In 2021, market demand is constantly being redefined, and industrial innovation is constantly adjusting and moving forward.
The transformation of the automotive industry to new energy shined in this year.
Internationally, auto giants and joint venture car companies have increased their investment and strategic layout in new energy vehicles.
In China, new energy vehicles have played their own new world in the traditional automotive industry dominated by fuel vehicles.
Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a set of data: in 2021, China's new energy vehicle sales reached 3.521 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, ranking first in the world for 7 consecutive years. That number far exceeded the 2.4 million vehicles expected by the CAAM at the beginning of the year.
2021 can be called the leap year of new energy vehicles, and standing at the head of the tide to lead the tide is a number of domestic independent brand car-making giants.
BYD is crazy!
In 2021, 9 of the top 10 brands with the highest sales of new energy vehicles in China will be independent brands.
Among them, bydir, a veteran car company, has really enjoyed a good scenery in the 2021 new energy vehicle rankings.
In the whole of last year, BYD sold a total of 593,700 new energy vehicles, an increase of 236.4% year-on-year, and won the sales championship of domestic new energy vehicle companies.
The earliest enterprise in China to carry out the research and development of new energy vehicles is BYD, and this has to mention its founder Wang Chuanfu.
In 2001, the state put forward the "863 Plan", which talked about the development of new energy vehicles.
Wang Chuanfu sensed the possible prospects of electric vehicles. However, in the context of the unification of fuel vehicles, electric vehicles are just a concept on paper. After all, until 2012, China's sales of new energy vehicles will exceed 10,000.
But Wang Chuanfu feels that electric vehicles must be the trend of the future.
He thought about it repeatedly and finally concluded that the reason why electric vehicles could not continue to develop was because of batteries, and he decided to enter the automotive industry. So in 2002, he began to lead the development of semiconductors for electric vehicles.
In 2003, Wang Chuanfu made a big news, he bought Qin Chuan for 270 million yuan, far beyond the conventional bottom line.
At that time, Wang Chuanfu, who started with a small battery, had just brought BYD to the market. Because of this decision, BYD's market value has plummeted, evaporating more than 3 billion in three days.
Employees talked a lot, shareholders jumped to their feet, but there was nothing they could do.
Wang Chuanfu began his car-building plan in the midst of a period of disapproval, by standing on the shoulders of giants and learning from scratch.
He bought dozens of different cars on the market at that time and gave them to his engineers to dismantle and study one by one.
Different from mainstream car companies that build cars and will find a large number of outsourced production of various parts, Wang Chuanfu chooses to take a vertically integrated car manufacturing model.
That is to say, inside and out of the whole car, in addition to individual accessories, almost all supporting products are BYD's self-developed and self-produced.
This "tricky" operation is once again not favored by people. But time has proved everything, and BYD has begun to grow rapidly for 5 years.
In the years when fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles were grasping both, BYD launched the first pure electric concept car in 2006, and by 2008, BYD launched the world's first new energy vehicle that did not rely on professional charging stations to achieve commercialization.
With technical advantages, BYD, which has entered the field of new energy vehicles, not only makes new energy batteries, but also creates a complete new energy vehicle production chain, and has now become one of the largest new energy vehicle manufacturers in China.
In 2020, Wang Chuanfu released a long-rumored blade battery in a high profile. As the core component of new energy vehicles, the route dispute between lithium iron phosphate batteries and ternary lithium batteries has always been the focus of the power battery market.
BYD's self-developed blade battery is essentially a lithium iron phosphate battery, but combines the advantages of ternary lithium batteries and avoids the huge safety hazard of spontaneous combustion.
After passing the "acupuncture experiment" of the most stringent test of power battery safety, Wang Chuanfu announced that "BYD relied on the blade battery to twist the structure and pull back the oscillation of the industry." ”
In addition to years of steady innovation in technology, solve the thorny problems that have plagued the industry for many years. Wang Chuanfu also has a trump card in his hand, the super hybrid system.
The super hybrid system well integrates the advantages of plug-in hybrid, extended range and pure electric vehicle, and becomes a perfect solution in the existing new energy technology route, which is worthy of a technological revolution in the field of new energy.
