The time has finally entered 2022, and it is foreseeable that this year will definitely be an important "troublemaking" year in history for Chinese car companies. The current year of 2022 is no longer a year for Chinese car companies to expand into overseas markets, but a year when they are really preparing to enter the practice.
There are many specific cases, Geely to continue to expand overseas markets in 2022, such as the launch of 2 new cars in Russia, including the overseas version of KX11 (Geely Star Yue L), the overseas version of Geely Atlas Pro (Geely Boyue Pro); Lynk & Co, to complete the UK market layout in 2022, Lynk & Co 02 will complete the European listing in 2022, and even the direct PK Sagittarius/Golf Lynk & Co 03 in the Chinese market also has the possibility of landing, Coupled with the fact that Geely and Mercedes-Benz will focus on Smart's new company to launch new cars in the European market in 2022, everything is obviously a very interesting topic.
The Great Wall will also complete its EU performance in 2022, and with the landing of the European center, it will compete for the market by relying on the launch of new energy models in the hometown of automobile inventors.
In addition to these, byd / MG / Chery these traditional forces are basically overseas with the initial basic disk, the new forces of Xiaopeng / Aichi mainly attack Europe, the current trend of the best Weilai, has flashed a chart on NIO Day 2021, to provide corresponding services for more than 25 countries around the world by 2025.
Obviously, Weilai and Jili rushed the fiercest
Chinese car companies go to sea, the current 2022 is essentially the third stage of the boom, the early stories are many, Chery relying on self-developed technology to bring the car to Europe, so that the most mature regional consumers to see the ability of Chinese car companies is not bad. In recent years, Geely, the Great Wall, etc. have accelerated the global layout, among which Geely has basically stood firm in ASEAN, the Great Wall has basically established factories in Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia/India and other countries are further expanding.
However, in the first 2 stages, Chinese car companies are basically in the posture of catching up, along the traditional automotive technology path, competing for cost performance, research and development capabilities, adjustment skills, cost control, channel promotion, etc.
In the immediate phase 3, this trend is beginning to be reversed, because Chinese brands in the smart electric vehicle industry are obviously running faster and playing more innovative.
A US "expansion" of personnel in 2021 is obviously illustrating some new ideas. The news that was broken by foreign media was that San Jose released 46 recruitment needs, and Seattle released 1 new job recruitment demand. Weilai officials also quickly responded to this, and has been in San Jose with relevant layouts, and this recruitment is a normal move.
Compared with the relevant plans/structures of the United States previously announced by NIO, the relevant functions of San Jose/Seattle are digital experience capabilities, including operating system architecture, operating system capabilities, autonomous driving capabilities, and network security.
In this recruitment position release, there are some new elements added to the relevant recruitment positions that have been exposed before, such as the power strategy supervisor / architectural design supervisor / user infrastructure construction supervisor in the above figure, which is not the same as the previous planning structure. One of the positions hired in Seattle is Motion Control Expert.
As for WEILAI's relevant plans for the US market, we have verified with the relevant people of Weilai officially, "There is no official news to be announced at present, and the time node of the announcement is not in the near future, it is still early." ”
However, from the perspective of the recruitment plan, Weilai is obviously doing a lot of basic reserve thinking. Power strategy + building design + infrastructure construction, these keywords are integrated, you and I can obviously think of one thing, the energy replenishment / replacement circle layer Weilai has new thinking.
As for whether it is in the US market, when it will be released in the US market, and how different it is from the way China's users serve, everything can only wait for the subsequent news to be disclosed.
From the relevant plans released by NIO Power Day in July this year, from 2022 to 2025, 600 new substations will be added in the Chinese market every year (there are more than 700 existing ones, completing the 2021 target ahead of schedule); by the end of 2025, the global total number of NIO substations will exceed 4,000, of which about 1,000 are in markets outside China. One of the plans announced by NIO in Europe is that NIO and Shell will carry out relevant promotions and carry out power replacement pilots. As for the space of overseas markets, it is obvious that it mainly lies in the European and American markets.
