Image source @ Visual China
Text | Finance And Economics Pro, author | Orange, edited by | West Building
The old tricycle that was greeted in dialect by the moshi near the station and returned home to the noise of the noisy vehicles full of characteristics, which is the unique memory of a generation of workers.
Nowadays, micro-new energy vehicles have quietly replaced those "slightly overdated" old-fashioned tricycles, found their own new territory in the sinking market, and are slowly accepted by consumers.
New energy vehicles seem to have changed the decline in the sinking market in the early years and gradually become a new darling.
01 The new favorite of small town residents?
According to the number of vehicle insurance in 2020, in the fourth-tier cities and below in China, the top 5 companies with insurance brands are: Wuling Hongguang, BYD, Baojun, Chery, and Oula, with each share of 27.5%, 12.0%, 9.8%, 8.5%, and 7.9% respectively, and the sum of the sales volume of the top five has reached 93939 vehicles, and the main models are below 15W.
Relevant reports show that the retail scale of automobiles in China's sinking market in 2020 is about 2,000.28 billion yuan, which has exceeded the scale of first- and second-tier markets.
At the same time, with the 2021 new energy vehicle to the countryside activities held in many places, the sales data of new energy vehicles in the sinking market has been further improved.
According to Fu Bingfeng, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, according to incomplete statistics, from January to November 2021, The cumulative sales of new energy models in China were 927,000, an increase of 1.9 times over the same period. The owner of an auto trade shop in a county also said: "Now there is no problem in selling four or five hundred new energy vehicles a year, half of which are sold to township users, and many are still repeat customers."
The good market feedback of new energy vehicles in the sinking market is not only the result of policy-oriented promotion, but also the result of the development of the new energy industry for many years.
In the past two years, the global new energy industry has developed rapidly, and the development of three electric technologies has become more and more mature (three electric, that is, batteries, motors, and electronic controls). Among the three electrics, the power battery is the most critical, and the power battery specifications selected by the vehicle are often concerned by enterprises and consumers. In the field of power batteries, domestic companies have made great progress in recent years.
According to the catalogue of new energy vehicle models exempted from vehicle purchase tax (hereinafter referred to as the catalogue) over the years, the cruising range of pure electric passenger cars in the catalogue has soared from an average of 159.7 km in 2014 to an average of 382.4 km in 2020. What is the concept of 382.4km, which means that the new energy vehicles in the catalog can circle the Shanghai Ring Expressway twice on average under full power, or realize a "Nanjing-Hefei" cross-city round trip.
As for the vehicles involved in the activities of new energy vehicles going to the countryside, although most of the vehicle categories are A0-class, A-class and some relatively cheap SUV models, the average electricity bill per kilometer when actually used is basically about 0.05-0.1 yuan, which is much lower than the fuel consumption price of ordinary fuel vehicles, and some vehicle NEDC mileage can even reach 410km, and consumers will not have "endurance anxiety" when using it.
The rapid development of the domestic power battery industry has also made its achievements in the global market quite eye-catching.
Take the data from November 2021 as an example: the installed capacity of the CATL era has reached 12.1GWh, and its market share of 37% makes it firmly occupy the world's first position. In addition, BYD also rushed to the third place in the market, while AVIC Lithium Battery, Ewell Lithium Energy and Sunwoda ranked 7th, 9th and 10th respectively. In the first 11 months of 2021, the market share of domestic battery companies has approached 50% (48.1%).
While achieving double improvement in mileage and market share, the problem of "charging difficulty" that has been criticized by new energy car owners in the vast sinking market has also improved with the construction of the national charging network, the layout of corresponding charging enterprises and the technological upgrading of the state grid in the past two years.
Under the change of many external conditions, new energy models have sold very well in the sinking market, on the contrary, those "new car-making forces" who frequently go out of the circle on the Network have been difficult to win the big cake of the sinking market for a long time.
02 It is difficult for new car-making forces to sink
Wei Xiaoli's three "new car-making forces" are undoubtedly the first echelon of domestic new energy vehicle companies, and they have also achieved good sales performance in the first- and second-tier markets. Behind the nearly 100,000 deliveries of each company in 2021 is the reality that the prices of the models sold by the new car industry are relatively high. According to the official mini program of the three new car-making forces car companies, the prices of the three best-selling models are roughly as follows, and the lowest starting price is more than 240,000 yuan.
