1997, adhering to the simple concept of "a car is four wheels and a sofa", Li Shufu officially entered the automobile market; Also in this year, Yin Tongyue finally assembled a core team of more than 50 people, including the "Eighth donkey kong", and prepared Chery's first car model with great pride. Subsequently, Chery brought QQ, the son of the East and other models, and Geely brought freedom ships and pride. Generally speaking, the development direction of these two brands in the initial stage is the same-making a fortune by cheap cars.
10 years later (2007), Chery has achieved the "small goal" of producing and selling 6.5438+0 million cars, that is, during this period (2009), Chery launched A3, which was equipped with an engine and CVT gearbox independently developed by Chery, and with a sleek and beautiful appearance, it achieved great success. In the same year, Geely officially announced that it had entered the strategic transition period, and thus became the first automobile enterprise in China to carry out strategic transformation. Subsequently, nearly one million Rolls-Royce and National Super Run Beauty Leopard were launched, but all the new cars launched by Geely in this transitional period did not come to a good end. But then Geely introduced models such as Vision and Emgrand, which laid a solid foundation for Geely's development in the next decade.
However, today, Geely's production and sales volume ranks first among independent brands year after year, reaching 65,438+0,368+0,600 vehicles last year. Car companies competing with Geely have already become the sub-brands of Chang 'an, Great Wall and even Great Wall. Although Chery has not faded out of our sight, its position and ranking among independent brands seem to be far worse than before. But in terms of quality, Geely and Chery will still be compared by everyone.
If we only look at the book data, Chery's engine parameters will be more beautiful, but Geely will not be too bad. Although Chery's performance has not opened such a big gap with Geely, the sales gap has widened, mainly because Chery has made mistakes in brand development and positioning. But it can't be said that the quality is good if the sales volume is good. Therefore, if we only compare the two companies in terms of quality, we can't conclude that Chery is better or Geely is stronger.
Because the judgment of a car or even a brand is good or bad, it cannot be considered within five or six years when the independent brand really begins to rise. But if we go forward for ten years, we can draw better conclusions from Chery. This can be seen from the current ownership. At the turn of the century, Chery's QQ, Yun Qi and other models still have a large number of ownership. Even today, many cash-strapped graduates will choose QQ as their first car. And Geely's pride, freedom ship and other models are not much now. But the conclusion that Chery's quality was better than Geely's 20 years ago cannot be directly applied to today's 20 years later. After all, the development direction of independent brands twenty years ago was completely different from that of today's independent brands.
In fact, the impact of sales volume on R&D investment of automobile companies is also obvious. If car companies want to succeed, a solid foundation for building cars and appropriate marketing strategies are indispensable. Chery did not match its own technical strength in marketing. 10 years ago, when it came to Chery, the first reaction was QQ. 10 years later, the first reaction was QQ. 10 years ago, when it came to Geely, my first reaction was that I couldn't come up with a representative model. 10 years later, the first reaction is a strong and predictable independent brand, which is the marketing gap. Although the gap between Chery and Geely in technical comprehensive strength will not be great, as time goes by, the gap between Geely and Chery will eventually become bigger and bigger, and Chery will be dumped further and further by Geely.