Editor's introduction: With the rise of the market penetration rate of new energy passenger cars, traditional car companies at home and abroad have accelerated their layout in this field; independent car companies have set off a new round of high-end battles, from vehicles to batteries to software research and development.
Traditional car companies launched a counterattack on the new energy market
Recently, BMW officially released a set of BMW XM concept hybrid car official map, it is understood that this car is BMW M department independently developed flagship high-performance plug-in hybrid SUV, the new car as a BMW M GmbH 50th anniversary of the establishment of the gift, will be officially released in 2022. Through BMW's product layout, it is not difficult to gain insight that the current traditional car companies are accelerating the layout speed in the field of new energy vehicles.
Traditional German brands, Volkswagen plans to produce more than 1 million electric vehicles by 2023 and launch 75 electric vehicles by 2029; BMW plans to launch 13 electric models in 2023, reaching 15%-25% of the group's total sales by 2025; Daimler plans to account for 25% of pure electric vehicle sales by 2025.
Toyota, a Japanese brand, has set itself up to sell 5.5 million electrified vehicles by 2030, including 1 million pure electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles; Nissan announced the launch of eight pure electric vehicles by the end of 2022.
According to the data, the existing, under-construction and planned new energy passenger car production capacity of major domestic car companies has exceeded 20 million. Such a huge number also shows that traditional car companies have begun to launch a counterattack on the new energy vehicle market.
Under the current "double carbon" background, new energy vehicles have become the preferred direction for the majority of car companies. Some traditional luxury brands such as Porsche, Cadillac, BBA, etc., no longer pursue 100 km acceleration and engine performance, and choose to join the new energy war. New brands such as Geely Kr, Great Wall Salon, Changan Avita, Dongfeng Lantu, SAIC Zhiji and so on have all flocked to the scene, and have also joined the battle of new energy.
The new brands of traditional car companies are focusing on the high-end market
It is not difficult to find that most traditional car companies have invariably chosen the new energy track when launching new brands, and concentrated their firepower on the high-end impact. From the perspective of this year's Guangzhou Auto Show, many traditional car companies have brought their high-end brand models.
Auto analyst Ren Wanfu said: "From the perspective of market segmentation, the high-end new energy market powered by the new brands of traditional car companies is still a blue ocean, mainly because the added value and brand value of high-end new energy vehicles are higher, which can bring greater profits." ”
Specifically, this time Chinese brands are moving towards high-end and have also taken different development routes. Among them, many new brands also carry the characteristics of cross-border and joint efforts, such as Changan Automobile's Avita. The brand is jointly created by Changan Automobile, Huawei, and Ningde Times, and the brand's first model, Avita 11, is positioned as a high-end emotional intelligent electric vehicle, claiming to understand your wisdom incarnation. In addition, Changan Avita has also set a longer-term goal, with a medium-term goal of launching four new cars in the next five years.
As the leader of domestic SUVs, Great Wall Motors also continued to exert efforts in the new energy market, launching a high-end brand salon at the Guangzhou Auto Show, and the brand's first model, the Mech Dragon, had a retail price of 488,000 yuan for the first batch of 101 units in the world.
Industry insiders commented: "From the perspective of brand positioning, the salon brand will position its products in the "more than 400,000 level of China's luxury pure electric brand", the mecha dragon is equipped with a lidar, using Huawei MDC automatic driving chip, the computing power reaches 400TOPS, and the CLTC working standard mileage is 802 kilometers, and it has to be said that the product force is very strong. ”
In addition to the above two blockbuster new brands, SAIC's Zhiji brand is also making rapid progress, zhiji automobile is jointly built by SAIC Group, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Alibaba Group, and is the first domestic automotive science and technology innovation company with a founding wheel of tens of billions.
The first Zhiji L7 launched by SAIC Zhiji has been unveiled, and the new owner is intelligent, equipped with a 39-inch giant dual screen inside, equipped with an intelligent boundless IMOS operating system, creating a new intelligent interactive experience. In addition to Zhiji Automobile, SAIC's R brand has also been independent, named Extraordinary Automobile, focusing on high-end new energy intelligent products in the range of 200,000-400,000 yuan, and Feifan R7, the first model of Feifan Automobile, will also be officially listed in the second half of 2022.
In addition, lantu automobile's first high-end MPV was also officially unveiled, as well as the high-end electric vehicle extreme krypton 001 and other models previously launched by Geely, which are representatives of independent brands moving towards high-end. In addition to the new brands that have been announced to move towards the high-end, there are also many high-end brands of car companies that are already on the road.
Geely and Baidu jointly created the Jidu automobile, the brand's Jidu SIMUCar has entered the dynamic testing stage. In addition, BYD Automobile is also planning to establish a high-end brand, according to BYD executives, the high-end brand will be released in the fourth quarter of this year, the new brand's first new car will be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show next year, officially listed in 2023, the price range or 50-800,000 yuan.
