As we all know, Japanese cars are always unfavorable all over the world, and their sales and quality are recognized all over the world, but things sometimes pass by. In recent years, the domestic sales of Japanese cars have been restricted to varying degrees. This year‘s performance is particularly obvious. The sharp decline in several months, and even the self-owned brand‘s share in the car market, is the most illustrative of the problem. What is going on here? Are Chinese people gradually abandoning Japanese cars?

  Few people would have thought that one day independent brands would directly compete for the share of Japanese brands in the car market. However, this has indeed happened this year. From January to February, the market share of Japanese-branded cars decreased by 4.4% compared with 2020, while the market share of self-owned brands increased by 4.3%. The share of American brands and German brands in the car market has hardly changed. From the data point of view, self-owned brand cars have directly swallowed the market share of Japanese brands.

  This is just the beginning of the decline in sales of Japanese brands. In the following months, especially in the second half of the year, sales of Japanese brands have shown varying degrees of decline. In the first three quarters of this year, the domestic sales of Japanese brands increased by only 0.3% year-on-year, but their market share fell to 21.8%. In October of this year, Japanese brand sales were 279,341 units, a sharp drop of 31.3% year-on-year, setting the worst October sales record since relevant statistics were available in 1968.

  Coincidentally, Japanese brands are also showing a downward trend in the US market. In the United States, Nissan’s sales have been declining year-on-year for three months, and Nissan has simply refused to release sales data for several consecutive months. In the US market, Toyota‘s sales in November fell 25% year-on-year. Among them, Toyota brand sales fell 24%, of which Corolla sales were 8,906 units, a 63% drop; Camry sales were 19,261 units, a 34% drop. The brand‘s best-selling light trucks also fell by double digits year-on-year: RAV4 (-14%), Highlander (-13%) and Tacoma (-21%); sales of the Lexus brand fell by 32%.

  Honda’s sales fell by 17% year-on-year. Among them, the Honda brand sales fell by 17%, and the Acura brand sales fell by 21%. Car sales fell 24%, and light truck sales fell 13%. Honda Civic (Civic) sales fell 26%, and CR-V sales fell 19%. Mazda and Subaru also fell 5.2% and 35% in the same period, respectively, for three consecutive months of decline and six months of decline.

  Sales plummeted globally and collectively fell. What happened to Japanese cars? The first is that technological iteration has brought a lot of troubles to Japanese cars. Beginning in 2016, Japanese cars began to apply turbocharged engines on a large scale, and hybrid systems have also been adopted from very few previous models, and now they have begun to be installed on a large scale. Starting to apply various new technologies and build a new automotive architecture platform, this time is the iterative period of Japanese models.

  During the technological iteration of Japanese brands, the technology of independent brands has developed rapidly. For example, when you opened a domestic brand car before, you mostly saw the engine of Mitsubishi Japan. Now, if you open a Japanese car, it is likely to use an engine produced by a certain Chinese manufacturer. Over the years, the technological breakthroughs of independent brands have occupied a lot of market shares, including those occupied by Japanese brands. Although the technology of Japanese cars is in a leading position, and the awakening of technological iterations is not too late, Japanese cars are still facing development difficulties, especially in China, the world’s largest automobile consumer market, where sales of Japanese cars have been greatly restricted in recent years .

  In addition, apart from our unique patriotic feelings, Japanese cars are also lackluster in terms of cost performance. High-end cars have never been better than German ones, and BBA will always be a luxury in the eyes of the Chinese, even though Lexus and Infiniti had wanted to impact luxury brands, they were finally defeated in the world.

  Cost-effectiveness is not the opponent of domestic cars. With the development of domestic cars, the industry structure of independent car companies has been optimized. Leading independent car companies such as Geely, Great Wall, and Changan have risen step by step and have begun to become the traditional force of Japanese cars. Siege the city and land in the range. In the hybrid field, especially BYD, the sales of its hybrid models continued to blow out, which greatly suppressed Japanese hybrid products. Therefore, the gap between joint venture cars and domestic cars is not that big, and the reputation of domestic car companies is slowly getting better. They are constantly gaining consumer recognition and directly cannibalize a part of the market segment of Japanese brands. .

