Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The original title: "Japanese cars don't smell good?" Popular styles have plummeted by 20%, the myth of value preservation has been shattered, and luxury brands have begun to collapse. "

The halo began to disappear.

0.2%, 12%, 22%.

These three figures are the year-on-year decline in sales of the Japanese Big three in 2022.

In 2022, Toyota suffered its first decline in sales in China in a decade, which was only 0.2 per cent, but enough to make the world's most profitable carmaker rethink.

Honda is down 12%, and Nissan is even worse. Sales fell 22.1% in 2022, which has been the fourth year in a row that Nissan's sales in China have fallen.

Japanese cars, which were once in demand, began to sell out.

Behind the decline in sales of the Japanese three swordsmen, China's car market began to rise, with cumulative car sales of 23.154 million vehicles for the whole year, up 9.8 per cent from a year earlier. BYD surpassed the joint venture car company for the first time to become the top seller in 2022.

Source: with the advantages of leather durability and fuel-saving economy, Japanese cars sold very well in the domestic market a few years ago, and even sold at higher prices, but they began to lose fire collectively in the new energy era.

Japanese cars, are they really out of order?

Main cars and luxury brands fell across the board in 2022, Toyota sold 1.9406 million new cars in China, Honda 1.3731 million, and Nissan just over 1 million, 1.0452 million.

The sharp decline in sales must be due to the problems with the main models.

According to the latest ranking of car sales from January to December 2022, Nissan's Xuanyi, which dominates the world with one car, sells 420665 new cars in China, which still ranks first, but down as much as 18% from 513207 last year.

Source: more than 420000 of Dongfeng Nissan's sales, accounting for more than 40% of Nissan's annual sales (1.0452 million), which means that once Xuanyi pulls, Nissan's annual sales will hit the street.

Toyota Corolla, known as the first-generation magic car, sold 252790 new cars in 2022, down more than 70,000 from 330280 in 2021 and 23.5% year-on-year.

Source: among the top 15 domestic car sales rankings from January to December 2022, only Accord and Camry sales of Japanese cars are growing compared with the same period last year, while sales of major models such as Leiling, Xuanyi and Carola have all dropped sharply.

In the SUV market, the situation of Japanese cars is also not optimistic. Dongfeng Honda's small SUV XR-V,2021 sales of 191000 units a year, is the top of the market segment, but in the first 11 months of 2022, XR-V sales have not exceeded 100000.

Source: among the top 15 SUV sales rankings released by the Federation of passengers from January to December 2022, only Honda CR- V achieved positive growth year-on-year, but the growth rate was only 0.2%.

RAV4, which ranks behind CR-V, also experienced a sharp decline, with sales of 167965 vehicles in 2022, down 35000 from 203410 in 2021 and 17.4 per cent year-on-year, while Nissan's Xiaoke was also down 6.5 per cent from last year.

Source: FAW Toyota not only economic models, Japanese luxury brands are also beginning to grow weak.

Even Toyota's high-end brand, Lexus, has not been able to shake off the decline in sales. Data on imported passenger cars released by the China Automobile Circulation Association show that Lexus imported 86477 vehicles in the first half of 2022, down 29.68 per cent from a year earlier.

In 2022, the number of Lexus in China nearly fell below 200000, to only 168000 vehicles, down 16.5% from the same period last year. This is also the first decline in sales since Lexus entered the Chinese market.

Source: Acura, a high-end brand owned by Lexus Honda, announced in April last year that GAC will officially withdraw from the Chinese market from 2023, and that GAC Honda will no longer produce and sell existing products under the GAC Acura brand.

Recently, it was revealed that Acura China's official website had been shut down, which officially came to an end after 16 years of independent development of the GAC Honda brand in China.

Infiniti, a high-end brand owned by Nissan, sold only more than 6,000 vehicles in 2022. Many people began to wonder whether Infiniti would end up in China like Acura.

02. Why doesn't it smell good? Toyota, Honda and Nissan Japanese car companies unanimously blamed the "failure" on the shortage of global supply chains, especially spare parts, which were plagued by the lack of core and the impact of the epidemic for three consecutive years.

In December last year, Weibo launched a topic, "Why Japanese cars can't sell #", which sparked a lot of netizens' discussion.

Source: Weibo generally speaking, the reason why Japanese cars are no longer popular in China is that, on the one hand, the reliability and economy of Japanese cars have been impacted by new energy vehicles, especially pure trams.

Japanese cars are known for their fuel economy, and now their fuel-saving advantage in the global market is being hit by hybrid technology. In other words, the core competencies and advantages of Japanese cars have been replaced by new energy, and there are only a handful of advantages that can bring sales.

