IAUTO
Speed Depth Attitude
Introduction |
2021/12/18
Traditional car companies, including Volkswagen Toyota, are afraid to become the next Nokia.
Author 丨 Yang Jing
Responsible editor 丨 Cui Liwen
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
"6 years ago, we were the first automaker to explicitly decide to support electric vehicles. Our competitors from Stuttgart and Munich frowned, while in Japan, hydrogen-powered cars have always been a dream. Today, 6 years later, they are all following suit. ”
This year should be the most exciting year for Herbert Diess, the CEO of Volkswagen Group, whose global performance and electrification have encountered great obstacles.
Seven days ago, the Volkswagen Group, building on the New AUTO 2030 strategy in July, further released its budget plan for the next 5 years and a blueprint for the future of Wolfsburg. Four days later, without any warning, Toyota released 17 electric vehicles in one go and elaborated on its electrification strategy.
Both car companies have not yet completed their respective 2025 goals, and they can't wait to advance the 2030 strategy, which is gossipically because of a man named Elon Musk. More precisely, the speed of development of China's electric vehicles has made Dis and Toyota Akio feel invisible pressure, and Tesla's surge in sales has really made these two leaders start to panic.
Volkswagen Toyota, in this way, has delineated its own strategic goals by 2030. Like Diess, Toyoda faces the same problems, but through the strategic direction of the two companies, it gives a plausible solution. And Volkswagen Toyota pinched such a time point official announcement, and there are some meanings of air competition.
The share is large enough, and the product makes up the lesson
Say the most cruel words, recognize the fastest encouragement, this is the evaluation of Chinese netizens to Toyota Akio. Late last year, Akio Toyoda said electric vehicles were over-hyped and claimed that electric vehicles would stifle businesses, require huge investments and emit more carbon dioxide. The reversal came particularly quickly, and a year later, Akio Toyoda said that by 2030, Toyota's global annual sales of pure electric vehicles are planned to reach 3.5 million.
This figure is an 80 percent increase from the previous target, and Toyota expects to introduce 30 BEV models by 2030, offering a comprehensive lineup of products in various fields including passenger cars and commercial vehicles worldwide. This time, Toyota put out 17 pure electric vehicle models in one go, of which 15 are brand new products.
What about Volkswagen? Volkswagen plans to have 50% of its global sales in electric vehicles by 2030 and 70% of its sales in the European market by 2030. By 2040, new cars on the market will be almost 100% emission-free. Last year, the Volkswagen Group sold 9.3 million vehicles, and in 10 years, even if it is based on annual sales of 10 million vehicles, its target sales of electric vehicles will be 5 million.
Although the sales target is higher than toyota, Volkswagen is at a disadvantage in the number of new cars. Fortunately, Volkswagen is better than Toyota in the speed of transformation, although last year's total Sales of Volkswagen was ranked second by Toyota's anti-overtake zone, but its global pure electric vehicle sales of 231,600 units, more than three times that of 2019, second only to Tesla.
Toyota's electric vehicle sales have not entered the top ten in the world, because new energy vehicles are still dominated by hybrid models. "In the traditional automotive market, Japanese companies have shown an overwhelming advantage." According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japanese car companies occupy three of the top ten seats in global auto sales. However, in the pure electric vehicle market, European and American companies and Chinese companies have an advantage.
Where is the most important market for new energy vehicles? Last year, sales of new energy vehicles in Europe reached 1.4 million units, making it the world's largest market for electric passenger cars. China sold 1.36 million new energy vehicles in the whole year, ranking second. In the first 10 months of this year, the total sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China were 2.304 million units, which is almost equivalent to half of the 4.847 million new energy vehicles in the world.
It can be seen that the focus of global car companies is still in China, and Volkswagen Toyota is no exception. Toyota will launch the world's first mass-produced pure electric vehicle with a dedicated chassis in 2022. Toyota China Chairman and General Manager Tatsuro Ueda has said that at present, Toyota's bZ pure electric series models have planned 7 models, of which 5 will be introduced to the Chinese market in the future.
Toyota, which has been relying heavily on hydrogen-powered and hybrid models, has to quickly make up lessons, while Volkswagen relies on the ID. series to directly highlight sales targets in China, and by 2025, Volkswagen Group's sales of new energy vehicles in China will reach 1.5 million, and the MEB platform models will reach 15 models. In the next 10 years, Volkswagen Group will deliver more than 2 million new energy vehicles in China.
Despite the huge number of new cars and ambitious sales targets, Volkswagen Toyota is still a younger brother compared to Tesla. On October 8 this year, Tesla held its 2021 annual general meeting of shareholders. At the shareholder meeting, Musk said that it will achieve annual sales of 20 million vehicles by 2030, while being confident of maintaining at least 50% delivery growth rate.
Tesla has only three ways to achieve this sales target: factory expansion, electric pickup trucks and 4680 batteries, simple and crude but efficient. This is also the characteristic of technology car companies that can shine in the era of electrification, starting from software rather than hardware and scale, and redefining electric vehicles. Volkswagen Toyota, like all traditional car companies, faces the problem of how to successfully transition from Nokia to smart phones.
Batteries, software, and autonomous driving
Quy Huy, a professor at Europe's first business school, wrote an article titled "Who Killed Nokia?" It mentions that Nokia lost the smartphone war because the fear that spreads among the company's middle and senior managers makes the whole company inert, which makes it unable to deal with apple's game-changing devices.
