Introduction | whose honey, whose arsenic?
In December 2021, Tesla won the first place in China's luxury car market with 70,000 sales. This result exceeded the second place Mercedes-Benz by more than 9200 vehicles, resulting in the first camp of luxury cars becoming TBBA.
For the first time, China's luxury car market was dominated by an electric vehicle brand, and it was a foreign electric vehicle brand.
Of course, since December is the "double impulse" node at the end of the quarter and the end of the year, it is Tesla's extraordinary play. For the whole year of 2021, its 322,000 vehicles are still far from BMW's 821,000 championship sales, less than half of audis, and temporarily ranked first in the second camp.
In any case, the days of BBA unification will not last long.
Tesla's year-on-year growth rate in 2021 is 119%, while in addition to BMW's 8.3% growth in the BBA, the other two have negative growth. Not surprisingly, in 2022, Tesla will completely break into the BBA camp and make a big fuss. It doesn't matter if it's TBBA, or BTBA, or whatever. Importantly, the era of electrification it led has come roaring in, upending the entire market landscape.
The once-high, entrenched BBA camp had a subtotal share of 44.5% in December — the second time it fell below the 50% mark and set a record low. One year ago, the figure was 54.2 percent, and another year ago it was 65.6 percent. Co-authored, the market share of the BBA in the past two years has dropped by 10 percentage points a year? Isn't there only 1/3 left in 2022?
Tesla's share in December was already as high as 18.7%, close to 1/5. This means that this month, for every 5 luxury cars sold in the Chinese market, about one is Tesla.
In December, WEILAI's share was 2.8%, the ideal was 3.7%, plus Tesla's 18.7%, and the subtotal share of the three major Chinese and foreign new forces reached 25.2%. Is it possible that the BBA, new forces, and other luxury brands that Li Bin said, together with the situation of dividing the world, will soon come? Of course, his original words were that Weilai was exclusive, which was a big challenge, unless the other two of the three new forces suddenly disappeared for some reason.
If you return to the perspective of the whole year, traditional car companies can breathe a little relief:
BBA accounted for 57.1%, Tesla accounted for 8.2%, and the three Chinese luxury brands of Ideal, Weilai and Hongqi accounted for 11.5%. In this way, in the struggle between the BBA and the new forces, the first to be hurt will definitely be the second-tier luxury brands. Just like Coca-Cola and Pepsi fight, the first to disappear is Fenhuang Coke.
Of course, it cannot be said that the traditional forces are hopeless.
Looking at the year-on-year growth in December, Porsche increased by 23.1%, Lincoln increased by 5.0%, and Hongqi increased by 1.9%, all of which rose against the market for their own reasons.
Porsche's better brands still have appeal, inherent performance advantages in the face of new forces can withstand one or two, active electrification and close to the Chinese market; Lincoln followed the explosion of product power throughout the Ford Group, actively embraced the era of electrification and was close to the Chinese market, extremely pragmatic pricing and greatly improved services. Hongqi also has a certain brand appeal, a new design increases the sense of high-grade, and desperately stacks materials to bring super cost performance.
For the whole year, the biggest decline is, of course, Lexus.
In 2021, its sales in China fell 6.9% year-on-year, surpassing two other brands that fell: Mercedes-Benz and Audi. All three have one thing in common: it is easy to immerse themselves in the glory of the past and cannot extricate themselves, the slogan of electrification is also there but the landing is not obvious, and the decline in product power is relatively more obvious. In short, it means "eat the old book".
Of course, they are all actively changing, such as Mercedes-Benz launching EQS and launching EQXX concept cars; such as Audi unveiling two Sphere concept cars at the Guangzhou Auto Show; Lexus hastily announced that it will become a pure electric brand in 2030 and launched a plug-in version of NX. But to be honest, the starting price of 318,800 is not as good as the Model Y in terms of performance and intelligence, less than the ideal ONE in luxury and practicality, and not as good as the BMW iX3 in branding and handling. Definitely useful, but still the breath of Old School.
This era never explains anything, nor does it listen to any excuses. It just rolls forward along the right laws.
In 2021, the second-tier camp has changed the most: it is scattered and scattered, and things are not people.
Tesla and Hongqi occupy the top two with sales of about 300,000, Cadillac and Lexus are close behind with sales of about 220,000, and Volvo is standing alone in the range of more than 100,000 vehicles with sales of 170,000, with nowhere to say bleak. Its 0.5% year-on-year growth is in jeopardy.
Then there was Jaguar Land Rover, whose sales in his early 100,000s had just passed the passing line, and the leading big brother of the former second-tier camp did his best. Its design is not beautiful, its performance is remarkable both on the track and off-road, and its price concessions have always been beautiful and moving--it seems to have done nothing wrong, but it always seems to have done nothing right.
Che Jujun felt that the biggest regret was that the I-PACE did not have a hit.
It was the first shot in the traditional camp to declare war on Tesla, but I didn't expect to be dudded as soon as I came on the field. Not from the pure electric platform, let Magna OEM, the interior is simple, and the Chinese user habits do not match, despite the extremely elegant design, it is still like a pole star, becoming a meteor in the electric market - even if the discount is 30%, it is still not alarming.
