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Whether it is a joint venture company for new energy vehicles or traditional fuel vehicles, both sides have joint venture contracts. After the 5:5 restriction is relaxed, the Chinese and foreign sides will start a new game on the basis of joint venture contract with a new attitude.
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued a blockbuster news that the automotive industry will relax the restrictions on foreign-funded share ratios for classified vehicles, and announced the opening time steps: in 2018, the restrictions on foreign-funded share ratios for special vehicles and new energy vehicles will be abolished; in 2020, the restrictions on foreign-funded share ratios for commercial vehicles will be abolished; in 2022, the restrictions on foreign-funded share ratios for passenger vehicles will be There are no more than two restrictions on joint ventures. That is to say, after five years of transition period, the automotive industry will all lift the restrictions, and the Chinese automotive industry will thus enter a post-joint venture era.
Up to now, almost all of the world's major automobile companies have set up 1-3 joint ventures in China, with a stock ratio of 5:5. The average remaining operating period of the joint venture agreement is about 20 years. Most of the earlier joint ventures have renewed their contracts before their expiration: Volkswagen and FAW renewed their contracts in 2014 to 2041, Volkswagen and SAIC renewed their contracts in 2002. The contract was extended to 2030, and BMW and brilliance were renewed in 2014 until 2028. In this way, both new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicle joint ventures have joint venture contracts. After the 5:5 restriction is relaxed, the Chinese and foreign sides will start a new game on the basis of joint venture contract with a new attitude.
Independent car companies face competition directly
The relevant policies of relaxing the restriction of foreign capital share ratio in the automotive industry classified type give passenger car enterprises five years buffer time, and the first one is in the field of special vehicles and new energy vehicles.
Zhang Zhiyong, a veteran automotive analyst, told TIME Weekly that the commercial vehicle market, trucks, buses and vans, which will be opened this year, will be basically unaffected. He explained that at present, in the Chinese market, commercial vehicles are in a polarized pattern, of which less than 400,000 are national brands, and millions of heavy trucks and engineering vehicles are the territory of foreign big men such as Volvo and Mercedes-Benz, who do not violate the river. Volvo will not consider low-end models, because profits are too low and costs too high, and domestic models have no technical ability to rise to the high-end market, or even the mid-end market. In addition, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz are unlikely to take huge risks on their own and come to China solely to build factories. Their only possibility is to cooperate with Geely. Zhang Zhiyong said that Li Shufu won the biggest shareholders of Volvo Group and Daimler Group precisely in order to let the two big commercial vehicle giants enter China in a joint venture and introduce truck technology into China. There will be more opportunities for cooperation in the field of special purpose vehicles this year after the joint stock restrictions are lifted.
As for the field of new energy automobiles, Yin Chengliang, deputy dean of the Institute of Automobile Engineering of Shanghai Jiaotong University, told TIME Weekly that once China's knowledge in the automotive industry could be described as "poor and white" and had to "trade the market for technology". Nowadays, what the Chinese automobile market needs is competition, especially for new energy vehicles, such as BYD, Geely, Zhongtai and other automobile companies, whose sales of new energy vehicles are in the forefront of the world, but they have not really gone overseas. The super-high sales of these companies are also limited to the Chinese market. Therefore, competition will prompt domestic giants to accelerate the development of new energy vehicles. This is a great opportunity for the emerging new energy automotive industry, especially in the field of new energy, such as Volkswagen and Jianghuai, Zhongtai and Ford. Shortly after the contract is signed, the validity period of the contract is usually as long as 25 years, which is equivalent to reserving sufficient competition time. However, a number of domestic self-owned brand automobile companies and new automobile manufacturers will be greatly impacted, and they will have to face the positive competition of foreign automobile giants in a hurry.
Foreign car companies do not want to disband.
Statistics show that China sold 24.72 million passenger cars last year, of which 19.6%, 17.0%, 12.3%, 4.6% and 1.8% were German, Japanese, American, Korean and French passenger cars respectively. In the face of the great changes in China's automobile industry policy, what actions will foreign car companies take? The market that can be used for reference is India. After the Indian government opened up the stock ratio of the automobile industry, most foreign-funded automobile enterprises chose to build factories solely in the Indian market, but the Chinese market has its particularity. Most people in the industry think that the possibility of building factories solely by foreign investors is not very high, such as FAW Volkswagen, Beijing Hyundai, Guangzhou Automobile Toyota. Large-scale joint venture enterprises, such as automobile companies, have developed in the Chinese market for many years before they become strong competitive automobile enterprises. Foreign capital will not easily start anew.
For example, Guangzhou Automobile Group, according to the statistics of its annual report in 2017, has broken through 2 million vehicles for the first time. Among them, the sales volume of its own brand has exceeded 500,000, and its own brand has formed a tripartite pattern with Japanese and European systems. Management of Guangzhou Automobile Group said that the joint venture agreement between Guangzhou Automobile and Toyota was signed by 2034, and there is little possibility of change during the cooperation period. At this stage, the cooperation between the two sides is relatively satisfactory. If a new company is established in the future, the stock ratio needs to consider the enthusiasm of both sides. And brilliance BMW, BMW also did not show the intention to change the current form of cooperation. Peter, director of BMW Group, said that he had not considered changing the proportion of BMW's shares in Huachen BMW, a joint venture company in China.