2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of SAIC Volkswagen and Jia Jianxu's second year here.
The year before, he took up the position of general manager single-handedly. At that time, the fierce external price war and the lagging internal electrification transformation made joint venture automakers including SAIC Volkswagen exhausted, and their market share was continuously eroded by domestic brands.
When Jia Jianxu first met with the media when he took office, he said frankly that he did not have many cards in his hand. When he talked about the cards in his hand again, it was the 2024 Beijing Auto Show.
At this time, Jia Jianxu can go to the SAIC Volkswagen booth to see what cards he has. SAIC Volkswagen's product lineup this time is led by Tiguan L Pro, ID.3, ID.4X, ID.6X, Touron, Weiran, Lingdu L and other star models all appeared.
In the past two years, Jia Jianxu has often appeared in public with Yu Jingmin, executive vice president of sales and marketing at SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd., and they have adopted the stage name "Jia Yu Combination". The media likes to participate in their interviews. The two middle-aged men in Shanghai are the ones who dare to speak, know how to speak, and are able to speak among the executives of the auto companies.
"We can only play these few cards. The key is how to use them to the fullest extent." Jia Jianxu said in his second exclusive interview with the media.
Preparing for 2026
What does it mean to use it to the fullest? Jia Jianxu admitted that SAIC Volkswagen's electric cars are not that smart, which is a shortcoming. At the same time, fuel vehicles are still the foundation of SAIC Volkswagen and cannot be lost.
"I can't change yesterday's decision, but I will definitely make today's decision." So Jia Jianxu played the card of "oil-electric and intelligent", which in short is to provide consumers of oil cars with the enjoyment of smart cars. Tiguan L Pro and Passat Pro, these two cars are the results of the cooperation between SAIC Volkswagen and DJI Intelligent Driving.
With few cards in hand, it is even more important to "see the right time to play". After a period of moderate operation, even in the first quarter when the price war was fierce, SAIC Volkswagen's sales performance was still stable. In the first three months of this year, SAIC Volkswagen's flagship product ID family continued to sit firmly in the leading position of the joint venture camp; in terms of fuel vehicles, Passat family and Tiguan family have grown steadily driven by high-cost-effective products.
However, this is just the beginning. "2023, 2024, and 2025 will be difficult," Jia Jianxu said. "But in the second half of 2025, starting from 2026, the world will be different, and the products we have planned will be launched one after another." "I think we can definitely get through the most difficult and darkest moment. Everything I do today is to prepare for 2026."
The most important thing that Jia Jianxu has done and is doing is to communicate with the Germans, gain a certain degree of dominance, shorten the decision-making process of SAIC Volkswagen, and keep up with the ever-changing market rhythm. This is a necessary prerequisite for the joint venture to get out of trouble in China.
In the past 40 years, SAIC Volkswagen's annual sales volume reached 2 million vehicles at its peak, and now it is 1.2 million vehicles.
Jia Jianxu said that the joint venture has two shareholders, and the communication cost must be higher than that of independent brands. What he can do now is to "work hard to communicate and exchange ideas". "We must tell shareholders how to win and help them achieve this goal." Jia Jianxu said. Before taking charge of SAIC Volkswagen, Jia Jianxu was the head of Yanfeng, the world's largest automotive interior supplier. He led Yanfeng to actively transform and achieve annual sales of over 100 billion yuan. Jia Jianxu is undoubtedly an excellent leader, but he knows that "one person taking 10,000 steps is not as good as 10,000 people taking one step."
So, Jia Jianxu tried to persuade the Germans to "forget about profits for the time being and remember that Volkswagen is a brand that exists for the public"; he also told the Germans that "Chinese competitors have far surpassed the joint venture in their understanding of software, but we can become a Fast Follower."
The nature of the joint venture means that Jia Jianxu needs to work harder than he thought. However, some changes are happening. A milestone event in recent days is that Volkswagen agreed to hand over all hybrid models to SAIC Volkswagen. SAIC Volkswagen will lead the development of power systems and work with Volkswagen and SAIC to jointly build hybrid models that meet the Chinese market, including PHEV and extended-range products.
Jia Jianxu also put forward requirements to the engineering team, "the cost of extended range and hybrid vehicles should be almost the same as that of fuel vehicles", and "increase intelligent entertainment space". This means that the hybrid models to be launched by SAIC Volkswagen will be based on the pure electric platform, rather than the modification of the fuel vehicle architecture.
SAIC Volkswagen is speeding up, "at least not too slowly, at least to catch up." Jia Jianxu said this is the change he wants to make after reflecting on the past year.
Sharing beauty with others
Jia Jianxu not only likes to use cards as metaphors, comparing the order of new car launches to playing cards, but from time to time he and Yu Jingmin also have to "tell fortunes" to figure out what products need to be launched on the market at what time; he also compared the 40 years between SAIC Volkswagen and Volkswagen to "ballroom dancing", saying, "If you take a step back and he takes a step forward, everyone can avoid stepping on each other's feet."
Playing cards, fortune-telling, and ballroom dancing sound like the three-piece set of middle-aged people. To be honest, Jia Jianxu and Yu Jingmin are both veterans in the automotive industry. Jia Jianxu started out as a parts manufacturer and has been in the automotive industry for more than 20 years; Yu Jingmin has never left SAIC since the beginning of his career. Working in one job for a lifetime, in the era of fast-paced job-hopping, both of them seem "very slow" and "extremely slow."
But life is never wasted. The long life experience has endowed this group of people with the wisdom to go through the darkness and the courage to turn the tide. At the beginning of the year, BYD took the lead in launching a price reduction trend, and then Xiaomi's participation in the price war inadvertently triggered a second round of price wars, and the entire auto market suffered terribly. Jia Jianxu has his own ideas about the two automakers leading the price war. Regarding BYD, he said, "No automaker can compare with BYD in terms of vertical integration of the supply chain. So we can only compare value with it"; regarding Xiaomi, he said, "Don't belittle it, and don't deliberately learn from it. You don't have what it has and you can't learn it. If you insist on learning it, you will pay a great price."
"Don't see the beauty of others and forget your own beauty," Jia Jianxu said. "We should not give up what we have today, but share the beauty with others and sing out our own beauty. At least this is one thing we at SAIC Volkswagen should do today."
What is the value of SAIC Volkswagen? Second-hand car service is one of them. Due to price competition and technological iteration, cars now depreciate faster than before. Therefore, it is particularly important to manage residual value around the user end.
For a major consumer product like cars, just buying cheap does not necessarily mean it is really cheap. SAIC Volkswagen is more concerned about the cost-effectiveness of car ownership, that is, the difference between buying and selling. In order to continuously optimize the cost of car ownership for users, SAIC Volkswagen has taken the lead in launching financial policies and launched a "three-year car ownership with a discount of up to 60% to maintain the value of the car" service for ID.3, alleviating the concerns of electric car consumers about the long-term value of the car.
SAIC Volkswagen will not forget the essence of cars, safety and reliability. For the products in 2026, Jia Jianxu hopes that the product lineup will be complete and excellent. "We will not make electric vehicle products opportunistically by sticking to national standards. We will meet consumer scenarios and give everyone more certainty in products, including safety and reliability. This is the key." Jia Jianxu said.
Is the golden age of joint ventures over? Maybe. Has SAIC Volkswagen bid farewell to its peak? How could it be? No one wants to lose here, and they must not lose.
"Don't underestimate it," Jia Jianxu said. "So our goal is to hold on for the next two years and see what happens in 2027."
