Lexus finally surrendered to domestic production! China's trillion-dollar electric vehicle market has entered a head-on phase

Old man, put out your cigarette. Let’s not talk about romance today, but about the changes in the world.

February 5, 2025, remember this day. On this day, Toyota signed a document with the government office in Shanghai, and Lexus's 31-year-old "purely imported" brand was finally removed.

In the past, when we brothers got together, if one of us drove a Lexus ES, what would it be called? It's called low-key luxury, it's called "craftsman spirit", it's the "original taste" that you would rather wait in line for a higher price. What now? Lexus (Shanghai) New Energy Co., Ltd. was established in Jinshan District as a sole proprietorship. It built its own factory and conducted research and development. It will build the car by 2027.

Old man, put out your cigarette. Let’s not talk about romance today, but about the changes in the world.

February 5, 2025, remember this day. On this day, Toyota signed a document with the government office in Shanghai, and Lexus's 31-year-old "purely imported" brand was finally removed.

In the past, when we brothers got together, if one of us drove a Lexus ES, what would it be called? It's called low-key luxury, it's called "craftsman spirit", it's the "original taste" that you would rather wait in line for a higher price. What now? Lexus (Shanghai) New Energy Co., Ltd. was established in Jinshan District as a sole proprietorship. It built its own factory and conducted research and development. It will build the car by 2027.

what does that mean? It means that the "arrogant" aristocrat who once made you feel unattainable and insisted on not being domestically produced has finally bowed his head to reality.

In this business world where there is only profit but no emotion, whoever can't live with money will have a hard time with life.

Let's break this matter apart and crush it into pieces. You will find that there is calculation and helplessness behind it.

Looking at this timetable, it’s like being whipped forward: it will be registered in February 2025, implemented in April, and construction will begin in June. The core workshop will be capped in February 2026, and construction will be completed in August. It took less than a year from signing to being capped.

This is no longer the slow-moving, carving-on-the-screws Toyota. This is the "desire for survival" forced out by the sharp knife of the Chinese market.

Why are you so anxious? To put it bluntly, if we don't hurry up, there won't even be any scraps left on the table.

If you look at the current data, out of 10 cars sold in China, at least 4 are new energy vehicles. What about Lexus? They are still relying on one set of fuel and one set of hybrid to support their appearance. In the past, the import model was very bullish. Even if it was like that, after tariffs and freight were added, the price would still be strong. But it doesn’t work anymore. The domestic “mad dogs” who are creating new energy have driven the price war to the bone.

If Lexus still insists on importing, its high cost structure will make you like an old man wearing a long gown in the current market. He is decent, but he has no money in his pocket and his back is not strong.

In the adult world, dignity is supported by strength, not by past feelings.

This time Toyota learned a lesson and became a "sole proprietorship". This is a very clever move. In the past, there was no way to do a joint venture. You had to exchange technology for the market, and you had to share profits with the Chinese side. Now that the policy has been liberalized, Toyota thinks to itself: Since it wants to use China's supply chain and play on China's territory, then I will play it myself. I want to keep the profits exclusively and keep the control in my hands.

This is actually a wake-up call for us. Look at the people it recruits: engineers in large-size die-casting, battery workshops, and smart driving fields. These words used to be words for Tesla or our new domestic forces, but now Toyota has to accept them all.

What does this mean? It shows that in this field, we in China are no longer the little brother who follows behind. We have become the rule makers. It can even be said that today's Toyota has to "steal" its skills from us.

But this matter, for those of us who have reached our age, seems to have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it feels encouraging. In the past, we were begging others to transfer technology, but now they are begging our industrial chain to reduce costs. But you also have to have a sense of crisis.

Once the Toyota elephant turns around, the noise will be huge. It's slow to respond, but it's less stupid and richer. It is now using our supply chain and our talents to counterattack our market.

This is like the apprentice you have worked so hard to train, and now the master wants to take your secrets and open a restaurant outside to steal your business.

In this trillion-level meat grinder, there are no permanent friends, only eternal games.

For those of us who have some spare money and want to drink soup in the capital market, I have to pour cold water on it.

Don’t just look at Lexus being made in China and think that car stocks are going to take off again. The car business is asset-heavy hard work. Building a factory, buying equipment, and hiring people all involve spending real money, and the payback period is unnervingly long.

The current situation is: the price war has become normalized, and it is also the beginning of the knockout round. There are now more than 100 new energy brands in China, and only two or three are really making money. Most of the rest are swimming naked.

If you really want to look at opportunities, don’t focus on the “face-saving projects” of automakers, but look more at the “inside”. Those who make die-casting, battery materials, power semiconductors, and those who sell shovels have a better life than those who dig gold mines. No matter who wins in the end, the car must use chips and batteries, right?

No matter how the times change, the "contractors" who control the core resources will always have more confidence than the "wage earners" fighting on the front lines.

Lexus domestically produced is not just a brand compromise, it is the bell of the end of the old era.

The era where you could make money just by being a foreign brand is completely over. It’s time to change the era when we were superstitious about “importing is good”.

In the next three years, this world will become even more bloody. Those who survived were ruthless characters who crawled out from the dead.

Brother, I want to ask:

Wait until 2027, when that electric car with the Lexus logo, but produced in Shanghai Jinshan, using domestic batteries and domestic chips, comes on the market. Will you still pay for the "craftsmanship" you once had?

In the comment area, we old brothers, let’s talk about what’s on our mind.