Even if the five major brands join forces, they cannot gain a foothold in the high-end market. Changan’s Zhu Huarong decided to join forces with Huawei to give it another try.

In the past few decades, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi have had an indisputable voice in the high-end Chinese auto market. However, with the rapid development of new energy vehicles, domestic brands have created high-end models such as Weilai, Wenjie and Yangwang, and the situation has shown signs of reversal. However, for most domestic automakers, building a high-end brand still seems to be an unattainable goal.

Take Changan Automobile as an example. As one of the leading manufacturers of domestic independent brands, it has been suffering from inaction in the high-end market.

Changan's product lineup is relatively complex. In addition to the main Changan brand, there are three sub-brands: Oshan, Qiyuan, and Shenlan, as well as Avita, which was jointly created with CATL and Huawei.

Among these five major brands, Changan, Oushang and Qiyuan all focus on the low-end market. Deep Blue is positioned slightly higher, but the average selling price of its main models Deep Blue SL03 and Deep Blue S07 is only around 150,000 yuan.

As for the Avita brand, it was born with a silver spoon in its mouth and is backed by Changan, CATL and Huawei. Its main models are priced at more than 250,000 yuan, but its average monthly sales from January to July this year were less than 3,000 units, falling from more than 4,000 in April to more than 2,000 in July. The Avita 12, which has the best-selling model, has a starting price of 265,800 yuan, but its sales in July were only 1,596 units.

Compared with domestic brands such as BYD and Geely, this result undoubtedly has a huge gap that is visible to the naked eye.

BYD has created the Han Tang series with an average price of more than 200,000 yuan, the Tengzhong D9 with an average price of more than 300,000 yuan and monthly sales of more than 10,000, and the million-level Yangwang U8, which can also contribute steadily to sales;

In addition to Volvo and Lotus, which Geely Auto acquired, there are also Zeekr 001 with a starting price of 259,000 yuan and Zeekr 007 with a starting price of 209,900 yuan. Even high-end models such as Zeekr 009 with a starting price of 439,000 yuan can maintain a stable monthly sales of more than 1,500 units.

Changan Automobile lacks such high-end popular models, which has become a big pain in the heart of its head Zhu Huarong.

In fact, Changan Automobile has invested a lot in the high-end market. The Avita brand was born for this reason. Zhu Huarong also publicly stated that he would do his best to support its development. However, things did not go as planned. Whether in terms of brand or sales, Changan Automobile has not been able to get a share of the high-end market so far.

The predecessor of the Avita brand was Changan Weilai, which was established in 2018, proving that Changan Automobile's layout in the new energy field was quite early, but as of 2023, Avita only had 350 stores nationwide.

Zhu Huarong only took over as chairman in June 2020 and is now approaching retirement age. It is hard to imagine what changes he can bring to Changan Automobile during the remainder of his term.

In addition, Changan Automobile has another obvious shortcoming, which is the lack of truly leading core technology. If a brand wants to enter the high-end market, it must have core technology that is ahead of its peers.

Geely has the SEA vast architecture, which can provide technical support for high-end brands such as Volvo, Zeekr, Polestar, SMART and even Lotus; BYD has core technologies and equipment such as Yisifang, blade batteries, super hybrid DM system, and Yunnian intelligent body control system.

Changan Automobile cannot come up with similar technology now, that is to say, it did not make good technical preparations in the "opening period" of the domestic new energy market a few years ago. If Wenjie is Huawei's "own son", Avita is more or less its "godson", which can directly obtain Huawei's core components to make up for its own shortcomings.

But what’s interesting is that Changan Automobile is the largest manufacturer that has the most resistance to Huawei. In the tripartite cooperation between Changan, CATL and Huawei, Changan strictly limited the cooperation model to the scope of the "Huawei Hi Model", missing out on a lot of development opportunities.

When the world of inquiry was at its peak, Avita was still clinging to his "half soul".

Due to its own insufficient technical strength, it is difficult to make any substantial improvement in the short term. At the same time, Changan is cautious about external technical cooperation. Naturally, its path to high-end development will be slow.

However, Changan seems to have woken up recently. On the evening of August 19, Changan Automobile issued an announcement stating that Avita will purchase 10% of the equity of Shenzhen Yinwang for 11.5 billion yuan.

After this cooperation, Avita is likely to deepen its cooperation with Huawei, make up for its shortcomings in core components, and create core selling points as soon as possible.

It is now the end of August 2024. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China has exceeded the 50% mark in July. Will Changan still have a chance in the narrow high-end market?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.