In recent days, new energy captive insurance has been particularly hot. Not only because the introduction of the insurance standardized the liability of new energy vehicles before, but also led to the new energy vehicles that were close to price increases due to subsidy declines, and once again ushered in different degrees of price increases. As the popular new energy vehicles ushered in a general rise, many consumers who are interested in buying new energy vehicles have shouted, "The fuel money saved by new energy vehicles has been insured."
Many new energy vehicles have indeed increased their prices because of the introduction of this exclusive insurance, but it is undeniable that the introduction of new energy exclusive insurance has brought benefits and will also invest more resources into the new energy industry, such as the recent media report that Weilai Automobile will enter the insurance industry. According to the Financial Associated Press reported on December 29, WEILAI Automobile is evaluating the possibility of establishing an exclusive insurance product for NIO in response to the latest new energy vehicle insurance clauses.
For Weilai's intention to enter the insurance industry, some people said that Weilai was going to cut leeks, but some people welcomed it. In fact, NIO is not the first new car-making force to enter the insurance industry, nor will it be the last. Xiaopeng Automobile, which belongs to the first echelon of the new car-making forces with WEILAI Automobile, was approved to carry out auto insurance agency business as early as September 2018 and has set up a special auto insurance agency company. The industry giant Tesla has officially established insurance brokerage co., LTD. in China in August this year, with a registered capital of 50 million yuan, and the legal representative is Zhu Xiaotong, global vice president of Tesla and head of Greater China, and the business scope is insurance brokerage business.
In fact, it is not uncommon for car companies to carry out insurance business, in the traditional car companies, the development of insurance business is only part of their own after-sales service, a means to expand the business map, for example, GAC Group as early as 2011 set up Zhongcheng Insurance Company to serve its own a number of joint ventures. However, in the era of new energy, the insurance business of new energy vehicle companies seems to have undergone great changes, and it is even expected to subvert the traditional insurance business, and the root of all this must come from Tesla.
New car-making forces to carry out insurance business into a new trend?
After years of development in the automotive industry, the entire car purchase process faced by consumers has long been very fixed, among which OEMs, dealers, insurance companies, all of them are performing their duties according to fixed roles, but all of this is unacceptable for Tesla, which pursues the ultimate cost control and efficiency in every operation link. And so many players connecting with each other means that it can seek more profit, so it began to put its tentacles into the insurance business.
Most importantly, the new energy vehicle that emphasizes intelligence provides a good foundation for it to carry out insurance business. Today's electric vehicles, the factory comes with a variety of sensors, there are millimeter wave radar, high-definition cameras, ultrasonic radar, and even lidar, everything is available, so overall, the car company's understanding of the car is more than an order of magnitude higher than the era of fuel vehicles.
In the past era of fuel vehicles, traditional insurance mainly started from the car itself when determining the insurance rate, that is to say, it mainly considered some factors of the car itself for pricing, such as the model, the nature of the use of the vehicle and the fare, etc., and rarely included the driver's driving behavior. That is to say, as long as the car is the same, whether you are a ten-year-old driver or a novice who has just obtained a driver's license, the price of your car insurance is the same. As you can see, after the introduction of new energy captive insurance a few days ago, the insurance prices of some popular new energy vehicles have risen to varying degrees, of which Tesla is the most serious, and the highest premium increase is more than 100%.
Although the current new energy vehicle insurance rate is high, and the traditional insurance company is not wrong to increase the premium of popular new energy vehicles in order to ensure its own profits, this is obviously unacceptable for Tesla, which intends to expand its market share. In order to keep its new car competitive in the future market, Tesla is likely to launch UBI car insurance in the Chinese market like it did in the US market. For UBI car insurance (Usage-Based Insurance), Tesla has previously said that its UBI car insurance will be 30% to 40% lower than traditional car insurance premiums. There is no doubt that if UBI car insurance can be launched smoothly, Tesla will continue to remain competitive enough.
In the UBI car insurance launched by Tesla, its premium will depend on the vehicle the user drives, the driving location, the number of times it drives, as well as the selected insurance coverage and the monthly safety score of the vehicle, where the higher the user's safety score, the lower the premium. According to the information disclosed by Tesla on its official website, Tesla's safety scoring system evaluates the safety score of the owner on a monthly basis, and its premium can even be adjusted according to the monthly safety score.
The reason why UBI Car Insurance (Usage-Based Insurance) was selected by Tesla is largely due to the relatively complete data collection ecology equipped with Tesla vehicles themselves. Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn once said, "Tesla's vehicles are all networked, can be seen as 'computers on wheels'. ”
Of course, Tesla's choice of UBI car insurance has another important factor, that is, the growing scale of new energy car insurance. At the third quarter of 2020 earnings meeting, Musk said: "Insurance will become Tesla's main product, and the value of insurance business will account for 30% to 40% of the value of the vehicle business."
In the Chinese market, relevant data show that the total number of new energy vehicles in 2021 is expected to reach 7.23 million, calculated by the average premium of 6,000 yuan per vehicle, then, the annual new energy vehicle insurance market size of about 43.4 billion yuan. China, as the world's largest and fastest-growing new energy market, is expected to reach the trillion-dollar scale in the near future, which is the main reason why Tesla chose to set up an insurance brokerage company in August this year. With the introduction of new energy captive insurance, Tesla, which has obtained insurance brokerage qualifications, has a high probability of launching its own UBI insurance in the Chinese market, and the reason why Weilai Automobile is also considering carrying out insurance business is that I believe it is also based on similar considerations.
