Looking back at the Chinese auto market in 2021, new energy vehicles are undoubtedly standing on the cusp of the storm, and a number of car companies are also like carp across the river. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers predicts that China's total automobile sales in 2021 will be 26.1 million units, an increase of 3.1% year-on-year. Among them, the sales of new energy vehicles were 3.4 million units, an increase of 1.5 times year-on-year.
Of course, the surge in sales of new energy vehicles is only the A side, this year, the lack of cores, insufficient supply of parts, insufficient production capacity, new energy subsidies and other issues are plagued by this industry, thriving behind there are also many car companies difficult to move forward.
Missing core "black swan"
The tide of "lack of cores" that has erupted since the end of 2020 has not subsided so far, and the shortage of chips has become the biggest "black swan" event affecting the automotive industry in 2021, resulting in a series of chain reactions.
The Volkswagen Group will reduce production by 100,000 vehicles in the first two months of 2021 due to lack of cores, and global sales will fall to less than 9 million vehicles in 2021. GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Great Wall and other first-tier manufacturers have also been affected by the lack of cores, and there have been different degrees of production cuts, and even Weilai has also been affected, which announced in March 2021 that the Hefei Jianghuai plant was out of production for 5 days due to lack of cores. According to statistics, as of October 2021, global automobile production has been reduced by 9.345 million vehicles due to the lack of cores.
Due to the shortage of chips, the production capacity of car companies is limited, and the terminal vehicle source is relatively tight. Dealers in many places across the country have narrowed the preferential treatment of models, and constantly present a situation of "one car is difficult to find". In the middle of the year, the mainstream models are tight on existing cars, preferential recycling, and the delivery cycle is extended, such as the Accord cash discount from the previous 20,000-30,000 to several thousand; the Audi Q5L cash discount from 50,000 to 70,000 to 20,000; the ideal ONE car pick-up cycle has to wait 2 months. What's more, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have also launched a "fare buyback" policy because of the shortage of existing cars, even if there are various additional conditions, but this operation is unprecedented.
Because of the lack of cores, in 2021, there are also "strange appearances" of dealers with high prices, original prices and even higher than the opening price to buy back used cars. In addition, to a certain extent, it has also led to the occurrence of disguised "mark-ups" for individual models.
Data show that from January to November 2021, China's cumulative transaction of used cars was 15.9669 million, an increase of 26.38% year-on-year. The most outrageous thing is that the new car is 430,000 Mercedes-Benz 2020 E300L, and the second-hand car transaction price is actually sold to 440,000. On the industrial side, the price of car rules chips has risen wildly, and the chips of a few dollars in the past have been speculated 40 times higher.
In fact, the serious shortage of automotive chips, in addition to the main cause of the impact of the epidemic, but also superimposed a lot of factors, such as the demand for chips brought about by the progress of automotive intelligent technology in recent years, some studies pointed out that today's ordinary cars use more than 600 chips, and the world's major automotive chip manufacturers Renesas Electronics, NXP Semiconductors and Infineon Technology, are due to fire, Blizzard production stopped production.
So when will the lack of cores end?
Multiple data show that as the epidemic situation in Southeast Asia, which is responsible for chip packaging and testing, tends to stabilize, the global automotive chip supply has recovered from the fourth quarter of 2021.
China Automobile Center expects that by the third quarter of next year, the supply of chips will be greatly alleviated. In addition, JPMorgan Chase also said that the chip supply situation may be fundamentally improved in the second half of 2022. Although small missing cores may become the norm in the automotive industry in the future, the tide of large-scale core shortages is likely to end in the second half of 2022.
Cross-border car building sentient beings
In 2021, there is also a keyword that appears very frequently, that is, "cross-border car manufacturing".
In January 2021, Baidu and Geely first formed "Jidu Automobile". Two months later, Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, announced that he would build a car and made a vow to "bet on the entire reputation of his life to fight for Xiaomi car".
Specific to Xiaomi's car manufacturing progress, Lei Jun currently uses various capital means to lay out many core technology areas including automatic driving, lidar, in-vehicle chips, new energy batteries and so on. On December 24, Lei Jun revealed in response to questions from netizens that the progress of the automobile business exceeded expectations, and it is expected that the volume of vehicles will be produced in the first half of 2024.
In contrast, Jidu Automobile is joined by technology companies and car companies, Baidu's artificial intelligence, Apollo automatic driving and other core technical advantages, coupled with Geely's newly developed Vast SEA architecture, such a combination has also helped Jidu accelerate the progress of car manufacturing.
