Independent brands have been suffering from joint ventures for a long time.
But starting in 2021, things have changed.
On the one hand, the traditional fuel vehicle market, where joint venture brands have the advantage, began to move from the "stock" to the "reduction" stage, while a number of independent head brands began to explore and achieved good success, and the market share appeared and traded.
On the other hand, the new energy market ushered in explosive growth, providing huge market growth opportunities, represented by BYD's long-term deep cultivation of new energy brands ushered in rapid growth, while the transformation of unfavorable joint venture brands did not have the ability to share this new market cake.
According to the data of the Association, from January to November 2021, BYD ranked first in the new energy sales list with 491,245 vehicles, reaching the level of nearly twice that of Tesla, but before this year, BYD was still a brand that did not have a strong sense of presence in the market.
The joint venture brands that "focus" on the traditional fuel vehicle market have almost no sense of existence, and the only two TOP 15 joint venture car companies FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen have less than a quarter of BYD's cumulative sales in January-November.
Through the current new energy market pattern, it is easy to draw a conclusion: behind every technological change in the industry, the entire market will usher in a reshuffle and give birth to new giants.
With the rapid increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, now and in the foreseeable future years, BYD will become the "number one player", and the market position of the Volkswagen brand in the era of traditional fuel vehicles is comparable or even higher.
1. Unfavorable transformation of new energy + internal roll of traditional fuel vehicles, Volkswagen bid farewell to the "era of strong brand"
Before talking about BYD, you may wish to take a look at the Volkswagen brand.
Since the marketization of China's automotive industry, the Volkswagen brand has always played an extremely important role, and the joint venture brands represented by Volkswagen, Toyota and Honda have suppressed a number of independent brands for a long time, and the market share has been stable at more than 50% for a long time.
Among them, the Volkswagen brand is "as stable as an old dog", which has always been the biggest winner in the domestic market, and the market share remains high.
According to the data, since the passenger car market entered the 20 million + era in 2015, the market share of the Volkswagen brand has been maintained at a level of about 13%-14% for a long time, and the Volkswagen brand has set a staggering record of 3.17 million units in the Chinese market.
However, the transformation of new energy is unfavorable, and the traditional fuel vehicle market is facing the impact of first-line independent brands, joint venture internal consumption and luxury brand dimensionality reduction.
Seriously dampened the overall competitiveness of the Volkswagen brand.
In 2020, the Volkswagen brand fell below the 3 million vehicle mark for the first time, selling only 2.851 million vehicles. In the first three quarters of this year, the market share of Volkswagen brands (excluding Jetta) has fallen to 11.9%, a new low in recent years. Corresponding to specific joint venture car companies, the situation is even worse.
Due to the poor performance of the main brand Volkswagen, from January to November 2021, SAIC Volkswagen's cumulative wholesale sales were only 1.1 million units, and the annual forecast was between 1.25 and 1.28 million units, while SAIC Volkswagen broke through the 2 million mark in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
In terms of FAW-Volkswagen, after excluding Audi and Jetta, the Volkswagen brand also experienced a decline in sales.
More importantly, in the new energy market with huge growth potential, the competitiveness of volkswagen brands is very different from that of the fuel vehicle market.
In the first three quarters, in the case of four ID. series electric vehicles on sale at the same time, the delivery volume of Volkswagen brand new energy models was only 69,600 vehicles, with a market share of less than 4%, and even less than BYD's one-month sales, and the sales growth rate was only half of the overall new energy market growth rate in the same period, far below the expected level.
On the one hand, the competition in the traditional fuel vehicle market has led to a decline in sales, and on the other hand, the performance of the new energy market has not been as expected.
Under the two-line dud of the traditional fuel vehicle and new energy markets, it is not difficult to understand that the market share of the Volkswagen brand has declined significantly.
At the same time, it is difficult to be optimistic about the Volkswagen brand when the competition in the traditional fuel vehicle market continues to intensify, resulting in the acceleration of the inner rolling of the joint venture brand, and the rapid increase in the penetration rate of the new energy market but the Volkswagen brand is not sufficiently competitive.
From God's point of view, the public is bidding farewell to the "brand boom era" that has lasted for the past 30 years and is gradually moving towards a period of brand decline.
2. BYD has become the holder of the new energy market, challenging the highest number of 1.5 million vehicles next year
Understanding the ups and downs of volkswagen brands, perhaps we will sigh that under the undercurrent of change in the automotive industry, even brands as strong as Volkswagen will become the background board of the times.
BYD, on the other hand, has taken a diametrically opposed route to volkswagen.
In the traditional fuel vehicle market, BYD's long-term presence is not strong, so far only launched F3 a model that can be called "explosive model", and this model with a very strong cottage style has also once made the BYD brand "mixed reputation", and the Volkswagen brand has long been ranked No.1 in the industry, and has launched at least 10 fuel vehicle evergreens.
