In 2021, the car market is affected by the lack of cores and is struggling, while the new forces of car manufacturing are bucking the current and repeatedly reaching new highs. First of all, Ideal and Xiaopeng respectively announced that the cumulative production and sales exceeded 100,000. Then in the 2021 sales report card, the first echelon of "Wei Xiaoli" exceeded 90,000, and even approached the sales volume of 100,000 levels.
In fact, as early as the end of 2019, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, said in an interview with Fortune (Chinese Edition) during the Guangzhou Global Science and Technology Forum: "Selling 100,000 cars a year is the premise of all future possibilities. Today, this goal is only one step away for Wei Xiaoli.
The first echelon went hand in hand, approaching the 100,000 mark
The annual sales of Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal are close to 100,000 vehicles, and the fourth place Nezha has opened up a gap of 20,000-30,000 vehicles, ranking first in the first echelon of new car-making forces. Despite this, the first echelon delivery ranking has quietly changed, and the "Wei Xiaoli" in the outside world has become "Xiao Weili".
In 2021, the performance of Xiaopeng Automobile is stable and rising, starting to exert force in September, and the delivery volume continued to exceed 10,000 for 4 consecutive months, especially in November, Xiaopeng Automobile overtook the delivery volume of the whole series under the assistance of P5, and continued to rise in December, with deliveries of 16,000 units, an increase of 181% year-on-year. All of this has helped Xiaopeng Automobile's annual delivery volume reach 98,155 units in 2021, which is 3.6 times the delivery volume in 2020, and it has won the championship of new car-making forces with an absolute advantage of nearly 7,000 vehicles higher than Weilai Automobile.
At the end of December last year, He Xiaopeng said in CCTV Finance's "Dialogue Challenger" program that the current annual R&D investment of Xiaopeng Automobile is about 4 billion yuan, and will have more than 600 brand supercharging stations by the end of this year, covering 54 cities. In terms of production capacity, Xiaopeng Automobile has three factories in Zhaoqing, Guangzhou and Wuhan, with a total design capacity of 300,000 vehicles, and a maximum peak production capacity of nearly 500,000 vehicles.
Weilai Automobile, which takes the high-end route, has a big ups and downs in 2021, with a total of 91,429 units delivered throughout the year, although it doubled year-on-year, but missed the champion of the new car-making force. This result seems to have been expected, from the delivery trend of Weilai Automobile in 2021, the fluctuations in January and July belong to the normal range, and since the delivery volume dived in August, it has shown a roller coaster trend, single-month sales have fallen out of the top three of the new car-making forces many times, sales in October even fell to 3667 units, November and December for two consecutive months to turn the tide, can be stable in the delivery of more than 10,000 units, it is not easy.
Unlike Xiaopeng and Weilai, ideals only attack the world with one model ideal ONE. Ideal ONE delivered 14,087 units in December, up 130.0% year-on-year. With this model, the ideal delivery of a total of 90,491 units for the whole year, an increase of 177.4% year-on-year. Since delivery, the cumulative delivery volume of Ideal ONE has reached 124088 units. In Li Xiang's view, this achievement is the result of user support and team efforts, which shows that he is still satisfied with this achievement.
In the author's opinion, although the ideal ranks third in the new force of car manufacturing, its gold content of more than 90,000 sales is higher, which is enough to show the product strength of the ideal ONE. Secondly, Ideal Auto also attaches importance to the construction of after-sales service, it is understood that as of December 31, 2021, Ideal Auto has 206 retail centers across the country, covering 102 cities. There are 278 after-sales maintenance centers and authorized sheet metal spray centers, covering 204 cities. In this way, the ideal car has built a solid fortress from product to after-sales. In the future, even if the range extender SUVs such as Lantu FREE and The Boundary M5 want to break through the defense, it will be difficult.
