By Yang Zhongyang

With the slowdown of the auto manufacturing and sales growth in China's market, self-owned brands are gradually losing their original cost and price advantages and faced with increasing pressure of international competition. Since the last year, under the background of market growth less than 3 percent, there has been a big drop in the general sales of self-owned brand passenger cars with the market share significantly decreasing. Insiders describe the hard situation faced by the self-owned brands as "cold winter".

The declining trend has not been changed fundamentally since this year. According to the statistics by China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, 1.0142 million self-owned brand passenger cars were sold from January to February, declining 11.5 percent year on year, over 7.2 percent on top of the general declining rate of passenger cars. The sales volume of passenger cars with self-owned brands accounts for 42.7 percent of the total one of passenger cars, with occupancy rate declining by 3.5 percent. But it is glad to see that in spite of the hardship, the self-owned brands are not discouraged but make an active adjustment and positive transformation with the hope of entering "warm spring" from "cold winter".

Why do the new cars appear on the market frequently?

Dongfeng Fengshen A60, a brand-new semi-luxury car model, was launched in China National Convention Center in Beijing on March 28. It is first self-owned-brand semi-luxury car promoted by Dongfeng Motor Group. With the slogan of "flagship-style car full of happiness", Dongfeng Fengshen A60 is provided with 55 security configurations, and advanced configurations like 360�� all around view video system and humane control through one button, it will form a situation of tripartite confrontation of "top 3 Chinese-made cars" with BESTURN B70 and ROEWE 550 and compete in the semi-luxury car market full of fierce competition on behalf of the self-owned brands.

Zhu Fushou, general manager of Dongfeng Motor Group, says that the appearance of Fengshen A60 does not only expand Dongfeng passenger car's product line as a new member of the family, but also lifts the new curtain of extension of Dongfeng Fengshen product series to the middle- and high-end, which marks that Dongfeng's capability of independent innovation and level of independent development has been lifted to a new stage and also further encourage Dongfeng's confidence and determination to develop the self-owned brands.

Previously on March 19, a "Beijing" E-series car with Mayday, its image spokespersons, in it made a brilliant debut in 798 Art District known as "new Beijing cultural landmark". It is the first car with self-owned brand promoted by Beijing Automotive Group.

Xu Heyi, chairman of Beijing Automotive Group and Beijing Automotive Group Co., Ltd. (BAIC MOTOR), took an introduction in the press release that "E-series car, though a level A0 car, carries the dream of generations of Beijing Automotive Group people to create the passenger car of self-owned brand after difficult exploration with persistent spirit; it is the first product for which Beijing Automotive Group makes full use of all resources in order to make ��Beijing' passenger car bigger and stronger, and also the first answer sheet submitted to the domestic car market since the establishment of Beijing Automotive Group Co., Ltd.; at the same time, ��three-guarantee' service is offered to E-series car in China, which is the first car with domestic ��three-guarantee' service".

Xu Heyi also says, taking the opportunity of E-series, Beijing Automotive will promote a lot of semi-luxury cars and SUV products like C70G, B40, C60, B7 and C80 this year and next year. The way of internationalized self-owned brands created by Beijing Automotive has been opened formally.

A lot of self-owned brand cars have appeared on the market since the beginning of this year, including GAC Trumpchi GS5, Changan EADO, BAIC MOTOR E150 and E130 and Fengshen A60. With Beijing Auto Show approaching, SAIC ROEWE 950, Geely GX7, Great Wall Hover M4 and BYD G6 are all ready to go.

According to the information released already, 2012 will become a year when most new cars of self-owned brands appear on the market.

It should strive to overcome "three obstacles".

"However, frequent appearance of new cars does not mean that the spring for the self-owned brands will come soon." Dong Yang, executive vice chairman and secretary general of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers makes an analysis that "there is a short history for the development of the Chinese-owned brands and compared with the foreign brands, there are three obstacles for us."

The first is poor strength, which is reflected in three aspects including R&D capability, technical accumulation and talents. Self-owned brand car enterprises begin to construct the R&D bases in a large scale in recent years. However, some bases are short of high-level laboratory and test field and some, though completed, are not put into use. Car enterprises with self-owned brand have set up the strict and scientific development process, but it is still far to go to achieve perfect and accumulate experience.

The second is poor brand, which mainly means the weak brand premium, poor brand loyalty and deficiency of brand strategy. According to a survey, the quality of the self-owned brand cars keep improving, and the malfunction rate per hundred vehicles has reached the level of that of the joint-venture brands in 2004, though there is still a gap. However, the price of cars with the same production scale and same configuration is 1/4 to 1/3 lower than that of the joint-venture brands.

The third is decentralization and duplication. The yield of the self-owned brand cars has reached 3 million in 2010, but the number of car models has exceeded 100 and the average sales volume per model is 28,000. However, the average sales volume per model for the joint-venture brands is 55,000 in the Chinese market and the number will be over 150,000 if plus the sales volume in the original country and other oversea markets. The main reason for such a situation is decentralization and duplication.

How to overcome these "three obstacles"? Dong Yang says that the first is to attach much importance to it. Whether the self-owned brand cars can make a success should be considered as an essential condition for China to become a strong auto nation. The second is to formulate the plan. It is a steady growth period in the coming 10 years for Chinese auto markets. The market volume will tend to stable after that and entering these markets will be much more difficult. The third is to cooperate. There are a lot of ways for cooperation, such as in key technological development, key assembly development and even platform development, which are all universal in the world. The fourth is to strengthen the auto part production. It must establish a batch of world leading auto parts enterprises. The fifth is to strengthen the related field. Material in the upstream, sales service in the downstream, manufacturing equipment and research and test equipment in the lateral should reach the international level, so as to make sure that the self-owned brand cars possess international competitiveness. The sixth is to formulate a right oversea strategy.

"Of course, it is still not enough to make the self-owned brands develop smoothly". Dong Yang believes that the government should support the self-owned brands under the condition of following the WTO rules and officials should also take the lead to use the self-owned brand cars; at the same time, our Chinese should have an ordinary mind to choose car products, consider it only a means of traffic and pay more attention to the cost performance, so as to give a fair consumer environment to the self-owned brand cars. "Thus, the spring for self-owned brand cars will come earlier".