On December 27, at the Baidu AI Developer Conference, Baidu founder Robin Li said that in the first half of 2022, Jidu will announce the first concept car, and mass production and delivery of the first automotive robot in 2023.
Huawei, which has always claimed not to build cars, has also brought an AITO Q&A M5 printed with its logo to the scene of the winter flagship new product launch. Yu Chengdong even began to talk about the model product introduction PPT.
It is undeniable that new energy vehicles have become the trend of the times, and the temptation of dividends and other relevant national policies has made car building a fragrant feast in the eyes of most people. But in fact, building a car is far less easy than people think, and not all crossovers can have a better tomorrow.
For example, Evergrande Automobile, which stands on the shoulders of giants, has not yet achieved mass production after 2021. After investing a total of 47.4 billion yuan in the new energy automobile industry, in June 2021, Evergrande Group, which was deeply in debt crisis, had no time to take care of car manufacturing, and even had to get a little respite by selling its assets. Boss Xu first became the most beautiful person in the automotive circle within a year, and then became the most miserable person.
It is not only Boss Xu who is worried, but also Qi Yumin, who has been investigated, and Brilliance Auto, who has been rescued, whose life and death are currently uncertain. The days are also not very good, there are Zotye, Ford, Mazda and Korean French brands, the situation has changed suddenly, the system that was once hidden behind the weak truth has been exposed, and now there is only difficult self-help, and it is done and cherished.
Of course, it is not all bad news, recently the first test car of Evergrande production line rolled off the production line, BMW China bought all the assets of Zhonghua Automobile for 1.633 billion, and Zotye just completed the increase and opened the "resurrection" mode... In 2022, whether the crossover car builders will be destroyed or reborn, everything is still unknown.
Self-owned brand highlight moment
Although faced with factors such as lack of cores and intensified competition in the external environment, China's independent brands are also shining in 2021.
The data shows that after 3 years, the market share of Chinese brands has returned to more than 40% again. It's just different from a few years ago when we grabbed the share of the joint venture with SUVs, this time we rely on new energy and brand upwards.
Throughout the past 10 years, the market share of Chinese brands has basically belonged to the state of "continuous decline and intermittent recovery".
However, with the popularity of new energy vehicles, Chinese brands have once again regained the market. The "Wei Xiaoli" in the new force group, BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling, GAC Eian, Great Wall Euler and so on in the traditional car companies have worked together to pull the market share back to more than 40%.
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, recently told the media that "independent brands account for 80% of sales in the new energy market, Tesla accounts for 14%, and joint venture brands account for only 6%."
Under the sweep of the wave of electrification and intelligence, foreign brands are gradually declining in the Chinese market. In addition to Tesla, which sells 30,000-50,000 vehicles a month, and the Volkswagen ID. family, which has just exceeded 10,000 units per month, foreign brands really can no longer find players who can play in the field of new energy.
In contrast, the new car-making forces in 2021 not only have come out of the "ICU", the company's operating conditions have also improved in an all-round way, starting from October, the new car players represented by "Wei Xiaoli" and Nezha have achieved the small goal of delivering more than 10,000 vehicles per month, and frequently refreshed the single-month record to start the qualifying race.
At the same time, the supply advantage brought by the complete industrial chain of Chinese automobiles has been further amplified under the influence of the overseas epidemic, especially the chip shortage is obviously good for China's automobile exports, and the export of passenger cars of China's own brands has also benefited.
According to the data of the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's automobile exports reached 1.95 million units from January to November 2021, which is still a good achievement in the case of the impact of the epidemic, and there is still huge room for the development of automobile exports in the future.
Excluding the December data, vehicle exports from January to November 2021 have already hit two record highs. That is, the growth rate of vehicle exports and the total amount of vehicle exports are the highest values in the calendar year.
In fact, through the healthy competition of many independent brands, the gold content and confidence of Chinese cars have also been enhanced, and the ambitions of many Chinese car companies have gradually expanded to the level of globalization strategy, which is obviously an external dynamic energy that cannot be ignored by Chinese car companies.
Looking back at the auto market in 2021, in the turbulent market environment, car companies can be described as a hundred flowers blooming and a hundred flowers competing, bringing us more surprises. The wheels roll forward, the road ahead must be Kangzhuang Avenue, and 2021 is destined to be the "inflection point year" for the development of new energy vehicles and the entire automobile market.