General Manager of SAIC-GM-Wuling: Developing its own brand in a joint venture

Report from the newspaper (Reporter Wang Yunqing's photography report) Discussion on independent brands is the topic of the Chinese automobile industry. There are two models for developing independent brands, which are more mainstream in China. One is represented by Geely and Chery and developed independently on the basis of imitation; the other is based on Brilliance Zhonghua, which completely delegates foreign companies to design and development. But property rights are completely owned by them. SAIC-GM-Wuling is taking a completely different third route: developing its own brand in a joint venture. Recently, Shenyang General Motors Wuling General Manager Shenyang said in an exclusive interview with this reporter that “Wuling” has now become the only fully autonomous auto brand under the joint venture model in China. Regarding the question of whether Wuling has become a common sub-brand now, Shenyang resolutely said: NO. He said Wuling is still Liuzhou Wuling's own brand. SAIC-GM-Wuling’s brand is local, R&D is also local, but GM brings technology and funding. More importantly, GM has made Wuling an international company. After the joint venture, the development of Wuling really accelerated. According to Shenyang, at present, the production concentration of the top five micro-vehicles in China has reached 99%, and the top three such as Wuling exceeded 75%. In the first half of this year, the sales volume of Wuling reached 115,000 units, and it is expected to exceed 220,000 vehicles throughout the year. By 2008, Wuling’s sales target will be 400,000 units. Shenyang said that SAIC-GM-Wuling’s development steps can be simply summarized in three steps. The first step is to develop from an old enterprise to a modern enterprise, the second step to develop into an international enterprise, and the third step to develop into an internationally competitive enterprise. At present, Wuling is in the process of the second step, Wuling is becoming an international automotive company. So what kind of company can be called an international enterprise? Shenyang has its own standards. He said that Wuling strives to achieve export volume of 15% of production by 2010. Shenyang once again turned its head to its own brand. He said that if we want to engage in independent brands, we must first cultivate internal strength. Now, even if General Motors withdraws one day, Wuling is still a very strong company. On the contrary, many companies proposed to engage in independent brands, but they did not form a true competitiveness. Products did not have follow-up vitality because the company itself did not form a true systemic competitiveness. He is proud to say that Wuling is more successful in this respect. The use of connectivity all believes that Wuling's low-cost experience can be absorbed and learned by GM. Speaking of the next step, Shenyang said that Wuling will continue to expand the micro passenger vehicle market. He said that micro-vehicle utilization trend is fast, and Chevrolet SPARK is Wuling's first attempt. Naturally, we would be curious if all the Wuling mini-vehicles would have a Chevrolet trademark. Shenyang is very clear that it does not necessarily sell better than the Wuling brand.
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