By Tong Na

Statistics from China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that in 2009, the sales volume of China's self-owned brand passenger vehicles reached 4.577 million, occupying 44.3 percent of the total sales volume of passenger vehicles; the sales volume of self-owned brand sedans reached 2.2173 million, occupying 30 percent of the total sales volume of sedans. In 2010, maintaining the stable development of China's self-owned brand automakers is critical for China's auto industry to realize the dream of becoming bigger and stronger.

Both the flourish of auto market and the explosive growth of the rigid demand on auto consumption indicated that the era of China's second boom on auto consumption is coming. For those self-owned brand automakers having made favorable progress in 2009, it's particularly important to make a reasonable plan for development in 2010. In order to answer the fierce competition in market, various major automakers with self-owned brands have begun to adjust output and expand productivity successively.

China FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor and Changan Auto have definitely put forward the target of striving for exceeding 2 million in output and sales volume. Depending on the favorable performance of Shanghai GM Wuling and Shanghai GM in 2009, SAIC Group has realized the output and sales volume of 2 million in advance. The output and sales targets of these four major auto groups in 2010 are very close, which means the competition will be intensified further.

Recently, Chery Automobile has released a plan named "intensive cultivation in 2010" and its output and sales target in 2010 is to strive for realizing 900,000 sets. Geely Automobile has established its target on 500,000. Meanwhile, as the most rapidly developed brand in 2009, BYD Automobile's annual sales volume reached 448,000, and its target sales volume in 2010 is 800,000. After experiencing rise and fall in the auto market, Brilliance China Automotive has found its optimal growth pace gradually. Its expected sales volume in 2010 is 500,000. Jianghuai Automobile has set a sales target of 150 percent growth on passenger vehicles in 2010, and the output and sales volume target is located at 500,000, among which 300,000 are passenger vehicles.

Behind these figures, we have seen the boom of China's auto market. Considering its explosive growth, plus the complex economic environment in which the influence of international financial crisis having not yet shaken off, it is difficult to exactly forecast China's auto market. However many self-owned brand automakers are complying with the market trend and actively adjusting their output and expanding their productivity. It indicates that they are actively challenging the market and experiencing their course of growth.

Some experts forecast that within five years, the market share of self-owned brand autos will see a considerable rise. There are four major reasons, that is, the central government will launch more policies benefiting the development of self-owned brands; with large auto groups' increasing their inputs on self-owned brands, the number of self-owned brand enterprises, which have the potential to growth in the next few years, will more than that of foreign-brand joint-ventures; the growth of sales volume will mainly come from the market in secondary and third-class cities, even from rural market, where the self-owned brand products possess comparative advantages; self-owned brands' response to market demand will ever be faster, which will in turn make self-owned brands in a more favorable competitive position.

With the further release of auto consumption demand in China, automakers are facing a favorable development environment. However, we should recognize that, besides the improvement of output and sales volume, what shall be improved at the same time are technologies and quality, which is the lifeline for the development of enterprises.

The test appraisal of the whole 23 auto types in 2009, which is issued by China Automotive Technology & Research Center (CATRC), shows that currently, among the autos newly launched in China, two-star cars occupies 4.3 percent, three-star cars 13 percent, four-star cars 30.4 percent and five-star cars 52.2 percent. Zhao Hang, Director of CATRC, expressed that, "What's particularly obvious is that six types of small passenger vehicles, which have been appraised in 2009, had prominent performance, no matter the self-owned brands or joint-venture brands, both the score and star-rate have been improved than the past." "Except for the gap in such aspects as comfort, the small autos with self-owned brand have been in line with the world on passive safety technologies." This indicated that the product quality of China's self-owned brand autos has been enhanced greatly; furthermore, they are still improving the quality and technologies by efforts.

In terms of technical upgrade, we see that Geely has mastered the technology on gear boxes, which is one of the key technologies for autos, through purchasing the world second-largest gear box plant DSI. Beijing Automobile has obtained the overall quality and manufacture technique system through purchasing part of SAAB's assets; recently, the diesel sedan engine and the 4/6-speed automatic transmission, which are developed independently by Huatai Automobile and meet Euro V Emission Standard, have gotten off the assembly line in Erdos. Huatai Automobile has become a self-owned brand automaker having mastered such three technologies in engines, gearboxes and whole cars at the same time.

In terms of new energy autos, there have been 15 types of self-owned brand cars in the Catalogue of commended auto types for the project of demonstrating, promoting and applying the autos with energy conservation and new energy. What deserves notice is that China Association of Automobile Industry has taken the development of electric power autos as a special action, and organized such enterprises as SAIC Group, China FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor and Changan Auto to jointly inked Program of Joint Action in Developing Electric Power Autos and formulated the industrial development strategy on electric power autos as "leading actively, acting jointly, focusing priority and developing innovatively".

The joint efforts by multi-parties means that, with the further maturity of the consumption environment of new energy autos in China, self-owned brands will give more excellent performance in the market in 2010.