This article is based on publicly available materials and is for informational purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice. Author: Foolish Old Man, with a column of the same name in Snowball
A while ago, there was such an article about second-hand cars: "Your electric car, no pick-up man", after reading the title you can probably know what the content is.
In the current second-hand car market, there are indeed very few electric vehicles, and the depreciation rate of new cars is higher, but this phenomenon is also very reasonable.
Every year, the total number of cars we own flows out to the used car market will have a percentage, and this ratio is called the divergence rate.
From 2000, when Chinese cars officially entered the popularization period to now more than 20 years, our second-hand car precipitation rate is still not high, the annual precipitation rate in the past 5 years is about 7%, and the Value in the United States is exactly twice ours, about 14%.
Although China's new energy vehicle market is very hot, but it is also recently especially this year's relatively fast volume, the amount of ownership is not high, the flow to the second-hand car market is naturally less, the speed of circulation in the hands of second-hand car dealers is not fast, car dealers often need lower car prices (higher depreciation rate of new cars), higher intermediate price difference, so as to make up for the risk and time cost.
Behind all the problems of second-hand electric vehicles, there are actually reasonable economic explanations.
The era of fuel vehicles to do used cars is a typical hell mode. China's second-hand car market has developed for so many years, independent second-hand car dealers or car dealers we often say, still occupy about 80% of the market share.
In the era of fuel vehicles, it is a craft to buy and sell used cars professionally, because the condition of used cars is half scientific and the other half is metaphysics. Judging the condition of a second-hand car, even for old drivers, is largely like fortune telling, basically relying on the sky to eat.
For used cars, in addition to accident cars, water soaking cars, lowering the odometer these common pits, the biggest sinkhole is that the machinery manufacturing industry has a large number of Know-how, many even the manufacturers themselves are not clear, not to mention the second-hand car dealers? Often the car looks OK, it's not right to drive up, and you can't tell where the problem is.
Mechanical processing has a saying slip: "large factory freeze small factory burn roadside shop all rely on knocking", a ring is set on a shaft, in order to make the two sides more closely combined, the large factory usually soaks the shaft into liquid nitrogen, the shaft is frozen a little smaller and then assembled, the small factory is just the opposite, is the ring burned red, after swelling to the shaft, if it is a roadside stall nothing, it can only be hammered hard. This is why many people react to the fact that once the car engine is repaired, it cannot be stopped, because the unprofessional disassembly seems to solve the problem, but in fact, the assembly process itself has produced a bigger problem.
This has caused the sale and purchase of second-hand cars, into a job that relies heavily on the experience and talent of the car collector, a car collector, not only to be able to drive to judge the condition of the car, but also to repair the car, can bargain the price, match the transaction, the high requirements for the professional of the practitioners also limit the second-hand car company to become bigger, our second-hand car dealers, two-thirds of the number of employees less than 4 people, can you imagine the market economy for more than 40 years, there is also an industry two-thirds of the practitioners are self-employed?
But now, above the used car market, an unprecedented storm is forming, and when the eye of the storm is formed, the mountains and rivers will change color, and the big changes will follow.
Like it or not, the replacement of fuel vehicles by electric vehicles is no longer a matter of controversy, but a fact.
The level of the retention rate of used cars, like the price-earnings ratio of the stock market, can be maintained as long as there are enough people who believe. The problem is that when fuel vehicles are replaced by electric vehicles, this evaluation system based on fuel vehicles is destined to be uprooted. If the skin does not exist, the hair will be attached?
When the avalanche occurs, every snowflake cannot escape. Sorry, neither can Toyota.
Electric vehicles relative to fuel vehicles, the changes in the second-hand car market, can be called revolutionary.
Electric cars do not have so much metaphysics, and the three-electric system is not easy to break. The motor and electronic control technology are extremely mature, and the maintenance problem is basically not considered during the whole life cycle. As for the battery, although there are many problems at present, but the technology progress is very fast, the cost is destined to continue to decline, and finally it becomes not a problem, and the manufacturer will basically promise a warranty for a period of time.
Most importantly, electric vehicles emphasize intelligence, and the understanding of vehicle companies about automobile information may be more than an order of magnitude higher than that of the fuel vehicle era.
Today's electric vehicles come with all kinds of perception configurations, such as high-definition cameras, millimeter-wave radar, ultrasonic radar, and even lidar. Where your car went, where it was parked, whether there was an accident, if the manufacturer cross-checked with the insurance company and traffic police data, it is basically a very small probability event for individuals to fake and falsely report in the second-hand car market.
Simply put, cars are going to run autonomously, and automakers know more about your own car than you do. Taking a step back, even if some data is lacking, electric vehicles are not easy to break, and the long tail effect of risk does not exist.
And these data, in the era of fuel vehicles, are basically not even dare to think.
So what is the future of the used car market dominated by electric vehicles?
First of all, this market must be dominated by OEMs.
In the era of intelligent automation, the main body is now the self-employed these second-hand car dealers, will gradually withdraw from the market, because relatively large automakers, their personal skills are useless, just like the emergence of CNC machine tools, reducing the dependence on front-line operators, the big data of the electric vehicle era solves the qualitative problem of the problem car, and the homogeneity of the three-electric system also makes the basic performance of different brands of electric vehicles tend to be consistent.
I also tend to think that the current second-hand car online enterprises, in the era of electric vehicles, if they can have agreements with automakers and partially access the vehicle data, there will also be large second-hand car platforms similar to Taobao Tmall or JD.com.
Secondly, from the perspective of the retention rate, electric vehicles are less valuable than fuel vehicles in the early stage, but the retention rate will be higher in the later stage.
In the era of intelligent electrification, electric vehicle technology has advanced rapidly, the attributes of electronic products are stronger, and it belongs to "early buying and early enjoyment, late buying with discounts", and the retention rate in the early stage is certainly not high. However, at a critical point, the basic function of electric vehicles is maintained better than that of fuel vehicles, and the retention rate will be higher than that of fuel vehicles.
Brad Pitt once starred in a film called Rejuvenation, in which the protagonist, Benjamin Barton, was born with the image of an 80-year-old man, gradually becoming younger as the years passed, eventually returning to infantile status and dying in the arms of his elderly lover, Daisy.
At present, at least in the second-hand car market, fuel vehicles still look young and not old at all, but this may be like that movie, a kind of reverse growth. The fuel car slowly reversed the process of his growth. Every year, the number of new cars is a little smaller, the existing cars continue to be scrapped and withdrawn from the market, and then the gas stations and 4S stores of related service agencies are gradually reduced, which in turn reduces the application of fuel vehicles.
The fuel car didn't get old, he just went back to his nascent state. One hundred and twenty years ago, when the car just began to enter the human society on a large scale, the fuel vehicle was once equal to the electric vehicle, but in that era, there was no current lithium battery, and the intelligent basic computer would not mature until a hundred years later, and the fuel vehicle, which belongs to the internal combustion engine era, appeared in the era of electrification, which was originally born with an old dragon clock, but there was no hero at the time, the shaft became famous, and the backwardness of related technologies made the fuel vehicle young for more than a hundred years.
It's time to send the fuel truck back to the stroller.