 500,000**, but also has outstanding market performance in various segments.
Of course, while actively transforming to electrification, Geely has not stopped developing in the fuel vehicle business. In terms of sales, the "China Star" high-end series continued to sell well, with sales reaching 24,482 units in February. Up to now, the cumulative sales of "China Star" have exceeded 900,000 units, which not only helps Geely maintain the basic market of fuel vehicles, but also contributes to the high-end of the Geely brand.
Although the old saying goes, "Heroes are not judged by success or failure", the fact that there are countless "winners and losers" makes us have to pay more attention to the successful. Especially under the stock competition, the "involution" of the auto market is accelerating, and car companies are also facing a more complex situation. And Geely can achieve such good results in such an unfavorable market environment, which must have its advantages.
Relying on the systemStrong**value, in order to be lucky
Looking back on Geely's growth process in recent years, although it was once surpassed by BYD in the middle and lost the throne of the first brother of its own brand, Geely has grown steadily along the way, unlike many independent brands or new forces. The reason behind this is Geely's industry-leading systematic strength.
First of all, the R&D system is the foundation of Geely Group. "From 2020 to 2023, we are solving the problem of 'haves' and 'nots' through investment. Now that the problem is solved, we can compete with others. As Geely CEO Gan Jiayue said, Geely New Energy has been able to grow rapidly in recent years, precisely because Geely has been concentrating on laying the foundation, practicing internal skills, and doing a good job in basic technology and resources through technical advantages.
For example, in order to achieve a late-mover advantage in the hybrid market, Geely has launched a new generation of Thor electric hybrid power system and the industry's first transmission DHT hybrid transmission, and this "** combination" has also achieved amazing results on Geely Galaxy L7. From Geely's decisive and rapid layout of the hybrid track, we can see that Geely has a deep and solid technical foundation in the field of new energy.
As the saying goes, those who do not seek eternity are not enough to seek a moment; Those who do not seek the overall situation are not enough to seek a domain. As a long-term and comprehensive industry, the new energy vehicle industry needs strong technical strength in all aspects. To this end, in recent years, Geely has continued to promote the layout of three electrics, Internet of Vehicles, autonomous driving, low-orbit satellites, on-board chips, operating systems and other aspects to create a technological moat. It can be said that in terms of advanced science and technology, Geely's layout is wide and deep, and it is absolutely leading among its own brands.
Taking intelligence as an example, Geely has come up with industry-leading "hand-car integration" solutions such as Galaxy N OS and Lynk Flyme Auto to comprehensively improve the experience of using the intelligent cockpit. In terms of hardware, Geely's self-developed China's first automotive-grade 7nm cockpit chip "Dragon Eagle No. 1" has been mass-produced and launched on Lynk & Co and other brands. In terms of intelligent driving, Geely also has a full-stack self-developed high-end intelligent driving "Vast Intelligent Driving", focusing on the highest-frequency intelligent driving scenarios such as high-speed, urban NZP, and intelligent parking.
These hard-core new technologies will gradually empower Geely's main brand and multiple sub-brands such as Lynk & Co and ZEEKR, and with its leading technology and comprehensive product layout, Geely will continue to reap more dividends in the new energy market.
Secondly, Geely also has the strength of a structured car manufacturing system that many independent brands do not have, or Geely is one of the few Chinese car brands that can achieve structural car manufacturing.
With multiple new energy vehicle architecture platforms such as SEA vast architecture and CMA architecture, it covers a variety of energy forms such as hybrid and pure electric. The construction of cars through the architecture not only improves the efficiency of self-development, but also can quickly improve profitability, so that Geely has the confidence to deal with the best war.
Finally, it has to be mentioned that Geely Group has a strong resource advantage, and has also established a strong system strength in terms of first-class chain and channels.
For example, in terms of channels, by the end of 2023, the number of Geely Galaxy stores nationwide will exceed 650, which is a scale that many new car companies cannot compare even if they have been operating in the market for many years. To have such scale and speed, it is Geely's own huge channel resources. The advantage of using independent channels is that, on the one hand, it can highlight and strengthen the image of new energy brands, and on the other hand, it is conducive to avoiding the loss of intended users and vicious competition between each other caused by same-store sales.