To tell the truth, these European cars are really good, but they are always a breath of relief in internal strength. The Polar Star 2 from the CMA platform is also, so the ice clean jade, beautiful and moving design, and finally discounted to 190,000... It's sad.
If you review, it may be because: the intention of pure electricity is not pure, the action is too slow, the Chinese market is taken for granted, and only trying to avoid Tesla's shortcomings and not having its advantages...
Each one doesn't look fatal, but it all adds up to a terrible one.
Ideals and Weilai, not much to say, in the new forces and new energy chapters have been discussed more. They are not perfect, they have made many mistakes, but stumbling down, after all, represents the Chinese luxury brands among the top 13, and sold more than 90,000 new cars in 2021. The growth rate is as high as 100%, and it is expected to reach 200,000 vehicles in 2022, when it will not be difficult to surpass Lexus, Volvo, and even Cadillac.
Of course, some people ask without hesitation: why are they luxury brands?
First of all, the definition of luxury has long changed, no longer the Blingbling interior style represented by Mercedes-Benz, the century-old brand, and the high-ranking service posture, but the sense of technology, performance, and service have been given greater weight, which is what young consumers in the new era value - in fact, the middle-aged and elderly people who are still teenagers (such as Che Jujun) also value it.
▲Source: Jelan Road Consulting; Data statistics time: January-November 2021
Secondly, if you look at the price alone, the average actual transaction price of Weilai is 413,800, the ideal is 333,600, ranking 4th and 9th in the luxury brand market, surpassing Lexus and BMW, Audi and Tesla.
Finally, foreign consumers and media do not mind putting Tesla and Weilai in the Premium (literal high-end, equivalent to China's luxury cars) category, and the US media even like to put Buick in Premium. Therefore, whether it is luxury has both a problem of habit and a problem of the times, and everyone seeks common ground while reserving differences and witnesses history, which is more meaningless.
Look at the next single model.
December sales were interesting: the Model Y won the championship with 40,000 units, which is more than the sum of all the BBA SUVs in the top ten, that is, the GLC, Q5L, X3 three members will be combined and defeated by a Model Y. Similarly, the Model 3 finished second in the single model list with nearly 30,000 results, more than the E-Class and A6L combined.
This has been played out in the US market a few years ago, and the situation there is even more tragic. The Chinese market is like a mixture of the US and European markets, and the offensive of electric vehicles is somewhere in between, more conservative than the US market and more aggressive than In Europe.
Let's look at a table and we know who's grabbing whose market?
In 2021, Tesla's monthly sales and BBA have formed a distinct "mirror correlation". Especially in September, Tesla was in the end-of-quarter sprint period, with a market share of nearly 20%, and the BBA suddenly fell below the 50% mark in the same period. Then, in October, Tesla entered the first recuperation period of the season, and BBA sales resumed. The standard "honey of A, arsenic of B".
Tesla's mirror attack even swept into the new Chinese forces. In November and December, Tesla began a year-end sprint, the BBA fell sharply, and the wonderful thing is that ideals and Weilai also showed a slight month-on-month decline. Not as powerful as the BBA, but also "mirrored" by Tesla.
This reminds Che Jujun of the "rubber forest phenomenon".
The rubber forest is a high-value economic forest that was widely cultivated in Xishuangbanna after being introduced from South America. While it brings us great economic benefits, the local ecological environment is also invisibly reshaped:
Rubber forests are often artificially opened, the original vegetation and ecology are destroyed, and the trees have a large demand for water, but it is difficult to form clouds, and direct sunlight will aggravate water evaporation, and finally cause soil erosion, and other plants are difficult to survive. Its leaves are difficult to eat by other animals, so animals have become rare.
Finally, although the rubber forest is also a forest, "there are no eagles flying on the top, no snakes on the bottom", and the ecological diversity is greatly reduced, and it is even called "green desert".
One view is that the two groups of elephants who fled the Xishuangbanna Reserve last year may also be related to the flooding of rubber forests.
To a certain extent, Tesla has also produced the "rubber forest phenomenon". It is vigorously cultivated by artificial, which has produced huge economic benefits and formed a new ecology. However, the rapid change of ecological diversity has tended to "become a forest by one tree", and the original growth of animals and plants has been greatly affected. There are positive and negative influences, and how to judge merits and demerits is not something that Xiaobian can clearly explain.
Car gathering summary
The bell rings in 2022, and economists say the more depressed the economy, the stronger the demand for luxury cars. For example, wealth is more concentrated to promote the psychology of showing off, the epidemic has led to timely entertainment ideas, tax avoidance, etc., Che Jujun is not sure, just look at the numbers:
In 2019, mainstream luxury cars accounted for 14.4% of China's passenger car market, 17.9% in 2020, and 18.7% in 2021, and the proportion of luxury is indeed increasing year by year. But what about growth rates?
China's luxury car market increased by 15.2% year-on-year in 2020 and 10.9% in 2021. You can guess what 2022 will be?
Finally, the figures and analysis in this article are based on the upper risk number.