In addition, it is particularly worth mentioning that although there are very few companies in the global field that can/already have power exchange business, the current giants are all enterprises from China and have cash flow/rapid large-scale popularization capabilities.
In addition to Weilai, the other is also an ambitious Jili in terms of power exchange. In December 2021, Geely Holdings also announced its next related plan, Yiyi Zhaoneng (a charging infrastructure operation company under Geely Technology) will achieve the operation of 5,000 intelligent substations around the world in 2025. The highlights are also global, and the order of magnitude is huge.
However, at present, it has not been like Weilai, which has clearly announced the approximate proportion of the global layout.
Weilai or Geely have the ability to attend classes, but why doesn't the United States play changing electricity?
Compared with the development speed of smart electric vehicles in the Chinese market in recent years, the European market is slightly slower but accelerating, and the United States has many problems in the development of new energy vehicle-related businesses because of its previous withdrawal from the "Paris Climate Agreement".
As for whether the US market has relevant development space in areas such as power exchange/energy replenishment, the answer is yes.
As early as 10 years ago, Better Place established a corresponding power exchange business company, the business model is to replace the battery pack that is now familiar. However, in 2013, Better Place went bankrupt, and the corresponding concept was applied and grown in the Chinese market.
In the case of Better Place, the core topic that has been discussed more in the industry is that 1. 2. Its high costs, especially in non-operating areas with a small number of users, the vacancy rate is too high, and it requires the consumption and waste of a lot of money; In the face of different shapes/structures of battery packs in different models, automation cannot achieve a perfect match.
The above two points have actually triggered a lot of discussion in the Chinese auto market. A more typical case is that Musk first flashed a Tesla quickly completed the power replacement scene within 3 minutes, but finally chose to give up because the cost could not be afforded. Another classic case is that the battery recycling market has not been rapidly developed in recent years, which is largely due to the fact that in the early stage of the development of electric vehicles, the battery shape/material standards of various companies are not uniform, the decomposition cost is extremely high, and the replacement power station also faces such problems.
However, the current situation is a change, in August this year, the power exchange business Ample company got a $160 million C round of financing, the investor market, seeing the ability and potential of Weilai and other car companies in the field of power exchange, began to pay further attention to power exchange.
As for Weilai or Geely, who can first roll out the relevant layout of power exchange in the United States, and obviously the problems to be solved are also these. Among them, what does not need to be specially considered is not how to cover the vast area, but how to take the lead in having a certain scale and forming a scale effect.
We do not know the relevant data of Weilai, but in the current related power exchange business applications in the United States (operating vehicles), it can maintain the size of more than 100 fleets for power exchange, which can achieve a better cost balance.
With the corresponding power exchange technology and power exchange operation experience, for Weilai/Geely, it is possible to get the advantages of big data/algorithms, and can better complete the problems of site selection/battery quantity preparation/transportation convenience, and it can also bring a good user experience.
So the problem comes back to the source, about providing vehicles, about having a large number of users. Among them, in fact, it can be seen that the relevant reserves of Weilai Automobile are relatively in place. Because, at present, it has begun its own promotion in the European market, and the corresponding customs clearance/introduction/local compliance and other businesses have been preliminarily tested. Geely's related business is currently mainly in the European market.
Write at the end:
As for the topic in the title, Geely or Wei came to the United States to take the lead in completing the expansion of the power exchange business, and saw that there was a lot of space. However, the so-called "class" also depends on the progress of the two major CAR companies in the United States (FCA's electrification business is not currently within the scope of mainstream discussion), GM and Ford. According to its current corresponding announcement plan, there is no relevant layout for power replacement, after all, the long-term business of the automobile industry, the tuition fees that need to be paid are basically constant, and even the hottest Tesla has experienced more than 10 years of cruel tests.
Therefore, 2022 is obviously quite interesting and meaningful for Chinese car companies.