【Tidal Business Review/Text】
2021 is definitely a year for the new energy automobile industry to shine.
According to the latest data released by the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 378,000 units in November 2021, an increase of 122.3% year-on-year, and from January to November, the cumulative retail sales of new energy vehicles in China reached 2.514 million units, an increase of 178.3% year-on-year, and the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles also reached a record 20.8%.
Behind this eye-catching achievement is the result of the "hundred flowers blooming" of the domestic new energy automobile industry. Unlike Tesla, which is dominant in the overseas market, the domestic market has both new car-making forces represented by "Wei Xiaoli", as well as traditional car companies such as BYD and Great Wall, which are known for their manufacturing capabilities, as well as the active participation of "cross-border players" such as Xiaomi and Baidu.
Photo/ Nezha car official micro
Among them, the new forces of car-making that combine the Internet and hard technology have attracted much market attention. Recently, some media reported that Nezha Automobile's parent company, Hezhong New Energy, is considering an IPO in Hong Kong, and is expected to raise about $1 billion. If the listing is successful, Nezha Automobile will become the fourth domestic car-making new force to be listed after "Wei Xiaoli".
Since the second half of this year, Nezha Automobile has been shortlisted for the TOP3 of the delivery volume of new car-making forces for many times with the attitude of "turning out to be born", which has had an impact on the first echelon of new car-making forces composed of "Wei Xiaoli". Compared with "Wei Xiaoli", Nezha Automobile is somewhat "outlier", and its "bottom-up" product route is also unique.
As an investor in Nezha Automobile, Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360, once said that he hopes to launch new energy vehicles of about 100,000 yuan in the future, and the human-computer interaction experience is no different from the 2 million Maybach.
The wish is good, but for Nezha Automobile, the most important thing at the moment is to break through the shackles of the price of 100,000 yuan, but in the high-end market surrounded by strong hands, it is not simple to achieve this goal.
01 Sales rushed into the first echelon
If you look at the sales data alone, Nezha Automobile has been on par with the first echelon of the new car-making forces composed of "Wei Xiaoli", which is an indisputable fact.
According to the data disclosed by Nezha Automobile on its official website, Nezha Automobile delivered a total of 10,013 vehicles in November, an increase of 372% year-on-year and a 24% increase from the previous month, which has set a record delivery for 10 consecutive months. At the same time, The deliveries of Xiaopeng Automobile, Ideal Automobile and WEILAI Automobile in November were 15613, 13485 and 10878 units respectively, and Nezha Automobile also reached the sales level of 10,000 units after the first echelon of "Wei Xiaoli".
Graph/Network
In fact, in May, August and September this year, Nezha Automobile was among the top 3 monthly deliveries of "new car-making forces". From January to November this year, the cumulative delivery volume of Nezha Automobile has reached 59,547 units, an increase of 393% year-on-year.
Industry insiders believe that the overtaking of Nezha's automobile sales is not the norm, mainly due to changes in the same industry itself. Due to the shortage of chips, the delivery of orders from NIO and Nippon in August and September was delayed, and NIO suffered a factory upgrade in October, which greatly affected its production capacity.
02 "Price for volume" is questioned
The doubts about the development prospects of Nezha Automobile come more from the technical level.
Industry insiders believe that the starting price of Nezha U Pro, Nezha V and Nezha V Pro are all within 100,000 yuan, and it is not "fair" to compare the delivery volume with high-end new energy models such as ideal ONE, Xiaopeng P7, Weilai ES6, EC6 and so on.
In the view of Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motor, "less than 100,000 can only be called electric vehicles, not intelligent electric vehicles." Shen Hui believes that smart electric vehicles need high reliability perception and execution system to support in hardware, and "software + computing power + data processing" also need high research and development costs to ensure the operation effect, coupled with the current battery price is still difficult to decline rapidly, so it is difficult to build a real intelligent electric vehicle below 100,000 yuan.
