BMW Brilliance's Dadong plant realizes the spontaneous self-use of electricity and the internet access of surplus electricity
Weilai once again clearly put forward "automatic driving"
The auto market in 2021 is more magnificent than the previous year's waves.
In the gradually warm sales of new cars, people see the hope of market recovery, but also have to be immersed in the uncertainty factors behind the "high driving and low walking"; although the new forces of car manufacturing are frequent, they have become a "front wave" after ict giants such as Xiaomi Huawei enter the car; and as the wave after wave after wave after it has passed, people need to seriously think about how people and cars will get along in the future, and how people, cars and the environment will coexist.
It's time to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. Beiqing Automobile reviewed the major events in the Chinese auto market in 2021 and tried to outline the general appearance of the automotive industry in 2021 through these carefully selected events.
1
After three years, the auto market is finally going to "return to normalcy"
The Association of Passenger Vehicles recently released its December car sales forecast data, and it is reported that the retail sales of narrow passenger cars in December are expected to be 2.050 million units, down 10.4% year-on-year. However, full-year 2021 retail sales are expected to reach 20.090 million units, up 4.1% year-on-year. Not surprisingly, China's auto market will return to the mark of more than 20 million vehicles and usher in its first positive growth since 2018.
According to the data of the Federation, the positive growth this year is mainly due to the good performance in the first half of the year and the market rebound under the slowdown of the epidemic. In the first half of this year, the cumulative retail sales of narrow passenger cars (cars, SUVs and MPVs) were 9.942 million units, an increase of 28.9% compared with the same period last year affected by the epidemic.
However, the association said that there are many uncertainties in the market this year. In fact, monthly sales have been negative since June this year, and it is expected that it will be difficult to change until December. According to the analysis of the association, the supply side continued to improve at the end of the year, and the dealer side also actively prepared the warehouse to cope with the upcoming sales season of the previous year. However, in early December, a new round of local epidemics appeared, and many places issued notices to advocate the local New Year, and the obstruction of population flow may further affect sales during the Spring Festival peak season. The market is not expected to have a significant tail effect in December.
But in any case, saying goodbye to negative growth is still a positive signal, and it is also a testimony to the tenacious standing of the automotive industry under the double impact of the epidemic and lack of core. The "last cold winter" is almost over.
2
Should "autonomous driving" be renamed?
In August this year, a car accident of a Weilai ES8 pushed "automatic driving" to the cusp of public opinion. Since the parties said that the vehicle was in a state of "automatic driving" at the time of the accident, the focus of public opinion quickly focused on the excessive packaging of "automatic driving" by some car companies. The industry also quickly began to reflect on whether the practice of promoting systems with only assisted driving functions at this stage as "autonomous driving" has misled consumers. In fact, after the car accident, the Beijing Youth Daily reporter found in an interview that some salespeople were indeed misleading when selling vehicles, and defaulted to assisted driving as automatic driving for sales.
Shortly after the incident, ideal cars' official website adjusted the description of "AD advanced driver assistance system" to "AD driver assistance system". Almost at the same time, Xiaopeng's official website also changed the name of its own driving assistance system to "XPILOT Intelligent Driving Assistance System", deleting the word "automatic" in the name.
The lessons of the past have long been learned. As the first car company to use the term "autonomous driving" for publicity, Tesla changed the Chinese translation of "Autopilot" from "automatic driving" to "automatic assisted driving" after an accident five years ago. However, it was not until another accident occurred five years later that some car companies remembered to "change their names".
It is worth mentioning that less than half a year after the accident, NIO released the new car ET5 and announced that it is equipped with the latest "NIO Autonomous Driving" NAD technology.
Hopefully this time it's true.
3
Internet companies build cars to photograph new forces on the beach
At Huawei's winter new product launch on December 23, Huawei released the latest automotive product Q&A M5. This new car, designed by Huawei and provided with technical solutions by Huawei, is considered a symbol of Huawei's "infinite proximity" to car building.
As early as March this year, Xiaomi Group also officially announced: it is going to build a car. Following the announcement of car-building plans by Internet technology companies such as Alibaba, Didi and Baidu, Xiaomi, which combines software and hardware products, finally no longer hides its car-making ambitions. In the announcement released by Xiaomi Group, Xiaomi plans to invest 10 billion yuan in the early stage and invest 10 billion US dollars in car-making projects within ten years.
