Geely has better and better cards in its hand. Does Great Wall still need to rely on sharp operations to show off its skills?

In the automotive industry, there is a joke that Geely has the best cards and Great Wall is the best at playing cards. Indeed, Great Wall Motors relied on Haval H6 to support more than half of its annual sales. Later, Great Wall Motors established a new high-end brand WEY, which exceeded 80,000 sales in less than a year in 2017. But now, Geely's cards are getting better and better.

Lynk & Co's global expansion

On November 28, 2017, Lynk & Co 01 was launched on the market, marking the first mass-produced model of Lynk & Co, a highly anticipated new brand positioned above traditional Chinese brands. Although everyone believes that Lynk & Co's competitor should be WEY, in Lynk & Co's own eyes, it has already set its sights on Volkswagen.

Looking at the current brand matrix of Geely Holding, it is indeed very comparable to Volkswagen. Volkswagen has Skoda, Geely Holding has the Geely brand, Volkswagen has Audi, Geely Holding has Volvo, Volkswagen has Porsche, Geely Holding has Lotus, Volkswagen's Volkswagen brand is positioned higher than Skoda, and Geely Holding's Lynk & Co brand is positioned higher than Geely Auto, so the relationship between the two is self-evident. If Geely Holding is China's Volkswagen, then Lynk & Co is China's Volkswagen brand.

In 2017, Geely Auto (Geely brand + Lynk & Co) sold 1,247,116 vehicles throughout the year, a year-on-year increase of 63%. The company has set a sales target of 1.58 million vehicles in 2018. Judging from the cards Geely currently has, this target is not exaggerated. In terms of Geely brand product layout, Geely has a wide range of models in both sedans and SUVs, and also has good sales performance. Lynk & Co has sold more than 6,000 vehicles in 33 days since its launch. In terms of global layout, Geely Holding also has inherent advantages. The acquisition of Volvo and Proton has paved the way for Lynk & Co to enter the Southeast Asian and Nordic markets. What puts more pressure on competitors is that Lynk & Co is going to build a factory in the United States.

How far is Great Wall's dream of becoming the world's number one SUV?

Unlike Geely, Great Wall Motors does not have so many good brands. Its sales have always been dominated by SUVs. Although its annual sales in 2017 were only 1,070,161 units, Great Wall Motors has sold over 930,000 units in the SUV market segment, while Geely has just sold over 600,000 units. But what is worrying is that the only sedan, the Great Wall C30, is a major shortcoming of Great Wall Motors. Is it really like what Wei Jianjun said, that if SUVs are not the world's number one, they will not touch sedans?

As a leading car company among independent brands, Wei Jianjun, like Li Shufu, has the dream of going global. Although WEY has taken the lead in high-end brands, Lynk & Co's fearlessness in the face of danger has also doubled the pressure on WEY. At this time, Great Wall must be very envious of Geely, which has good cards such as Proton and Volvo. For this reason, Great Wall also began to seek help from BMW and FAC (Fiat Chrysler), hoping to acquire BMW's MINI brand and FAC's professional SUV brand Jeep, but ultimately failed.

This also gave Great Wall a blow, telling it that the road to globalization is not so easy. Not all jeeps are called Jeeps, although some jeeps want to be Jeeps. As a result, Wei Jianjun's dream of becoming the world's No. 1 SUV seems a bit out of reach. I'm afraid that in the future, we will not see other Great Wall cars except the Great Wall C30 for a long time.

Can Great Wall’s sharp operation show off Geely’s good hand?

Today, Great Wall's problems have been exposed very clearly. The product advantages of SUVs have long been unable to cover up the lack of sedan products. Although it has achieved good sales results in China, Great Wall's scale is not enough to be feared in the global market. In the future, it does not have good resources to export abroad. In the short term, it can only rely on the Chinese market. On the contrary, these are Geely's advantages. If one day, the Chinese SUV market begins to sluggish, what should Great Wall do?

If Geely is the Volkswagen of China, then Great Wall can be said to be the Toyota of China. At the 2017 Guangzhou Auto Show, WEY's booth was next to Lexus. To some extent, Great Wall and Toyota are indeed similar. Compared with Volkswagen, Toyota's main force in the Chinese market is only Toyota and Lexus. It also had ambitions for the global sales champion throne and turned its dream into reality in 2007.

But from the experience of Toyota, the throne of the global sales champion is a trap. In the pursuit of global dominance, there will always be some radical behaviors, thus ignoring the quality of products. In addition to Toyota, Volkswagen has also fallen on the road to pursuing global dominance. At this time, as a latecomer, Great Wall Motors was not in a hurry to expand its sedan product matrix before its SUV became the world's number one. Perhaps it is just like Toyota: make good products first, then expand the scale, and learn how to play cards before getting good cards.

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.