Recently, the Chinese auto market has welcomed a new high-end new energy passenger car brand – Landmap.
It had to be said that the new energy track was really attractive. As soon as the next person fell, there would be someone here to relay the power. Even if the venue had already fought for "blood and blood", there was no fear at all.
But don’t think that this is a returned overseas Chinese who is deceiving under the banner of new energy. The background of Lantu is not ordinary.
Do you still remember that in 2018, Dongfeng Motor Group established the h business department specially for the high-end brand of electric vehicles? It is the predecessor of Lantu, in other words, the Lantu brand is shouldering the major task of Dongfeng Motor’s brand upward and new four modernizations, which is extraordinary enough, right?
And there are various indications that Dongfeng is coming for real this time.
The official said that Lantu does not belong to Dongfeng’s existing independent brand passenger car company, but directly belongs to Dongfeng’s Hong Kong-listed company – Dongfeng Motor Group joint stock company. This is equivalent to Xu Liuping, chairperson of FAW Group, when he adjusted the structure, he directly belonged to the group, and the status and importance are self-evident.
In addition, Landmap will be different from other subsidiaries of Dongfeng Motor, featuring a new strategy, a new organizational mechanism, a new business model, and a new team. Yoyah will operate independently and adopt market-oriented operations, which is equivalent to Dongfeng Motor starting a second business.
Let’s take a look at the core executive configuration of Lantu. The CEO (CEO) and CTO (Chief Technology Officer) is Lu Fang, the former head of the project management department of the FAW Group Pentium Development Institute, who once led the development of Hongqi H5 and Pentium T77. The chief brand officer is Lei Xin, the former executive deputy general manager of Dongfeng Infiniti, the CFO (chief financial officer) is Shen Jun, the former manager of Dongfeng company finance reporting division, and the COO (chief operating officer) is Jiang Tao, the former general manager of Dongfeng Nissan Dalian Branch.
"This is a strategic choice for us to use a new organization, new mechanism and new model to promote Dongfeng’s brand upward," said You Zheng, a member of the Dongfeng Group’s party committee standing committee and deputy general manager.
Under the new organizational mechanism, Landmap has a more flexible way of activities, gets rid of the previous rules and regulations, and explores an innovative and integrated development model of "mature car companies + new forces in car manufacturing". This is the basic framework for the birth of Landmap.
Why?
"With the consumption upgrade of China’s automobile market, the mid-to-high-end market of 200,000-350,000 yuan is growing significantly, and it is also the only incremental segment in the passenger car market in 2019. Only this price market can carry the future of Dongfeng Group’s electrification and intelligent technology." You Zheng once said frankly.
Breaking through the original pricing ceiling of independent brands can provide more cost space for the application of new technologies and functions, which is also one of the motivations for Dongfeng to plan the "Landmap" brand.
A person close to Dongfeng Motor said that another motivation for Dongfeng Motor to launch Lantu was the influence of high-end independent brands such as FAW Hongqi.
FAW Hongqi, which also belongs to the background of central enterprises, has undergone tremendous pressure on Dongfeng in the past two years. In 2019, FAW Hongqi achieved its annual sales target of 100,000 vehicles, a significant increase of 234% compared with the same period last year.
But as China’s second-largest state-owned auto group, Dongfeng Motor’s sales are mainly provided by joint ventures, and its independent passenger car business is relatively weak. In 2019, Dongfeng Motor sold a total of 2.4536 million passenger cars, of which the combined sales of multiple brands of autonomous passenger cars were only 323,000.
From January to June this year, Dongfeng’s own brand passenger car sales were 164,000, down 33.4% year-on-year, the overall performance was less than the market, and the main models were mostly priced below 140,000 yuan, and the brand power could not be compared with the red flag.
Obviously, the birth of the Lantu brand is not only due to the general trend of the market, but also due to the performance of Dongfeng.
It is worth noting that, due to the decline in Infiniti’s positioning, Dongfeng has no luxury brands to sell, while other state-owned enterprises such as FAW, SAIC, Changan, and GAC all have luxury brands as a facade.
