For joint venture automakers, 2024 will be an exceptionally difficult year amid the tide of transformation towards electrification and intelligence.

As senior executives of SAIC Volkswagen, the largest joint venture automaker in China, Tao Hailong, Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd., and Fu Qiang, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing of SAIC Volkswagen and General Manager of Shanghai SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Sales Co., Ltd., feel deeply about this.

2024: 1.2 million vehicles, one champion, one top brand

In 2024, SAIC Volkswagen will achieve annual sales of 1.2 million vehicles, and the strategies of "oil-electric advancement" and "oil-electric intelligence" will show results.

"One is the single-brand champion in the fuel vehicle market, and the other is the top brand in the joint venture new energy vehicle market. This is our overall situation in 2024."

On January 6, in the first exclusive interview of 2025, Tao Hailong used the words "champion" and "top card" to succinctly summarize SAIC Volkswagen's overall performance in 2024.

This year, facing the pressure of the overall decline in the market share of fuel vehicles in China, SAIC Volkswagen launched the "smartest fuel vehicle" with all its strength, and its market share in the fuel vehicle field continued to grow, achieving the expected goal of being the number one brand. At the same time, the ID. series of pure electric vehicles also ranked first among new energy joint venture brands.

Tao Hailong, Party Secretary and General Manager of SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd.

Fu Qiang, who is in charge of sales, said that he rated himself as basically qualified for this achievement. "Why do I rate myself as qualified rather than satisfied? Because our entire company's market share, especially in new energy, has not yet been fully opened up. This is also the focus of SAIC Volkswagen in the future, including this year and next year. We hope that the performance in plug-in hybrid and new energy can achieve the same market position as fuel vehicles."

2025: Maintaining the basics, becoming stronger, more beautiful and smarter

As we enter 2025, SAIC Volkswagen's goal is to maintain its basic annual sales volume of 1.2 million vehicles.

Facing the uncertainty that may be greater in 2025 than in 2024, Tao Hailong said that the worst-case scenario should be prepared for the business. However, no matter how the market changes, SAIC Volkswagen will continue to improve its business quality: continue to maintain its market share in gasoline vehicles, and even continue the upward trend in the second half of 2024; launch a comprehensive strategy for pure electric models to keep the ID. series rising and achieve a break-even in 2025; and do a good job in launching three new models and corresponding modified models.

How to achieve this series of goals? Fu Qiang introduced that SAIC Volkswagen's overall marketing strategy for 2025 can be expressed as: More Powerful, More Beautiful, More Intelligent, that is, more powerful, more beautiful, and more intelligent.

The first manifestation of becoming more powerful is to continue to exert efforts in the advantageous areas of fuel vehicles. In 2025, Volkswagen's latest EA888 fifth-generation engine, both longitudinal and transverse, will be launched in China. Among them, the transverse EA888 engine will be launched on the Touron Pro, and the longitudinal EA888 engine will be installed on the Audi A5L Sportback.

"Volkswagen and Audi have used all of their best technologies on the EA888 engine," said Tao Hailong.

"The power of this generation of the fifth-generation EA888 engine is comparable to that of the previous V6 engine, reaching more than 450N·m, but the fuel consumption is even lower than that of the previous EA888 engine. If consumers want to buy a fuel vehicle, the Touron Pro and Audi A5L Sportback are very suitable choices." said Fu Qiang.

Fu Qiang, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing of SAIC Volkswagen and General Manager of Shanghai SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Sales Co., Ltd.

Even more beautiful are the Touron Pro, the successor of the Lavida, the facelift of the Lingdu L and the ID.3 GTX version, which will all adopt a more dynamic shape; the Audi A5L Sportback retains the original European hatchback shape, and the first model of the AUDI brand with the four-letter logo will also be launched in 2025, which also has a sense of futurism and technology. Tao Hailong, who has already test-driven the Audi A5L Sportback version on the German highway in the rain, said that this car has unparalleled competitiveness. In 2025, SAIC Audi's network will be ready for the dual-brand strategy, and two new products - the A5L sportback and the first AUDI model, will become the "absolute dark horse" in the ABB luxury camp.

To be more intelligent, both gasoline vehicles and electric vehicles must be continuously updated and iterated in terms of intelligence to reach industry-leading levels.

Insist on invisible quality when rolling

Why was the year 2024 so exciting?

Tao Hailong analyzed that hybrid power generation is the characteristic of the market this year. However, due to technological equality, those car companies without differentiated advantages can only engage in price wars.

He judged that 2025 might be more competitive than 2024. "This competition is acceptable to SAIC Volkswagen, or SAIC Volkswagen prefers it. Only by competing in the market can we make progress. Survival of the fittest is the law of market competition. But I hope that the Chinese market will be a fair and regulated competition, and I hope that the market can become more mature and rational."

So, what should we insist on when rolling?

"How many people insist on invisible quality? We insist on it." Tao Hailong said that how to achieve differentiation and insist on building a brand is the right way. At the same time, the more difficult the business operation is and the more challenges the sustainable development faces, the more we need to think clearly about the foundation of the enterprise.

"28 million customers are our base and also SAIC Volkswagen's unique advantage. We must stick to our advantages, polish our brand and make the 28 million users truly satisfied with our products and services."

Fu Qiang believes that SAIC Volkswagen's re-emphasis on service quality is a return to the essence of marketing, which is to make good products and provide good user services. "Word of mouth is the most important part of the entire marketing. We believe that the automotive industry is a marathon and does not rely on short-term promotions to achieve success. We still have to return to brand building, which is inseparable from the persistence of service quality."

It is reported that SAIC Volkswagen will continue to improve user satisfaction in 2025. The sales staff of the dealer network are the front line facing users. For this reason, SAIC Volkswagen has formulated a new dealer assessment system. "In the past, we focused on wholesale sales, but this year we started to assess retail sales. In the past, the assessment weight of service quality was not high, but this year we will increase the assessment weight of service quality to more than 50%.

Fu Qiang revealed that the construction of the dealer network will be the top priority of SAIC Volkswagen's work this year and the first half of next year. Only after the network is built, SAIC Volkswagen will usher in a comprehensive take-off in 2025 and 2026.