The timing of Volkswagen and Toyota's electrification may be earlier than the start of China's auto industry. Volkswagen began research and development of electric vehicles in 1970, while Toyota established an electric vehicle research and development department in 1992. Although the development of electric vehicles is early, they are in the period of fuel vehicle dividends, and they obviously underestimate the speed of electrification.
As early as 2010, Toyota held a 2.4% stake in Tesla and resold its own factory to Tesla at a low price. In exchange, the Tesla factory oem produced the Toyota RAV4 EV model. Later, the car sold poorly, resulting in a rift between Toyota and Tesla, and Toyota sold Tesla stock and parted ways with it.
Although Volkswagen's connection with Tesla was not as early as Toyota's, Diess forged a deep friendship with Musk. Since the beginning of this year, Diess and Musk have interacted frequently, and have exchanged commercial blows on the same stage, and even boldly invited Musk to speak to 200 Volkswagen executives through video calls.
Despite the storm between the two men, Volkswagen and Tesla did not have any practical cooperation. Instead, Toyota held hands with Tesla again after a gap of 10 years, and in March this year, it was reported that Tesla would be able to use the Toyota platform to launch a compact pure electric SUV at low cost, in exchange, Tesla needed to provide some electronic control platforms and software technology to Toyota.
But regardless of whether it is cooperative or not, what the relationship between people is, volkswagen and Toyota present two different states in the strategy. In Akio Toyoda's speech, there are only two words: electric vehicles and batteries. Volkswagen's strategy is not only electric vehicles and batteries, but also software, platforms, autonomous driving and so on.
Perhaps Dies got Musk's true biography, and about the future, Volkswagen elaborated on the hardware platform SSP, energy companies focused on battery and charging technologies, planned software stacks, operating system VW.OS, and mobility services including ADAS (Intelligent Driver Assistance System).
In Toyota's strategy, the main directions are the new concept of "carbon emission reduction vehicles" and "carbon neutral vehicles", the new lineup of TOYOTA bZ pure electric exclusive series, the continuous expansion of the BEV product lineup by 2030 (the plan is to be fully disclosed), Toyota's active initiatives in various fields, and Toyota's efforts to achieve carbon neutrality.
There is no doubt that in the era of fuel vehicles, the reference for whether cars are excellent or not is Toyota. In the era of electric vehicles, the reference of the car became Tesla. In Tesla, it is not an electrified car product, but a technology product. When the standard of the reference object changes, it means that there are different evaluation standards for future electric products.
In contrast, Volkswagen quickly integrated into the new form of competition, while Toyota is still clinging to the ultimate innovation of "craftsmen". Some people say that in this battle, Volkswagen seems to be actively changing, while Toyota is passively following. Technology is only part of the development of the automotive industry, and it is more important to change in thinking and do long-term business with a forward-looking vision.
Investment and return
Building a car is a long-term and money-burning sport. This cliché can not only see the strength of car companies, but also see the main direction of car companies.
By 2030, Toyota will invest a total of 8 trillion yen (448 billion yuan) in technology research and development and equipment investment, of which 4 trillion yen will be used in the field of pure electric power. New investment in batteries has increased from 1.5 trillion yen announced in September to 2 trillion yen, and it is expected to achieve more advanced, higher quality and more competitive batteries.
That's not a small amount, but Volkswagen's investment is even bigger. For the first time, Volkswagen is investing more than half of its total spending, or 89 billion euros (642.7 billion yuan), in future technologies. Of this, 52 billion euros are used for electric mobility, an increase of more than 50% over the previous round of planning, and 30 billion euros for the development of digitalization and autonomous driving, an increase of about 10% compared with the previous round of planning.
Toyota is inferior in terms of sales of pure electric vehicles, but strives to ensure 280GWh in batteries to surpass Volkswagen, which leads in the field of pure electric vehicles, and Volkswagen plans to ensure 240GWh in Europe by 2030. However, Tesla strives to ensure 3,000GWh batteries by 2030, and the scale varies greatly.
After the capital investment, another question also surfaced, how does Volkswagen Toyota make a profit?
Do you make money selling electric vehicles? Under the economy of scale, it is definitely profitable. But the profits from new cars are certainly not as profitable as selling software or services, which has been proven in technology companies like Apple and Amazon. There is only one way to make money in the new era, "the wool is out of the pig".
With the advent of the era of intelligent electric vehicles, the era of software and service payment has also come. If Toyota still sells electric vehicles, then consumers buy quality, reliability, safety, and essentially pay for hardware. The avant-garde experience of entertainment, interaction and technology is the end of electric vehicles.
In this regard, Volkswagen is one step ahead of Toyota. Diess believes that digitalization will bring new opportunities and huge profits to the automotive industry. By 2030, Volkswagen's software-related sales are expected to reach 1.2 trillion euros, an increase of about one-third from the projected combined sales of pure electric vehicles and fuel vehicles, and personal mobility business is expected to account for 85%.
Whether it is intelligent or electrified, or carbon peak carbon neutrality, it has brought strong pressure to traditional car companies, and they have a century-old development history and face the difficulty of elephant turning. However, this is a challenge and an opportunity for traditional car companies, because new business opportunities and business models have been born.
"Transforming from a manufacturing company to a software-driven mobility service provider."
"We want to be a company that creates happiness for all, for individuals and society."
Dis and Zhang Nan are actually typical of two styles, the former being a professional manager and the latter being the head of a family business, one responsible to the shareholders of the board and one to his own surname. Therefore, under the leadership of these two people, Volkswagen and Toyota will inevitably embark on a completely different development trajectory.
| Yang Jing |
No sleep at noon
Afternoon crash