With the entry of a number of Internet technology companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi, the first batch of new car-making forces represented by Weilai and Xiaopeng have the potential to become a "front wave". Xiaomi, Baidu and other companies lurking as investors directly entered the market to build cars, bringing a different business model; Huawei used brand endorsement and technical solutions as a stepping stone, and then began to dominate product planning and design, bringing unprecedented "technology flow" play.
New energy vehicles have been upgraded from "automobile industry development direction" to "carbon peak" is a chess piece in the big chess game, in such a major policy background change, the new force of car manufacturing is also about to enter the 2.0 era.
4
"Double carbon" and sustainable development are not exclusive to electric vehicles
This year's government work report for the first time included the "double carbon" issue, and many car companies have also explored ways to help "double carbon" in various forms. New energy vehicles with low emissions and low pollution have naturally become the preferred way for "double carbon" and sustainable development. However, in view of the fact that fuel vehicles are still the absolute main force of domestic automobile consumption, how to achieve a greener, greener and more sustainable development mode on the fuel vehicle body is also a topic that the automotive industry is considering this year.
In this regard, multinational car companies have once again provided us with reference. The BMW Group, which proposes "home in China", takes BMW Brilliance as the core and is working hard to promote carbon emission reduction and resource recycling in the whole industry chain. BMW Brilliance's factory has achieved 100% renewable electricity, and even has a special "carbon reduction" program in the factory logistics process; Volkswagen China is also actively promoting green production and building a sustainable supply system while accelerating its electric mobility strategy. While adopting its own renewable electricity, Volkswagen China also signed contracts with more than 200 suppliers this year, promising to gradually switch to renewable electricity.
Autonomous car companies are also following suit. FAW Group has set up a "Double Carbon Management Committee" to pay close attention to the relevant developments of the country and the industry, and strive to implement the requirements of "carbon neutrality" and "carbon peaking" in an all-round way in low-carbon technology, design and modeling, production process management and supply chain management. Prior to this, BYD announced in February this year that it would officially launch the company's carbon neutrality planning research to help the zero carbon target.
By the end of this year, another 20 million new cars will be "on the road". Of these, 17 million are fuel vehicles. This is the main battlefield to help the "double carbon" goal and promote sustainable development.
5
Weilai's "100,000+" and Li Xiaowei's "Three Kingdoms Killing"
In April this year, NIO celebrated the rollover of its 100,000th new car off the production line. For traditional car companies, 100,000 vehicles may not be enough to fill the market demand for a hot-selling model, but for a "new force" like Weilai, this means that it has initially gained a foothold in the market and has a certain user base. As of the first half of this year, NIO's cumulative sales were 41,956 vehicles, ahead of Xiaopeng's 30,738 vehicles and the ideal 30,154 vehicles.
However, the celebration of Weilai is difficult to last long. Because with the rapid development of competitors such as Ideal and Xiaopeng, Weilai, who has long been the "first brother" of the new force, can only watch "Wei Xiaoli" become "Li Xiaowei" on the July report card. Based on cumulative sales as of November this year, the latest seats of the top three new forces are: 82,155 units of Xiaopeng, 80,940 vehicles of Niolai and 76,404 vehicles of the ideal.
In fact, whether it is Weilai's "100,000 +" or the new forces in full swing of the "Three Kingdoms Killing", the good performance of the new power brand this year is inseparable from the overall improvement of the new energy vehicle market. If the overall performance of the passenger car market is equivalent to the recovery period after a serious illness, then the market performance of new energy vehicles this year can be described as vigorous.
According to the data released by the China Automobile Association, from January to November this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China hit a record high, with a cumulative production of more than 3 million vehicles and sales of 2.99 million vehicles, and the production and sales of 3 million vehicles will be achieved within the year. Industry experts pointed out that "breaking through 3 million vehicles" is a huge change, showing that the development of the new energy automobile industry has shifted from policy-driven to market-driven in the past.
The real marketization of new energy vehicle consumption is something more meaningful than "100,000+".
Text/Yang Zheng