  Secondly, Japanese brands are always slow in their electrification transformation. As the biggest vested interest in the era of fuel vehicles, Japanese manufacturers have intentionally or unintentionally resisted the transformation of electrification. For example, Toyota‘s head Akio Toyoda has repeatedly bombarded electric cars and mocked Tesla for filling his hunger. Japanese car companies have been slow to fully transform to electrification, and generally adopt technology routes such as hybrid and hydrogen energy. The global automotive industry is making great strides in the transition to electric vehicles. Japanese car brands failing to quickly keep up with the trend of the times will definitely outweigh the gains in the long run.

  In contrast to the rivals of Japanese brands, the German-based Chinese Volkswagen took the lead in launching the MEB platform to meet the electrification trend, ID. A series of models have been put on the market one after another. Audi‘s etron is also a pure electric model built on the MEB platform. Although Mercedes-Benz and BMW do not have models built on a pure electric platform, somehow others have also launched several products that are capable of fuel-to-electricity. U.S. cars are also determined to transform, GM‘s Autoneng electric vehicle platform, Cadillac LYRIQ, Ford electric horse, etc., but we still haven‘t seen mass-produced models built by Japanese brands on pure electric vehicle platforms.

  The advancement of the electrification strategy of Japanese brands is also long overdue. Honda China only announced its electrification strategy in October this year. When friends and businessmen have come up with mass-produced models and the market competition has become fierce, Honda has only Does it seem a bit late to come up with a strategy? However, according to Honda‘s plan, after 2030, only pure electric vehicles and hybrid models will be introduced in the Chinese market, and fuel vehicles will completely withdraw from Honda‘s product matrix. And within 5 years, Honda intends to launch 10 pure electric vehicles to participate in the competition in the domestic market. At the same time, its new pure electric brand "e: N" was officially released, and three concept cars were launched worldwide, including e: N Coupe concept, e: N SUV concept and e: N GT concept. These three concept cars will Mass production will continue in the next five years.

  Toyota also released the TOYOTA bZ4X CONCEPT concept car on the e-TNGA EV exclusive platform in April this year. Later, at the end of October, Toyota announced the details of the bZ4X, the first model of the TOYOTA bZ pure electric exclusive series, and announced it in 2022. It went on sale in China and other markets in the middle of the month, showing a clear determination to accelerate. If this electric vehicle can pry into the domestic market next year, it will further accelerate the deployment of Toyota‘s all-round electrification technology.

  As the first country in the world to propose fully electric vehicles, the decline in sales of Japanese cars is also due to its insufficient deployment in the electric vehicle industry. The overall decline in the sales of fuel vehicles has caused the sales of Japanese cars to be trapped.

  Finally, industry-specific chip shortages and shortages of parts supply have also been the main reasons for the sharp decline in sales of Japanese cars in recent months, causing them to reduce production globally, leading to serious delays in delivery. As the world‘s largest automaker, Toyota has always been known for its supply chain management, but after all, it was defeated in the auto parts supply crisis. In addition, the other two major players Honda and Nissan have also experienced sales declines. Of course, it is not difficult for Japanese to catch up. For example, Toyota has already been frantically deploying the Gemini strategy, which also means that once the chip problem is alleviated, it will make efforts. It will be more fierce.

  Summary: Although the sales of Japanese brands have fallen sharply this year, independent brands are indeed eroding the market segments of Japanese brands, but we have also seen that the sales of German and American brands have also fallen to varying degrees, so there is no need at all The bad news of Japanese brands, after all, the short-term sales ups and downs cannot explain the future development trend. After the completion of technical iterations and the mitigation of chips and supply chains, coupled with Honda Toyota officially standing on the track of electrification in the new travel era, it is also foreseeable that Japanese brands will renew their efforts.