Grassroots layoffs, senior executives leaving, and sales reaching only 51%, Great Wall Motors is struggling.

Competition in China's automobile market is fierce, and even the "big brother"-level Great Wall Motors is now "a bit annoyed."

Recently, according to a news report from Jiemian, a former employee of Great Wall Motors revealed that Great Wall Motors laid off hundreds of people through non-consensual job transfers and salary cuts.

Prior to this, Great Wall's smart driving division, Momenta, also launched a layoff plan. According to a report by China Business News, functional departments have laid off about 30% or even nearly half of their employees.

Although Great Wall Motors has always given people a "simple" impression and has always claimed that it is "developing steadily", this sudden wave of "layoffs" has still caused the industry to question its previous image and current actual development trend.

The financial report shows that Great Wall Motor's revenue in the first three quarters was 142.254 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.04%, a record high; net profit reached 10.428 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 108.78%; non-net profit attributable to shareholders was 8.374 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 119.93%.

In the first three quarters, Great Wall Motors' comprehensive revenue per vehicle was 166,600 yuan, an increase of 28,300 yuan over the same period last year. If we only look at revenue and net profit, Great Wall Motors can maintain high profits and revenue at a time when price wars are fierce, which at least shows that there is no major problem with its overall corporate market.

Of course, this is only a superficial perspective. Judging from the overall sales volume, Great Wall Motors is still under great sales pressure.

In the first nine months of this year, Great Wall Motors' cumulative sales volume reached 853,800 vehicles, down 1.18% year-on-year. The cumulative sales volume of the five major brands of Haval, Wei, Great Wall Pickup, Ora, and Tank from January to September were 471,700, 32,400, 132,100, 47,200, and 169,800 respectively; the corresponding sales growth rates were -4.78%, -1.76%, -13.46%, -39.25%, and 62.43% respectively. In October 2024, Great Wall Motors' sales volume fell 11.05% year-on-year, and the cumulative sales volume from January to October this year also fell slightly by 2.49%, with a total sales volume of 976,000 vehicles.

From the sales perspective, the overall decline of Great Wall Motors is not large, but considering the current competitive situation of the entire Chinese auto market, especially facing BYD's huge monthly sales of 500,000 units, the pickup trucks and SUV models that Great Wall is best at have also seen a significant decline. Although the sales of WEY and Tank brands have increased, the total of the two is less than 220,000 units, even less than BYD's sales in half a month.

Originally, Great Wall Motor’s sales target of 1.9 million units this year was lower than that of Geely, Changan, Chery and BYD. Now, sales are declining and each product line is not very strong. In 10 months, only 976,000 units were sold, which only achieved 51% of the annual sales target. It can be said that these combined factors have widened the gap between Great Wall Motor and other automakers.

Judging from Great Wall Motors' attitude in public, it seems that sales have not been affected too much. At the 8th Great Wall Motors Technology Festival, Great Wall announced its ambitious 2025 strategic plan, setting an annual sales target of up to 4 million vehicles in 2025, and expecting operating income to exceed 600 billion yuan.

It is undeniable that Great Wall Motors has its own ambitions, but no matter how Great Wall Motors sets its "FLAG", judging from the current situation, the possibility of achieving this year's goals is already very low. As for the future, it is too early to predict it now.

After all, in addition to sales issues, Great Wall is facing other difficulties.

In recent years, Great Wall Motors has suffered from a serious loss of internal talent, especially in 2023, when this situation seems to be more frequent. For example, at the beginning of last year, Wang Fengying, the former president of Great Wall Motors, joined Xiaopeng Motors; in May last year, Wen Fei, the general manager of both Ora and Salon brands, resigned; in October, Chen Siying, the former CEO of Wei brand, resigned; in early November, Guo Tiefu, the former general manager of public relations of Great Wall Motors, joined Radar Automotive under Geely; in December, Li Xiaorui, the former general manager of Great Wall Haval, was reported to have joined Xiaomi Motors.

It can be said that this kind of loss is a headache for any car company. Regarding the decline in sales, the loss of talent, and the recent "layoff storm", I wonder what the big "boss" Wei Jianjun thinks and how he will deal with it.

The current situation is that everyone can see that Great Wall Motors has stood at a crossroads, with sales pressure on one side and product planning on the other. Should it continue to stick to its own models, or bravely face the future of intelligent manufacturing?

Great Wall Motors may have already noticed this and is trying to develop in a better direction. Recently, there is news that Great Wall Motors is trying to establish cooperation with Huawei to enhance the competitiveness of its products through a strong combination.

At the 2024 Huawei All-Connect Conference, Great Wall Motors and Huawei signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement on marketing digitalization. Although speculation that Great Wall Motors would use Huawei's intelligent driving has been dispelled, this cooperation at least shows that Great Wall Motors has taken the first step in its intelligent strategy.

Great Wall Motors has maintained a good momentum in its overseas expansion. According to Wei Jianjun, Great Wall's overseas sales this year will challenge 500,000 vehicles, and it plans to achieve overseas sales of more than one million vehicles by 2030, with high-end models accounting for more than one-third of sales.

In terms of marketing, the changes of Great Wall Motors can also be clearly felt this year. Wei Jianjun started to update his Weibo and personally participated in live broadcasts, interacting with Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi. Wei Jianjun said frankly: "This is an Internet era, and we must actively embrace Internet thinking."

However, the only shortcoming is that Great Wall may not be familiar enough with marketing in the social media era, because some of its remarks have brought some negative impacts on itself. For example, Wei Jianjun said in an interview with Sina that in China's electric vehicle industry chain, the original battery invention technology is from the United States. China has no advantage in core technology, but is in a leading position in the industry chain.

This view was immediately criticized by CCTV commentator Xiang Ligang, who believed that Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, belittled the core technology of China's electric vehicles in order to cover up his own incompetence. He failed to run his own business well, but dragged the entire industry to "take the blame".

Over the past few decades, we can see with our own eyes the efforts made by Great Wall Motors, but the difficulties it is facing now are also an established fact, whether it is layoffs, resignation of senior executives, or severe pressure on sales. As a banner of China's automobile industry, Great Wall Motors, which is wandering to the point of being "a bit annoyed" under various situations, should really think carefully about how to find the root cause of the trouble and solve it, so that employees, society, dealers, and users can all feel the great love of Great Wall.