Comments: The reason why "Xiao Wei Li" can go hand in hand, thanks to their market segment basically no overlap, Xiaopeng is mainly to conquer the pure electric car market within 300,000 yuan, Weilai mainly attacks the intelligent pure electric SUV of 350,000-500,000 yuan, and has the blessing of power exchange technology, and the ideal ONE seems to overlap with Weilai at the vehicle level, but the technology and price of the extender are suddenly different from Weilai. Thus, "Xiao Wei Li" will not dismantle each other but form a joint force to jointly expand the market and promote consumers' affirmation of the new forces of car manufacturing and achieve a win-win situation.
The second echelon has a large gap, and Nezha leads the way
When the first echelon of the new car-making forces is marching all the way, the second echelon of the new car-making forces is also struggling to catch up, and the distance between them is also very large.
In December, the delivery volume of Nezha Automobile continued to exceed 10,000 units, reaching 10,127 units, achieving two consecutive months of delivery exceeding 10,000 units. Nezha delivered a total of 69,174 units in 2021, an increase of 361.7% year-on-year. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the slight decline in the Spring Festival month in February, Nezha Automobile seems to be unaffected by the lack of cores, and has been making great strides, and has also surpassed Weilai with a strong posture, and has repeatedly ranked among the top three monthly sales of new car-making forces.
This is mainly based on the Nezha U series and the Nezha V series. Among them, the Nezha V series, as a sales force, delivered 49,640 units throughout the year, accounting for 71%. Friends who buy Nezha V around it evaluate it as: Nezha V is larger than a mini car, comfort can be, the key is high degree of intelligence, the whole vehicle is cost-effective, very suitable for our young people who have just worked.
In addition, in the author's opinion, Nezha Automobile also has a major highlight, that is, what it advocates is "good cars are not expensive, and the service is top-matched". In addition to making consumers love its products, Nezha Automobile has also increased investment in charging infrastructure to cooperate with third-party charging companies. As of November 2021, Nezha Automobile has completed the power supply layout in 150 cities across the country, with 1637 free charging stations and 19663 DC charging piles, covering more than 95% of the user's use area, largely meeting the charging needs of users.
In 2022, with the mass production and delivery of Nezha S, it is not impossible for Nezha Automobile to enter the first echelon.
A few joys and some sorrows, WM Motors, which was once in the first echelon of the new car-making forces, has been lagging behind in last year's sales ranking. Since WM re-announced sales in September, sales have hovered around 5,000 units for four consecutive months, and the delivery volume in 2021 reached 44,157 units, although it increased by 96.3% year-on-year, but this data is only half of the start-up brand of "XiaoWeili" in the same period. In the next article, the author will further analyze why WM Motors fell behind?
The market performance of zero-run cars, which ranks sixth in the new car-making forces, is relatively stable in 2021, with cumulative deliveries reaching 43,121 units, an increase of 320.04% year-on-year. Mainly thanks to the T03, which aims at the A00-level pure electric segment, its sales account for up to 89%. At the same time, it also expanded into mid-size SUVs, with the C11, which began deliveries in October, delivering a total of 4,021 units in less than three months. From this point of view, the performance of zero-run cars in 2022 is still worth looking forward to.
Comments: The core of the second echelon, Nezha Automobile and Zero-run Cars, have started to expand the market with small and micro vehicles with large market volume and low price, but at the same time, they are still marching towards more intelligent compact SUVs and medium-sized SUVs to establish a high-end brand image. In the author's view, in 2022, with the establishment of consumer reputation, the improvement of product structure, and the improvement of service networks, the second echelon will go to a higher level, but it is difficult to pose a threat to the first echelon.
In general, the future is changing rapidly, with the volkswagen, GM, Honda and other joint venture car companies electrification elephant turn and millet, Ali and other Internet manufacturers to accelerate the layout of the new energy vehicle market, new car-making forces to maintain the current strong momentum, we must adhere to the user thinking, accurately grasp the consumer trend; secondly, we must pay attention to technology research and development, continue to invest funds, launch more competitive products to gain market favor.