【Zhongyang Auto Review】The automobile industry has been making steady progress for another year

Although China's 2021 annual automobile production and sales data will not be officially released until next week, combined with the fast sales data disclosed by major car companies and the preliminary analysis of the China Automobile Association, this figure is expected to exceed 26 million vehicles and achieve slight growth. In the context of repeated epidemics, "lack of core and less electricity", and rising raw material prices, such a steady progress is not easy. Even more exciting than this figure is that the industrial structure is undergoing major changes. After more than 10 years of strategic guidance and careful cultivation, China's new energy vehicles have not only ushered in explosive growth, but also brought new vitality to the industry and showed a new atmosphere.

Annual production and sales exceeded 3 million vehicles, the market penetration rate exceeded 13%, private consumption accounted for nearly 80%, the new forces sold more than 10,000 vehicles a month, inventory of data, identify details everywhere, all indicate that China's new energy automobile industry is ushering in an inflection point from policy-driven to market-driven. On the surface, this is the resonance of industrial technological progress, product enrichment and policy power interaction, but from a deeper level, it is the burst of innovation vitality of China's automobile industry.

Compared with the rapid realization of independent innovation in the high-speed rail and home appliance industries, China's auto industry has been criticized for relying too much on joint ventures. Reflecting on the reasons for this, there are both the deformation of the action of the "market for technology" policy at the implementation level in that year, and the constraints and squeezes of the evolution law of the industry itself. With the continuous development of the automobile industry in the past century, the traditional fuel vehicle technology including powertrain, chassis, and automotive electronics has gradually matured, and the driving force of technological innovation on fuel vehicles has weakened, and the competitive pattern of the world automobile industry has tended to be stable. If independent brands want to achieve surpassing Brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW on the fuel vehicle track in the short term, the difficulty is self-evident.

However, the transformation of intelligence and electrification has bred new opportunities for China's automotive industry to change lanes and overtake. Driven by the national innovation strategy, we have firmly seized this opportunity, adhered to the pure electric drive, and tolerated the development of fuel cells, plug-in hybrids and other technical routes, and properly handled the technical route disputes. At the same time, we will break down the policy and institutional obstacles of the traditional automobile industry and gradually establish an industrial policy system conducive to technological progress and enterprise innovation. Especially in the early stage of electrification development, allowing "cross-border car manufacturing", mobilizing the enthusiasm of new and old forces, introducing Tesla openly, further stimulating the vitality of the industry, and achieving leading development in the process of global automobile electrification.

From the perspective of the specific performance of the enterprise, the new forces of head car-making represented by "Wei Xiaoli" have sprung up and collectively entered the club of 10,000 vehicles sold every month; the traditional car companies represented by Dongfeng, GAC, Geely, etc., have worked hard and have successively created new brands such as Lantu, Eian, and JiKr. Many of the products of these companies and brands are close to, or even surpass, the joint venture brands. In the supply chain, CATL ranked first among global power battery companies, and the industrial support was greatly enhanced. More importantly, at present, many models of Weilai and Ideal have entered the market of BMW and Mercedes-Benz at the same price, highlighting the strong brand premium ability, which is something that independent brands did not dare to think of in the traditional fuel vehicle era in the past.

Some economists pointed out that if in the next 10 years or longer, fuel vehicles are significantly replaced by new energy vehicles, coupled with the market scale brought by downstream industries, the new energy automobile industry will become the most promising field to replace real estate, heavy chemicals and other sectors. Of course, such an analysis makes sense. As the pillar of the national economy and a typical representative of the manufacturing industry, the automobile industry chain is long, strongly related and large, which is of great significance to stable growth, employment protection and tax promotion. Especially in the context of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, new energy vehicles have become the best carrier of intelligence and an innovative integration platform. Through the deep integration with information and communications, big data, energy and other industries, new energy vehicles, as interconnection nodes, intelligent terminals and core hubs in the ecological system of travel services, are expected to open up and reshape all aspects of transportation, cities, energy, environment and even social life, which will bring them greater imagination space and development potential.

It should also be noted that since the birth of the automobile in 1886, the world automobile industry has developed for more than 130 years, and three major changes have occurred in the middle, resulting in the transfer of the center of the automobile industry in different countries or regions such as Europe, the United States and Japan. With the boom of new energy vehicles in China, China's auto industry has never been so full of innovation vitality as today, and we have the conditions to build a world automotive industry center and lead the development of the global automotive industry more than ever. Therefore, whether from the perspective of innovation-driven or from the perspective of expanding consumption, the strategic position of China's automobile industry needs to be re-recognized and improved. (Source of this article: Economic Daily Author: Yang Zhongyang)