With the help of blade batteries and super hybrid two magic weapons, starting in the second half of 2021, BYD's new energy vehicle sales began to soar, and then for several consecutive months to hold the top position in sales, and finally won the 2021 annual sales champion.
For the sake of Wang Chuanfu, the "stock god" Buffett broke the convention of not investing in high-tech enterprises and weighed in BYD for more than ten years.
And his behind-the-scenes military master, Charlie Munger, praised him as "a combination of Edison and Welch—able to solve technical problems like Edison and get things done one by one like Welch." ”
This slightly exaggerated praise now seems appropriate.
Three brothers who built cars "Wei Xiaoli"
With the continuous improvement of consumer awareness and acceptance of new energy vehicles, the domestic new energy vehicle track has become more and more crowded in the past two years.
The big wave of sand and sand, survived from a large number of eliminators, Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal three new car-making forces, successfully ranked among the forefront of the industry. And because they are almost comparable in terms of "hard technology" and "soft power", these three are often compared by the outside world, collectively known as "Wei Xiaoli", which also indirectly gives the ranking of the three car companies.
Last year, these three car companies have doubled their growth, with NIO delivering 91,429 vehicles, an increase of 109% year-on-year; ideal cumulative delivery of 90,491 vehicles, an increase of 177%; Xiaopeng delivering 98,155 vehicles, an increase of 260% year-on-year.
"I don't understand at all, why do people still buy gas trucks now?" How nostalgic is this to buy a gas car, what is the good of the oil car except to smell a little gasoline? ”
In the communication link after the WEILAI ET5 conference at the end of last year, Li Bin leaned in the corner of the sofa, holding a microphone, and slowly spit out this passage.
After this amazing speech was uploaded to the Internet, Li Bin was named "the most floating person in 2021" by the media.
From the beginning of its birth, Weilai has been active in the high-end market, either benchmarking Mercedes-Benz BMW Audi or benchmarking Tesla's high-end models.
Remember Li Bin's "arrogant" speech in 2019: Buying Weilai is to choose a middle-class lifestyle.
With its first-mover advantage, it has also been in a leading position among the three car companies, but from the perspective of this year's sales, Xiaopeng has achieved a counter-overtake.
Although NIO is very popular in the high-end market, its expensive price does not please the mainstream consumer group, and no model has sold more than 5,000 per month so far. Even if the new model ET5 was released in December, labeled "low price", the price of 258,000 yuan is still much higher than that of Xiaopeng.
The reason why Xiaopeng can become the 2021 pin crown is not unrelated to its high cost performance.
Xiaopeng's cheapest G3 has a starting price of only 150,000 yuan, and the most expensive main model P7 is priced at only 219,900 yuan. Compared with the weilai and ideal that wanders in the middle and high end, the price of Xiaopeng is undoubtedly very "close to the people".
But Xiaopeng's road to car building is not very smooth.
When He Xiaopeng gave up the president of Alibaba Mobile Business Group and turned from the Internet to the uncertain future of the car-making industry, Lei Jun advised him that car-making is not the same as the Internet, which is extremely dangerous.
He Xiaopeng was not frightened, and even prepared to sit in economy class and stay in a fast hotel.
But what he didn't expect was that the biggest problem on the road to entrepreneurship was not only technology, but also to have a strong heart. As an emerging industry that has emerged in recent years, new energy vehicles are one of the most miserably sprayed.
From proposing a plan, announcing a prototype, mass production of a new car, to going public, everything is sprayed. Even his name will be sprayed, and everyone says that the name "Xiaopeng" is too earthy, affecting sales... At this time, the straight male team headed by He Xiaopeng was very speechless.
At the P7 conference in 2020, the tough guy how Xiaopeng directly pulled the performance parameter information of his own and competitors into a table, which means: Don't rip the useless, look at the performance.
This move undoubtedly does not talk about "martial virtue", while competitors look at each other, for consumers, at a glance, it is gratifying.
But He Xiaopeng also has troubles, although these years have deeply cultivated the low-price area and captured the hearts of a group of users, but the profits are very small. According to the third quarter financial report of last year, among the three "Wei Xiaoli", Xiaopeng's net loss was as high as 1.595 billion yuan, which was 2 times that of Weilai and more than 16 times the ideal.