Higher prices make it difficult for new forces to attract consumers in price-sensitive sinking markets. According to the survey data, the proportion of users' car purchase budgets in the sinking market is only 8.2% of 20-30w, compared with 84.7% of consumers with a budget below 20w, and the problem of high prices will be further aggravated with the decline of subsidies in 2022. However, the sinking market is an incremental market that must be laid out for new forces.
From the perspective of business model, the new forces seem to be taking Tesla's "old road", with the help of direct stores and the form of opening stores in large supermarkets, although they have gained more market exposure, they also mean higher operating costs. This makes it difficult for new forces to rush into the sinking market due to the decline in order volume in third- and fourth-tier cities, which makes it difficult for new forces to rush into the sinking market.
Second, it is difficult to solve the supporting facilities. High-volume models of new car-making forces often use ternary lithium batteries with better performance and higher energy density, one of the biggest advantages of this type of power battery is that the charging efficiency is high, and the higher charging efficiency must be matched with high-performance charging pile equipment, and the normal household 220V voltage can not support such a high power, users need to install special charging equipment.
However, due to the special "local customs" of sinking markets such as small counties, it faces greater resistance when installing equipment such as "supercharging". A netizen who lives in the county once reported on social media that he needed to install a charging pile because he purchased a Tesla vehicle, but in the installation process, he was resisted by many parties such as property, power grid, power supply bureau, etc., and failed to solve the problem of charging pile installation for 2 months.
In contrast, most of the less expensive micro-electric vehicles tend to use more traditional, lower-energy-dense lithium iron phosphate batteries, with lower charging power, and can be charged using household 220V.
With the passage of time, the state will further promote the upgrading of power grid facilities, and these problems that plague the new forces will be solved in the future, but at present, this is still one of the key problems that make it difficult for the new forces to gain a foothold in the sinking market.
What's more, the competition in the new energy field of the sinking market in the future will also produce more uncontrollable changes with the innovation of the industry, and how the new energy track will be in many years is still unknown.
03 Can the boom be sustained?
Since 2021, the contradiction between supply and demand between new energy vehicle companies and the power battery industry has been generated, on the one hand, the market continues to increase demand, on the other hand, the fact that the market supply is not abundant, and the important raw materials of the lithium battery industry, ore and lithium battery materials, have increased significantly.
The data shows that at the end of 2021, the price of cobalt has risen by 100% compared with the beginning of the year, the market price of nickel has risen by 15% year-on-year, and the price of lithium carbonate in the sea has hit a record high of 32,600 US dollars / ton, up more than 400% from the beginning of the year.
However, some insiders have analyzed that the shortage of chips and the rise in lithium battery prices will improve in 2022, and the pressure on new energy vehicle companies will be alleviated.
The impact of the further decline of subsidies for new energy vehicles in 2022 has now been reflected in the price level of new energy vehicles.
Up to now, a number of new energy vehicle companies have successively announced price increases. Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y have increased prices by 10,000 yuan and more than 20,000 yuan respectively, some models of Nezha Automobile have raised their prices by about 5,000 yuan, and GAC Aian has increased by 7,000-14,000 yuan and so on. This is not good news for a price-sensitive sinking market.
To this end, many car companies have chosen to carry out promotions, playing out the so-called "lock single subsidy does not retreat" and other activities. That is, orders can continue to enjoy the new energy vehicle subsidies in 2021, and the resulting price difference is borne by the enterprise. But in any case, the subsidy decline will be a great impact on the A0, A-class and other cheap new energy vehicle manufacturers, especially in the chip shortage, power battery cost rise in the environment, is undoubtedly a very difficult test.
Industry forecast data show that domestic new energy vehicle sales will reach 5 million in 2022, accounting for 20% of the annual sales, which means that the domestic new energy market or will complete the early planning of the domestic new energy vehicle sales will exceed 5 million in 2025.
It is foreseeable that the future new energy industry will undoubtedly have a more long-term development, with the decline in chip prices and the technological innovation of new energy enterprises under policy support, the boom in new energy will continue to be maintained for a long time in the future, and gradually become the future of the automotive field.