For intelligent electric vehicles within 100,000 yuan, Xiaopeng Automobile CEO He Xiaopeng has also expressed a similar view, "Battery costs and the cost of intelligent software and hardware will not drop significantly in the short term, the cost of high-level automatic assisted driving will even increase, intelligent electric vehicles want to do a good job, do gross profit, 150,000 is the entry and base price ... The word "smart" for electric vehicles below 100,000 yuan cannot be talked about. ”
At present, the price range of 59,900 to 75,900 yuan after subsidies is the main product of Nezha Automobile, according to the sales data of the first ten months of 2021 released by the Association of Automobiles, the sales volume of Nezha V is 37,339 vehicles, accounting for 75% of Nezha's overall sales.
"We will do electric vehicles first, and then we will do smart electric vehicles." Daniel Zhang, the founder of Nezha Automobile, is also very frank. It is understood that until March 2020, the L2+ level intelligent auxiliary driving function appeared in the Nezha U, the medium and high-end model of Nezha Automobile.
Therefore, although Nezha's car sales are booming, it may be more of a result of "price for volume".
It is worth noting that smart electric vehicles need to invest a lot of research and development costs and parts costs, including chips, to maintain the leading position of technology and products, if you adhere to the product route of less than 100,000 yuan, this is not conducive to the company's long-term development.
Nezha Automobile has long been aware of the drawbacks brought about by the low-price strategy, and has also begun to gradually exert its strength in the high-end market.
At the recent 2021 Guangzhou International Auto Show, Nezha Automobile released the high-end intelligent coupe model Nezha S, which is scheduled to be officially launched at the end of 2022. For Nezha Automobile, the future should be bigger and stronger, and high-end is the only way.
03 Short soldiers meet, Nezha car looks forward to "upward birth"
Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile, once said that an electric vehicle company needs at least 20 billion yuan to go to mass production, and this figure has almost become the consensus of the industry.
From July 2017 to October 27 this year, Nezha Automobile raised a total of more than 12 billion yuan, but compared with the same industry, Nezha Automobile's "hot weather" seems to be not enough. As of March 2021, NIO motor raised a total of 9.6 billion US dollars, Xiaopeng Automobile raised a total of 7.7 billion US dollars, ideal automobile raised a total of 3.16 billion US dollars, even the second echelon of WM Motors, September 22, 2020 D financing amount reached 10 billion yuan, the total financing amount of at least 20 billion yuan.
At the same time, Nezha's own hematopoietic ability is also insufficient. Public data show that in the first half of 2021, Nezha's total net assets were 3.823 billion yuan, revenue was 1.632 billion yuan, and losses were 693 million yuan, compared with the loss of 1.321 billion yuan in 2020, there was a narrowing trend, but the profitability was still not strong.
At present, Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile have been listed in Hong Kong stocks for the second time, and have raised a lot of funds, with abundant cash flow, a new round of talent competition and technological innovation war has become more and more intense, and the cash flow in the hands of Nezha Automobile has no advantage.
Fortunately, since the beginning of this year, Nezha Automobile has successfully introduced high-quality investors, bringing financial support and product-level empowerment to the company. In April this year, Qihoo 360 led the D round of financing for Nezha Automobile. Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo 360, believes that Nezha Automobile has built a good tram, "the lack of intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, including Internet genes, Internet thinking and the entire on-board safety are provided by 360." ”
In November this year, Nezha Automobile announced that CATL participated in its D2 round of financing and reached a strategic cooperation. In addition to providing core support for Nezha Automobile's power battery, CATL will also jointly develop innovative integration technologies for new energy vehicles with Nezha Automobile.
For Nezha Automobile, to reverse the low-end brand image is by no means overnight, if you want to "grow upwards", you need to create a more high-end intelligent car, which requires more funds to be able to invest in research and development, continuous technological upgrading, which is also the key to Nezha Automobile's impact on the first echelon of the industry.
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