27,000 units sold in four months, Kia's Yang Honghai is as fierce as a tiger, but the record is 0 to 5

Are there any brands that are obviously well-known but are actually dying?

Kia from South Korea is definitely one of them. From January to April 2024, Kia Motors sold 27,789 vehicles in China, which is completely marginalized. The best-selling car in April was the low-end Kia K3, which starts at 82,900 yuan, with sales of 1,363 units, and the sales of other models were all below 1,000 units.

The Kia Carnival, which is officially promoted by Kia, has a monthly sales volume of 132 units; the K5, which was very popular when it was launched, has a monthly sales volume of 93 units; the pure electric model Kia EV5 has a monthly sales volume of 638 units.

Logically speaking, it would be difficult for Kia's performance to become a hot topic in the Chinese market; but in fact, over the past year or so, Kia Motors has frequently appeared on the Internet, not because of its products, but because it has a chief operating officer named Yang Honghai.

Yang Honghai joined Kia on February 13, 2023, and on February 17, he made a big move online: he named and scolded BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu. In his Weibo post on that day, Yang Honghai asked Wang Chuanfu to "educate the team well", accused BYD of spontaneous combustion on the street, falsely labeling the mileage, and fraud, and even said that the name BYD was a curse word.

It is not uncommon for executives of auto manufacturers to engage in verbal abuse online in China's auto industry, but this is the only case so far where executives of auto manufacturers have been directly insulted by name.

In fact, on the second day after joining the company, Yang Honghai cursed "BYD water army" on the Internet. However, Kia was already in a precarious situation at the time and did not attract much attention. Therefore, a few days later, Yang Honghai directly directed the target of his curse at Wang Chuanfu.

However, such outrageous behavior is just the beginning for Yang Honghai. At the 15th China Automotive Blue Book Forum in June 2023, Yang Honghai's rhetoric escalated again: Kia earned $2.1 billion globally in the first quarter and can afford the Chinese market; wait until Chinese automakers are burned out, and then come in to grab the market later.

At the same time, Yang Honghai claimed that Kia has a lot of money and technology in its pockets, and has not given up on the Chinese market. It is also a strategy to come in and clean up domestic manufacturers at the right time. Such exaggerated remarks stunned the professionals present.

If you are interested in checking out his Weibo, you will find that he is in an excited state almost every day. His Weibo posts mainly contain three kinds of content: first, criticizing domestic cars, mainly BYD; second, introducing Kia's new cars; and third, quarreling with netizens in the comment section.

The Chinese auto market has been flooded with traffic in recent years, but even so, Yang Honghai's high-intensity verbal attacks seem outrageous. Public information shows that Yang Honghai joined SAIC Group in 1996, which means he is a veteran in the Chinese auto industry. He is not young either, so he should be more mature. But why did he become a " The King of Lip-service "Woolen cloth?

First of all, this is related to his personal resume. In the past decade, Yang Honghai has worked in Shanghai GM, SAIC Ssangyong, SAIC MG UK Branch, SAIC MG India, SAIC Indonesia, and SAIC Maxus. In April 2020, Yang Honghai became the vice president of Brilliance Renault Jinbei, in charge of marketing, but Jinbei went bankrupt in early 2022, and then joined Kia.

We can simply paint a picture of this person: he is a veteran, has been in the joint venture circle for a long time, has basically never entered the core decision-making level, has never participated in key models or projects, and Kia is his most famous employer.

It is not difficult to understand why he hates domestic cars so much. The rise of domestic cars such as BYD is the decline of joint venture cars. At its peak, Kia's sales in China exceeded 600,000 vehicles, but now it is less than 100,000 vehicles. This makes Yang Honghai, who has always been making a living in the joint venture circle, very angry.

Secondly, Yang Honghai's exaggerated remarks may be a helpless choice for Kia Motors. Although joint ventures such as Volkswagen and Toyota's new energy performance is not as good as expected, there is always the possibility of transformation; but Kia is not in the position of transformation now, it is facing the problem of survival.

Yang Honghai has been in office at Kia for more than a year. His main new energy vehicles are EV5 and EV6, but the sales are very poor and almost no one is interested. Facts have proved that it is unlikely that Kia will be able to revive on its own, as it has neither core technology nor brand influence. So the purpose of Yang Honghai's rhetoric is only one: to force the outside world to pay attention and tell others that Kia is still alive and has new energy models to sell.

From an objective point of view, whether Yang Honghai's shocking remarks came from his heart or were arranged by Kia officials is no longer important. Kia Motors is a world-renowned manufacturer and was once a leader in the Chinese market. Choosing a person who couldn't even make it in Jinbei to serve as a senior executive may itself be a kind of lying down attitude.

It's not that Kia hasn't tried hard before. In the past three years, Kia has put a lot of effort into introducing models such as the new Kia K5, Kia Carnival, and the new Sportage to China. It also launched two new energy vehicle models, EV5 and EV6. However, these models have almost all fallen on deaf ears. The more it tries, the more its sales fall.

Perhaps, now Kia needs to consider when to withdraw from the Chinese market. In the foreseeable future, Kia Motors has basically no chance of turning around. You know, Kia's decline occurred long before the new energy era began. After the rise of domestic fuel vehicles, Korean cars were the first to bear the brunt. Hyundai and Kia could not hold on before the epidemic.

The Chinese market is indeed very tempting, but according to Yang Honghai, Kia is growing rapidly in other markets around the world, so why should it embarrass itself? Mitsubishi can withdraw from the Chinese market, but why can't Kia withdraw?

It was Yang Honghai himself who cursed domestic manufacturers as a senior executive of Kia, while domestic cars have already dominated the market. If Kia were to leave, Yang Honghai would have to think carefully about which joint venture he could find a decent job in, given his extensive experience in the collapse of joint ventures.

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.