For example, on the first-chain channel, Geely, with its annual sales strength of 1.6 million+, has gained great advantages in global procurement, which not only makes Geely's products truly achieve a "high price-to-price ratio", but also has a first-class response system when the war comes.
NopePartial science, not hanging science, "walking on two legs" is the king
Geely is not afraid of market involution and the wave of industry transformation, in addition to its own strong system support, but also thanks to the pragmatic strategy of choosing "walking on two legs".
First of all, it is "oil and electricity are not biased". While more and more Chinese automakers are entering the new energy sector, the fuel vehicle market is strategically abandoned or underestimated. However, Geely is still not biased, not unbiased, and the two tracks of fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles are developing in a balanced manner. It not only builds good fuel vehicles for fuel vehicle users, but also provides a higher quality electrification experience for new energy vehicle users. In contrast, BYD has completely abandoned the fuel vehicle market, although it has eaten up the dividends of new energy, but it has also laid a huge hidden danger for development.
On the one hand, from the perspective of market development, although the penetration rate of new energy continues to increase, fuel vehicles still occupy the "majority" and have a high market share. And just a few months ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and six departments jointly issued a notice, pointing out that it is necessary to steadily promote the development of fuel vehicles, improve the energy efficiency level and environmental performance of fuel vehicles, protect the legitimate rights and interests of fuel vehicles, and maintain market order.
This shows that although the general direction of the country supports the development of new energy vehicles, the premise is to maintain the healthy development of the fuel vehicle market. This means that, at least for a long time, fuel vehicles and new energy will continue to "coexist in harmony". According to the industry, the market share of fuel vehicles will be 50:50 with that of new energy vehicles, thereby supporting the benign development trend of the market.
On the other hand, from the user's point of view, fuel vehicles are more reliable and safer, and there is no anxiety about battery life and energy replenishment, which is still very attractive to consumers in second- and third-tier cities. It is important to know that compared with the first-tier cities with traffic and purchase restrictions, the sales growth rate of the automobile market in the second- and third-tier cities is significantly higher.
Because of this, Geely's choice of "two-legged" for fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles not only allows Geely to have a larger market space, but also helps Geely form a mutual complement between new energy "blood transfusion" and fuel vehicle "hematopoiesis". In contrast, BYD in the "stud" new energy market has seen a growth bottleneck, and the decline in sales growth in the month is the best proof.
Secondly, it is the simultaneous growth of domestic and overseas. Geely Automobile is one of the first Chinese car companies to go overseas. Last year, Geely Automobile won the third place in the export sales of its own brand with 274101 units. This year, Geely Auto continues to accelerate. In January, overseas export sales were 26,262 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of about 79%; In February, overseas export sales were 24,373 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of more than 39%.
Not only that, in January this year, Geely's main brand and Lynk & Co brand launched blockbuster models in the Egyptian and Vietnamese markets, and established dealer channels; ZEEKR also landed in the Macau market not long ago, which is also another development of ZEEKR in the international right-hand drive market after landing in Singapore. With the launch of a number of high-value models and the acceleration of the construction of overseas sales channels, it is bound to further promote the rapid implementation of Geely Group's globalization strategy.
Write at the end
In the extremely involuted market competition environment, under the "dragon slaying knife" of the first war, rational consumers will naturally choose the best value of the product. However, while subtracting the product, it is also necessary to be able to add the value of the product, which not only needs a strong system support, but also needs a strong enough hematopoietic ability, so as to have enough confidence to move forward in the contrarian trend.
Geely Automobile, as one of the few Chinese car companies in the market that can maintain positive growth under the market trend of substantial month-on-month **, just proves that Geely has the advantage of industry-leading system strength. Relying on the advantages of system strength and the correct development route of "walking on two legs", Geely Automobile will not only help the success of Geely Automobile throughout the life cycle of the industry, but also help Geely win the long-term battle of new energy transformation.