You can’t say that the things that senior brothers and junior brothers have, when they arrive at Dongfeng, there is nothing. That definitely won’t work, so the third motive for the birth of the Mist Map is also there.
The mid-to-high-end market has a way out, sales decline, and the desire for luxury brands are the main reasons for the birth of Lantu.
Can it stand?
Some people also pointed out that Dongfeng was slapping his face and making him fat, just like an ignorant child. Others have it, and I am also clamoring to have it.
Personally, I don’t think this is accurate. Why can’t I have what others have?
Everyone knew that the new four modernizations were a major trend. If Dongfeng deliberately adhered to the original few traditional independent brands, wouldn’t it be equivalent to sitting still? Instead of sitting and waiting to die, it would be better to "take a fight and turn a bicycle into a motorcycle".
But the beginning also said that the new energy track has been fighting for blood, and what does Dongfeng (Lantu), who is halfway through the battle, use to match the old drivers who have fought dozens of rounds?
Although Dongfeng’s layout in the new energy field is very early, in 2001, Dongfeng Electric Vehicle Company was established, and now it has 19 years of experience in electric vehicle research and development. In addition, in recent years, Dongfeng has also launched several 100 thousand yuan pure electric vehicles, and its Dongfeng well-off electric vehicles are not uncommon.
The problem is that the technical reserves used for low-end models over the years, do you think it is enough to support 20-350,000 high-end cars? Obviously, it is insignificant. We don’t know what good goods are pressed in the bottom of the Dongfeng box.
DONGFENG MOTOR CORPORATION Standing Committee Member, Vice President
Second, although there are increments in the 20-350,000 range, these increments do not belong to independent brands. Take the new energy vehicles in the 20-350,000 range targeted by Landscape as an example, in fact, many independent brands have already tasted the pain.
For example, GAC New Energy’s Aion LX and SAIC’s Marvel X, they all shoulder the brand’s high expectations, and the price is infinitely close to the 20-350,000 range, but the results are obvious to all, Aion LX monthly average of hundreds of units is already good, Marvel X some months even only single-digit sales.
Data Source: 1st Electric
After years of hard work in the field of new energy, it is considered a small achievement of GAC New Energy. The current main sales models are still about 15-170,000 Aion S and Aion V. It is difficult for independent brands to rise! It is even more difficult to rely on pure electric vehicles to rise!
It was no wonder that Lantu’s high-end approach would be questioned by the industry. Dongfeng Automobile, which was still a traditional OEM, had failed to accumulate enough users and word-of-mouth in the field of new energy vehicles on the basis of several existing passenger car brands.
Of course, everyone understood the truth. Just as Zhu Yanfeng, the chairperson of Dongfeng Group, said, "You have to run at the beginning, and you have to sprint at the beginning." Lan Tu had to keep up with the rhythm quickly, otherwise it would become the next Byton and end in tragedy.
It is reported that Dongfeng has formulated a 10-year product plan for the Lantu brand and will launch 9 models. The first SUV product will use the pure electric vehicle S platform led by Dongfeng’s technology center. The new product will be a B-class SUV model, which will be launched in 2021, targeting BBA mid-sized luxury SUV products.
Landmap will sell in a new channel built by itself in the future. Dongfeng Renault’s factory in Wuhan will be upgraded and used for the production of new models, and the annual production capacity is planned to be 150,000 vehicles. (Indirectly solve the problem of employee employment in the Renault factory)
In addition, we can also ask, can Nissan Motor, a joint venture partner of Dongfeng Motor, help to pull a hand? Recently, Nissan has officially launched pure electric vehicles, and the new Ariya will inevitably enter the Chinese market in the future. Is it possible to carry Nissan’s electric vehicle platform or provide some key technologies?
After all, with Nissan’s help, the gap between Landscape and the first batch of players could be quickly narrowed. Of course, this was just speculation, and Nissan might not be so generous.
Nissan Ariya
In general, you can say that the birth of the Landscape was an initiative, or it can be said that it was forced out by the market. As far as the current situation is concerned, what do you think of Dongfeng Motor’s "Landscape" drawing?