In this regard, industry insiders said that the added value and brand value of high-end new energy vehicle products are higher, which can bring greater profits. Compared with the extremely "inner-rolled" low-end product market, the high-end new energy vehicle market is still a blue ocean.
Tu Tiancheng, brand public relations director of SAIC Motor Passenger Car MG, said frankly: "From the perspective of the high-end approach of traditional Chinese car brands, they did not adopt the strategy of new bottles of old wine, but responded to competitive pressure with new brands. The involution of the current stock market has forced most car companies to accelerate the iterative update rhythm of products, and the launch of new brands has also become the best choice for many car companies to break through the inner volume. ”
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, also said: "Traditional car companies launching brands alone is not a new phenomenon, earlier Chery, Great Wall, Geely, etc. have launched models to test the high-end market, with the development of the times, these models have also made some achievements in the high-end market, which has triggered a new round of brand upward wave of Chinese brand car companies. ”
From the whole vehicle to the battery, traditional car companies are accelerating to catch up
Previously, traditional car companies were limited by their own interests and had been slow in transforming new energy in the past, but now under the trend of the times, they have begun to actively invest in the new energy track. At the same time, it is more necessary to make simultaneous efforts in vehicle manufacturing, power batteries and even software research and development.
The head of the new force brand has always been a firm practitioner of self-built charging and replacing networks. When Tesla entered China in the early days, while opening sales stores into shopping malls, it also invested in the core business districts, car owners' gathering places, office buildings, hotels, and even highways in major cities. Subsequently, the new local forces that entered the market also launched an "equipment competition" in the field of self-built charging and replacing systems, and a complete energy supplementation system has been built so far.
With the leading demonstration role of the new forces of the head achieving results, the public's cognition and expectations of new energy vehicle supporting services are also changing, and the market has begun to use new standards to examine brands and products. This has led to the fact that traditional car companies must complete a task when laying out the new energy market: to formulate a charging and replacing system strategy suitable for themselves.
While releasing the new energy vehicle sales plan, in order to achieve long-term stable battery supply, traditional car companies also develop upstream power batteries through self-built factories, investment in shares, external procurement and research and development of solid-state batteries, which also shows that different from the new forces of car manufacturing, traditional car companies have advantages in car manufacturing experience, capital and supply chain system.
This year Volkswagen announced at its Power Day that it will build six battery factories in Europe by 2030 together with partners, while expanding the infrastructure of electric vehicle charging infrastructure globally. GM also plans to invest $35 billion in electrification and intelligence over the next five years, a figure 30 percent higher than previous industry forecasts, including power battery projects.
Ford is investing more in battery research and development, announcing in April that it will form a new global battery innovation center, Ford Ion Park, to accelerate the development of power battery pack and battery technology, as well as the future of power battery manufacturing. Nissan Motor will join hands with Chinese power battery manufacturer Envision AESC to build new power battery production bases in Japan and the United Kingdom, with a total investment of about 1.82 billion US dollars in the two plants, which are scheduled to be completed and put into operation in 2024.
Insiders told CRRC that the existing model in the core areas of the traditional automotive industry such as "research, production, marketing and service" is facing challenges. On the one hand, with the confirmation of the new car-making forces on the direct sales model of new energy vehicles, the characteristics of high efficiency, direct customer and stable transaction price in the direct sales model provide an unprecedented reference model and transformation opportunities for traditional car companies; on the other hand, the direct sales system is also a very complex, significant and difficult to simply copy the topic. ”
"Among the traditional domestic car companies, brands such as GAC Group Great Wall Motors and Changan Automobile are particularly prominent, they have the historical background of traditional car companies, but they do not have the capacity baggage of first-line car companies, hoping to surpass competitors to become first-line brands in the process of industrial changes, and the transformation of these car companies is the most resolute and extremely rapid." Auto analyst Zeng Zhiling told CRRC.
The report of Huaxin Securities pointed out that in the context of a simpler technical structure of electric vehicles than that of fuel vehicles, traditional car companies with platform research and development accumulation and scale advantages can achieve faster and more efficient than new forces from platform development to model landing. There are four reasons for the slow development in recent years: traditional car companies have accumulated new energy vehicle manufacturing technology; avoid switching to new energy vehicles prematurely, causing the original production line to be abandoned prematurely to maximize benefits; waiting for battery technology to mature; waiting for the new energy vehicle market to mature, and avoiding becoming the "experimental product" of the market.
Conclusion: At present, both foreign brands and independent brands have regarded new energy as the future development direction, although new energy vehicles have been developed for a period of time, but with the continuous advent of new technologies and new products, there will still be new breakthroughs in the future. Nowadays, domestic car companies have taken the lead in the track of new energy development, and new car-making forces and traditional car companies have also sprung up and continued to move forward. In the future, whether it is for traditional car companies, new brands or new car-making forces, they are working hard to achieve energy structure transformation.