Today, there is the latest news about the iPhone 13 and Apple's supply chain.
Sony Cars (Source: CES Sony official announcement video)
Sony "built a car" and shocked "Wei Xiaoli".
Today's news, in the rather deserted CES 2022 Consumer Electronics Show keynote speech, Sony Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida officially announced that Sony Group will set up a new division - Sony Mobility Inc, a new company focused on electric vehicles, Yoshida Kenichiro said: "We are exploring the commercialization of Sony electric vehicles. ”
At the booth at this year's CES Sony conference, the company showcased an existing Sony Vision-S sedan unveiled at CES last year, as well as a prototype of a new concept SUV called the Vision-S 02. Sony says safety has always been its number one priority, and that didn't change when the SUV was built, with 40 sensors installed inside and outside the car to monitor the safety situation.
In fact, from the perspective of consumer electronics manufacturers, Sony is actually very anxious, and its level of anxiety is no less than that of Apple, which has repeatedly encountered walls in car building. After all, the innovation of the traditional consumer electronics market is declining sharply, the growth force is gradually declining, the car market next door "new four modernization" heat explosion, even if there is no foundation of the "Wei Xiaoli", are brave to pull investment against the "car" this track crazy money, through several years of precipitation, now also smashed out some "famous halls".
01
Crazy and sudden "Wei Xiaoli",
Can Sony "hold it"?
For Chinese players who are good at playing capital, the new energy vehicle track is just a game game, as long as there is enough money and resources, it can stand out among many competitors and become the final winner. The success of "Wei Xiaoli" is a vivid case.
From the beginning of the questioning, to today's large number of deliveries, whether it is Weilai, Xiaopeng or Ideal, has truly gone through the "trough period" of brand development, and the founders have gradually stepped forward from behind the scenes to wave the flag for their own products. Nowadays, the successful "Wei Xiaoli" is harvesting in the domestic new energy vehicle market with the advantages of domestic brands.
Source: Financial Associated Press
According to the delivery situation in December and 2021 released by the new car-making forces a few days ago, Xiaopeng Automobile ranked first in the annual delivery volume, and Weilai and Ideal ranked second and third respectively, defending the reputation of "Wei Xiaoli".
Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile reached the top of the new car-making force "sales crown" for three consecutive months with a delivery volume of 16,000 vehicles, an increase of 181% year-on-year. Cumulative deliveries in the fourth quarter reached 41,751 units, up 222% year-over-year. With the good performance in the fourth quarter, the total delivery volume of Xiaopeng Automobile in 2021 reached 98,155 units, which is 3.6 times that of 2020. Moreover, the Xiaopeng P5 continued to climb after the start of large-scale delivery in October this year, and the delivery of 5,030 vehicles in December hit a new high.
With the Ideal ONE model, Ideal Car achieved deliveries of more than 10,000 for two consecutive months with a delivery volume of 14,087 units, and set another delivery record. Ideal Auto expects vehicle deliveries in the fourth quarter to be 30,000 to 32,000 units in the third quarter of the financial report, and the actual fourth quarter delivery volume is 35,221 units, exceeding expectations by 10.1%-17.4%. From January to December, the delivery volume of ideal cars was 90,491 units, which is also the brand with the highest number of bicycle deliveries among the new car-making forces.
However, due to the influence of various uncontrollable supply chain factors such as chip customs clearance, Weilai missed the first throne. From the overall delivery volume of the whole year, NIO delivered 91,429 units; and from the monthly performance of December, NIO showed a slight decline of 3.6% month-on-month.
Such a crazy and sudden "Wei Xiaoli", even if Sony sets up a new department, and even in the future, this department will gradually develop into a new subsidiary. Its auto products have been off the production line, and it is difficult for Sony to compete with "Wei Xiaoli" in the short term. On the one hand, although Sony is huge, has many business lines, and has its own self-production capacity for products such as KEY semiconductor supply chains such as CIS chips, large enterprises often have heavy burdens, especially Japanese companies, which are less flexible than Chinese startups today in accepting new things and new market changes, and the thinking and strategic transformation cycle is longer, and it is difficult to adapt to such rapidly changing market demand and scene changes.
On the other hand, Sony's inherent consumer electronics attributes established over the past so many years can be very difficult to easily open up the automotive business, shift from consumer goods to automobiles, and then establish a credible automotive brand image in the eyes of users. After all, this is a pain point that even a generation of consumer electronics manufacturers Apple has been difficult to break through, even if there is no baggage, and the capital of the "Wei Xiaoli" and even the predecessor Tesla, are after many years of continuous burning, loss and run-in, to have today's results. For Sony, the road ahead is not only the challenge of "building a car", but also a huge challenge of transformation and even brand image.
02
Giants take turns to "carpool",
There are not many opportunities for "Wei Xiaoli"?
Although the road ahead is difficult, it will also encounter flexible competitors such as "Wei Xiaoli", but Sony still insists on building cars, and it is also forced by the current large number of competitors in the same level or the same track to start building cars, if Sony does not adhere to the transformation, the future will definitely suffer from the "siege" of competitors in the same industry. With the rapid change of market wind direction, the consumer electronics market is shrinking day by day, without the blessing of the new "outlet-level" business, Sony is almost difficult to survive in the future science and technology war.
Today's xiaomi, Huawei, Apple, OPPO and other giant technology companies, in fact, are this mentality, that is, worried that they can not keep up with the "outlet", but also worried that their accumulation is insufficient, can not fight "Wei Xiaoli" such emerging brands or even more in the traditional car market has a large accumulation of old car factories. Therefore, building their own cars or choosing small factories to cooperate to make the brand bigger has become the current choice of these giant enterprises.
Sony car interior drawing (Source: CES Sony official announcement video)
However, the successive entry of giants has also greatly increased the congestion of the intelligent new energy vehicle track, which is not a good thing for "half-hanging" players who do not have much accumulation in the industry and the basic resources are not rich. Take Huawei, Xiaomi, Huawei's style is specialized, technical flow, ecological flow, wolf style once played out in the automotive market, the pressure on "Wei Xiaoli" can be extraordinary, Huawei has a strong supply chain and investment relationships, as well as a strong ecosystem and user scale, coupled with technical power, these are "Wei Xiaoli" does not have.
Although Xiaomi's style is more moderate than Huawei's, the supply chain and ecology are still the foundation for this smart terminal manufacturer to have the courage to cut through thorns and dare to invest in the field of smart cars. What's more, Xiaomi is good at undercutting prices, and if Xiaomi adopts this strategy in the automotive field, it is bound to further reduce the profits of the smart car track, resulting in the entire industry starting to set off a price war. Therefore, the successive entry of giants, the future intelligent car track will form a "hundred regiments war" pattern, how to coexist peacefully in this market with different styles of players is a major problem.
What's more, today's "Wei Xiaoli" has a total sales volume of 280075 million, accounting for less than 10% of the market in China's new energy vehicle market (according to the data released by the Federation of Passenger Vehicles: from January to November 2021, China's new energy vehicle sales totaled 2.516 million units, compared with 903,000 units in the same period last year, an increase of 178.63% year-on-year). With the arrival of the giant "car-making tide", the "Wei Xiaoli" that has already run through the first half, how to survive in the second half of "car-making" is the key to whether the future can be bigger and stronger. (Proofreader: Marry)
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