In fact, in the era of smart cars, no insurance company can know more about their models than the new car-making forces. Moreover, this part of the information is a core secret for the new car-making forces, and will not be easily shared with other insurance companies, so in the new energy era, it is a natural advantage for the new car-making forces to carry out insurance business. It is foreseeable that with the continuous deepening of the development of new energy and the continuous growth of new energy vehicle penetration, there will be more and more new forces car companies to carry out insurance business, and even many car companies will follow Tesla's example to carry out UBI car insurance business.
New energy vehicles should subvert more than just car insurance
In fact, with the advent of the era of intelligent cars, new energy vehicles to subvert is not only car insurance, the current has been complained about by everyone of the new energy used car will become the next market to be subverted. As mentioned earlier, in the new energy era, car companies know more about your own car than you, which is unimaginable in the era of fuel vehicles.
In the past, the second-hand car market in the era of fuel vehicles is completely an unclear field, in addition to the most basic accident cars, water soaking cars, meter trucks and other common pits, there are a large number of areas that even car companies may not be able to figure out, so sometimes even decades of car dealers will have a time to hit the eye, but all this after entering the new energy era, many sinkholes will gradually disappear.
Because new energy vehicles leave the factory with many sensors, basically some desensitization data will be in the hands of car companies, so even if the accident car, water soaking car and meter car enter the market, as long as the car company through the background data query, all this will be hidden.
Most importantly, the introduction of the new energy vehicle exclusive insurance has provided a good opportunity for various new energy vehicle companies to enter the automobile insurance business. In the future, as various new energy vehicle companies gradually establish their own UBI car insurance system, new energy vehicle companies will build a complete closed loop from manufacturing, selling cars to car insurance to second-hand cars. It can be said that a new set of second-hand car value evaluation system composed of new energy car companies is about to begin to appear in the second-hand car market, and this market must be dominated by car companies in the future.
In fact, although the new cars produced by various new energy vehicle companies have not been listed for a few years, and even some models cannot calculate the three-year age retention rate because of insufficient age, car companies such as Tesla, Weilai and Xiaopeng have already launched official second-hand car business in advance, which is enough to see that the new car-making forces attach importance to the second-hand car business.
It is worth mentioning that when NIO launched its official used car business this year, it made it clear that it would invest 3 billion yuan in the next 5 years to promote the development of its official used car NIO Certified. Not only that, Weilai CEO Li Bin even said, "Weilai's second-hand car business is not for profit, but an important business with a closed loop of business model, and the purpose is also to safeguard the interests of existing car owners." ”
There is no doubt that in the current situation that the ownership of new energy vehicles is still relatively small, before the evaluation system of new energy second-hand cars is formed, the official second-hand car business established by various new car-making forces will face losses for a long time. But even so, I believe that the new car-making forces will definitely invest in the cultivation of their second-hand car business.
In fact, with the popularity of smart cars, car companies are no longer a simple car company, it is more like a big data company with a car shell, for example, Tesla has been emphasizing that it is a technology company. Perhaps in the eyes of ordinary consumers, Tesla is most familiar with its cool Tesla models and convenient FSD automatic driving assistance system, but in the eyes of people in the industry, Tesla's most valuable is the data behind the FSD autopilot assist system. McKinsey & Company researchers have estimated that by 2030, the market value of data collected by cars will reach $750 billion per year.
Unlike traditional fuel vehicles, Tesla's new cars come with various sensors at the factory, which provides a good basis for the continuous upgrading of its FSD autopilot system algorithm, as of now, with the Autopilot system and the "shadow mode", Tesla owners have traveled more than 3 billion miles in the case of enabling the Autopilot system, that is, the owner's every move on the car, whether it is to hit the direction, brake or step on the accelerator, may become the data point collected by Tesla. The collected data will be "fed" by Tesla to its own algorithm, and the upgraded algorithm will "feed back" Tesla's vehicles through OTA, so that Tesla has always been ahead.
In view of the huge total amount of data, Tesla relies on a set of neural networks that closely combine sensors, data, communications, CPU, peripheral hardware and software to build a large enough moat in the new energy market. Although Tesla is currently an unattainable existence compared to other new car-making forces, imitation is the best teacher. Because Tesla has gained advantages in autopilot data and related data collection, a large number of car companies that are currently new car manufacturers are basically "copying operations" against Tesla. It is foreseeable that with the continuous growth of new energy sales, these new energy vehicles equipped with a large number of sensors will provide unlimited value for their respective companies. In time, it is difficult to say that these new car-making forces will not subvert the ecology of the entire upstream and downstream of the car.
Summary: For Weilai Automobile, whose sales continue to grow, the insurance business can expand its own commercial layout to increase its own revenue while improving its service quality, and I think no car company can refuse. With the increase in the ownership of new energy vehicles and the expansion of the related auto insurance scale market, it is believed that more and more new forces will join the industry.
Most importantly, with the popularity of smart cars, car companies that are more and more like big data technology companies are likely to subvert not only the ecology of the upstream and downstream of the entire car in the future, but also may even affect our food, clothing, housing and transportation.