If Weilai, which has an average price of about 400,000 yuan and Xiaopeng with a starting price of 150,000, represent the poles of high-end and low-end new energy vehicles respectively, then the ideal is dead in the range of 300,000.
Among the three car companies of "Wei Xiaoli", the ideal force is the latest, but it relies on the extended range route to find another way.
Compared with the other two rich product matrix, Li wants to ideal, there is only one model, the ideal ONE.
One trick, eat all over the sky. In 2021, Ideal also achieved an annual delivery volume of nearly 100,000, compared with Xiaopeng and Weilai, not to mention more.
But unlike Weilai Li Bin and Xiaopeng's He Xiaopeng, Li Xiang did not have a Peking University education and a glittering resume, and he dropped out of high school without graduating from high school to start a business.
After experiencing several times of entrepreneurship of "Graphics Card Home", "Bubble Network" and "Auto Home", he personally took the keys of a red Model S from Musk' hands, along with Musk's legendary car-making experience.
He once likened his growth and entrepreneurial experience to climbing five floors: ordinary people - excellent people - excellent managers - excellent leaders - top leaders.
Nowadays, ideals, together with Weilai and Xiaopeng, are among the forefront of the industry. Although it has always been in the third position in the ranking, it is among the three, with the lowest loss and the highest gross profit margin.
The ideal of individual combat also has its own superiority.
In 2021, the three "Wei Xiaoli" companies are strengthening the existing moat, and from the current software barriers, infrastructure improvement, market expansion, etc., the investment is comparable, and there is no real gap.
In 2022, Weilai sinks, Xiaopeng explores, and the ideal continues to optimize the SUV that focuses on family travel while paying attention to user experience, at that time, the three will usher in a real short-term encounter.
A latecomer who rides the wind and waves
In the face of the hot new energy vehicle track, an industry insider commented: "The current new energy automobile industry, like the mobile phone industry ten years ago, when Apple plus a number of domestic mobile phones bloomed, and now Tesla plus Wei Xiaoli and so on bloom everywhere." ”
In addition to "Wei Xiaoli", this lively track is followed by the second echelon of new forces represented by Nezha, Zero Run, Weima, etc.
Weima, Nezha and Zero Run have also reported the news of preparing for an IPO. Zero Run completed a Pre-IPO round of financing of 4.5 billion yuan; Nezha completed three rounds of financing intensively in two months at the end of last year; and WM also received $452 million in financing this year.
From the perspective of sales, the sales of Nezha and Zero Run in 2021 have increased significantly. Nezha's deliveries exceeded the 10,000 mark for two consecutive months in November and December, with 100,130,000 and 10,127 vehicles respectively, and zero-run deliveries also reached 7,807 vehicles in December.
In the past year, the new energy vehicle industry chain has been continuously improved, from the appearance design to the endurance.
In addition to the new forces of car manufacturing, after seeing the market potential of new energy vehicles, many traditional car companies have also laid out in the direction of electrification and intelligence.
There are also cross-border players represented by high-tech Internet giants such as Huawei, Baidu, Xiaomi, and Apple, who have built cars one after another, and their strength should not be underestimated.
In the case of Xiaomi, it announced the construction of cars in March last year, established Xiaomi Automobile Company in September, and as of December, it has formed a research and development team of more than 500 people. Lei Jun said: In the first half of 2024, Xiaomi will launch its first model.
The "one brother" Of New Energy and Lithium Battery Plates, Ningde Era, expects that battery production in 2022 will reach 2.5 times that of 2021. The side confirms the confidence of the entire new energy market to grow in the market.
2021 is generally considered by the industry to be the first year of the great development of new energy vehicles, which means that new cars are still in the initial stage of development, and there are many problems, and these problems should be paid due attention and solved in the new year.
For example, the industry concentration is not high, the cost is too high, overcapacity, excessive dependence on subsidies, as well as safety, endurance, battery life, charging piles and other issues need to be improved.
The heat of the new energy track in 2021 has made the entire industry see the potential for the growth of this track. The replacement of traditional fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles, especially in the context of the era of national "carbon reduction" goals, is the trend of the times.
In 2022, the market pattern of new energy vehicles will presumably be more "lively".
Author: Li Ying