On the other hand, Japanese cars do not find a breakthrough in the new energy market, can not come up with competitive electric cars in a short period of time, and the decline in sales is reasonable.

In addition, some analysts believe that the sales of Japanese cars in China are greatly affected by BYD, and some BYD models have taken orders from Japanese cars of the same class.

The A-class car is an important analysis in the market structure, in which Xuanyi, Carola and Lang Yi were once dominant, but BYD Qin began to break into the top four with an increase of 80%.

The joint venture models Lanya and Corolla, which are in front of them, both fell by 18%. The sales share of independent brands such as Geely and Changan also began to rise in 2022.

Therefore, in the face of the impact of the epidemic and supply chain impact, the sales of many Chinese brands have increased by leaps and bounds, constantly seizing the market share of Japanese cars.

Even the myth of high value preservation, which we have been proud of in recent days, has also begun to shatter.

In 2022, as the end prices of new cars began to loosen, the discounts for Japanese cars were enlarged again and again. The price of Xuanyi classic top models was less than 100000 on arrival, and Carola and Leiling also had a lot of discounts. New car concessions are also transmitted to second-hand cars, and many second-hand car dealers say that the sharp price reduction of new cars has seriously affected the price of second-hand cars.

In fact, throughout the composition of Japanese car sales, it is still dominated by traditional fuel cars, or the above-mentioned star models such as Xuanyi, Teana, Accord, Carola, Camry and other established strong teams have carried the sales banner.

BYD, which became the top seller in the Chinese car market in 2022, sold mainly hybrid and pure electric models after it announced a total suspension of fuel production in April last year, with cumulative annual sales of 946239 hybrid and 911140 pure electric models respectively.

Source: according to data released by BYD, three models, BYD Han and Qin, as well as dolphins, are in the top 15 in car sales rankings. In the SUV market, BYD Song topped the list of SUV sales from January to December 2022 with 478811 sales.

So the claim that BYD snatched orders for other Japanese cars of the same class is not groundless.

In the new energy market, whether it's cars or SUV, except for the ID series of Tesla and Volkswagen, the top 15 sales lists published by the Federation from January to December last year are all independent brands, not to mention Japanese cars.

03. The Japanese halo has dissipated. In fact, the share of Japanese cars in China has gradually declined since it reached a peak of 24.1% in 2020.

The share of the Japanese system surpassed that of the German system for the first time in 2021, but it fell 1.5 percentage points from the previous year, and the market share fell below 20% to 18.2% in the first 11 months of 2022.

At the same time, with the development of new energy vehicles, independent brands ushered in explosive growth. The market share of independent brands reached 35.7% in 2020 and rose to 49.2% from January to November last year.

Japanese cars may have recognized the mistake in the strategic direction, and the transformation of electrification has become the most important thing right now.

At the Guangzhou Auto Show, Guangzhou Auto Toyota released the fifth generation dual-engine hybrid technology, while Guangzhou Auto Honda released the fourth generation i-MMD hybrid technology.

Source: when GAC Acura officially announced its withdrawal from China, GAC Honda also said that in order to further promote the landing of the electrification strategy, GAC Honda will fully integrate GAC Acura brand resources and join the electrification cause.

According to the electrification strategy released by Honda China, Honda will launch 10 new electric models in China in the next five years and 30 pure electric vehicles in the global market in 2030, with plans to produce more than 2 million vehicles a year.

Big Brother Toyota also announced that the Lexus brand will sell all electric cars in China, Europe and North America by 2030 and achieve full electrification globally by 2035.

On January 10, Lexus opened the pre-sale of the new pure electric SUV RZ, the first model built by Lexus based on the pure electric platform, positioning the medium-sized pure electric SUV and launching a total of three models with a price range of 375000-465000 yuan.

Source: Lexus adopts dual-motor four-wheel drive layout, equipped with the latest electronic control technology DIRECT4 electronic dynamic four-wheel drive system, battery capacity 71.4 kWhree CLTC maximum battery life 520km.

Although the positioning of high-end models is not volume, but this pricing and battery life, the domestic market is destined not to be too many consumers willing to pay.

Nissan, which suffered the worst decline in sales among the Japanese three swordsmen, began to put aside its arrogance and announced that it would launch a new generation of Qijun e-POWER in 2023 after it was listed as "education" by the new generation of three-cylinder Qijun. Infiniti, its high-end brand, also plans to electrify most of its models by 2030.

From this point of view, Japanese cars have not collapsed, but can Japanese cars with hindsight remain as strong as ever in the new energy era?

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Super Electric Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab). Author: Truman.

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