However, in the new energy market, which is rapidly increasing in volume, there has been a two-pole reversal.
BYD has created a number of explosive models such as Han EV/DMp, Song PLUS DMi/EV, Qin PLUS DMi/EV, Yuan Pro, Dolphin, etc., which have also become explosive products in their respective market segments. In terms of Volkswagen brands, whether it is the PHEV model with early layout or the MEB platform ID.series model with high hopes, the market performance is not satisfactory.
According to the data of the Association, BYD's cumulative sales from January to November 2021 reached 491,245 vehicles, of which the single month of November soared 247% to 90,142 vehicles, reaching the sum of two, three or four in the market, and the DMi+DMp series accounted for half of the entire plug-in hybrid market.
From the perspective of market share, BYD's share of the new energy market from January to November has reached 19.5%, and the monthly share in November is as high as 23.8%. Such market share data has clearly exceeded the market share level of Volkswagen brands in recent years.
According to BYD's plan, it will achieve 600,000 new energy sales this year.
According to the famous American analyst Harry S. Dent, Jr: Once a new technology or a new industry crosses the threshold of 10%, the speed of development will accelerate, from the introduction period to the growth period.
According to the data of the Association of Automobile Associations in recent months, the penetration rate of new energy has far exceeded 10%, and even reached the "prosperity value" of 20% many times.
The China Automobile Association believes that the sales of new energy vehicles in 2022 are expected to be 5 million units, an increase of 47% year-on-year.
WANG Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, also said at the communication meeting recently: "The era of change is really difficult to see clearly, now look at 2022 and 2021 if you maintain the same growth rate (the average monthly penetration rate in 2021 increased by 1.3 pct), the overall penetration rate in 2022 should be 25-27%, and the corresponding sales should be 5 million-5.5 million vehicles." ”
Under this industry trend, BYD, which has left-handed DMi+DMp, right-hand BEV, plug-in hybrid, pure electric dual-line and continues to enrich its product line, will undoubtedly become the biggest winner in the domestic new energy market for a long time.
At present, BYD has announced a very aggressive target for 2022, with conservative sales of 1.1-1.2 million new energy vehicles and optimistic target sales of 1.5 million vehicles.
Such a goal also means that BYD's share of the new energy market will reach about 25% next year. That is to say, for every 4 new energy vehicles sold in the domestic market, there is one with a "BYD" LOGO.
3. "Go with the flow" to achieve today's BYD
In a way, the extremely dramatic reversal of the plot of BYD and volkswagen may have laid the groundwork many years ago.
In fact, from the beginning, Wang Chuanfu, who played with batteries, did not seem to want to rely on fuel vehicles to gain a foothold in the market.
After all, it is almost impossible to beat an opponent in an area that is familiar to the opponent. This also explains that today, many independent brands are still unable to obtain the expected market performance in the case of cost performance, styling design and other aspects of crushing joint venture competitors.
As early as the acquisition of Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile in 2003, BYD had already begun the research and development of DM dual-mode electric vehicles, and finally launched the first plug-in hybrid model F3DM dual-mode electric vehicle on December 15, 2008.
During this period, a very representative thing also happened, "stock god" Buffett's Hilberk Hathaway in 2008 for 230 million US dollars to buy BYD, and in 2010 in Shenzhen for BYD to stand, Wang Chuanfu was also evaluated by Buffett's partner Charlie Munger as "a combination of Edison and Welch".
Subsequently, BYD launched the first pure electric model e6 in 2010, which was sold for 369,800 yuan before subsidies, which is obviously difficult to obtain a private consumer market (when I went to Shenzhen on business today, I could still get an e6 taxi).
However, at that time, whether it was industrial policy or market acceptance, it was decided that these two "advanced" technical concept products could not be successful at that stage.
BYD can be said to have "done the right thing at the wrong time." However, BYD has always adhered to long-term doctrine and has launched new technologies such as blade batteries and e-platform 3.0 in recent years.
At the same time, if the market "owes" TOD at that stage, it will certainly "compensate" AGAINST at a certain stage. Now look at it, "some stage" is from 2021 to the next few years.
But no one would have thought that this compensation would be incomparably generous, giving BYD the opportunity to become the world's first new energy brand to cross the 1 million mark in the single market next year, which will be a landmark event. After all, Tesla, which has a trillion-dollar market capitalization, has not yet done this, and it is not possible next year.
Seeing this, some people may feel that in 2008, the two "stock gods" on the other side of the ocean were far ahead of their vision and made tens of billions of dollars with an investment of 1.8 billion.
But for every ordinary of us, now choose to be with BYD (002594. SZ) to be a "friend of time", it seems that it is not too late.