The elephant turns.
Author | Jiahe Wanggang from the planet Magnesia
Gen Z is gradually becoming the "protagonist" of the automotive market.
According to a survey on the acceptance of the tram car market released by Tiger Sniff, Tesla, Xiaopeng and Weilai have become the brand first choice for the main group of electric vehicle consumers, accounting for 26.7%, 23.3% and 10% respectively, but BBA (author's note: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) is unexpectedly not in the list.
The author compared the 6 fuel vehicles on sale in the BBA with the NIO ET7 and found that the average price of BBA fuel vehicles was 442,800 yuan, which was slightly lower than the price of THE ULIS ET7. Even the cheapest ES6 model in Weilai has a guide price of 358,000.
For the same price, BBA is no longer the first choice for young people?
Some users have raised such a question on Zhihu: Do young people want to buy BBA? One of the highly praised answers was:
"After buying a Tesla, the BBA ate ash, because the driving experience is not a grade thing at all, and the strong feeling of pushing back is too unforgettable, and there is no noise." Now drive Tesla to see BBA owners, just like holding an iPhone 12 to see them use the Nokia 8850. Although 8850 was very luxurious at that time, it was not a grade and an era thing. ”
From "big toys" to the cornerstone of future transportation, electric vehicles have been widely popularized in the market for nearly 7 years.
On this side, the new forces that have emerged are marching all the way, enjoying the splendor of the flowers and trees blooming in the night of the east wind.
The just released 2021 domestic electric vehicle delivery data shows that Xiaopeng handed over a bright answer sheet with 98155 vehicles, and Weilai and Ideal followed with 91429 and 90491 vehicles.
On the other side of the box, looking back, the BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) insisted on not getting off the table at the dim light to continue to occupy the seat.
Since November 2019, Mercedes-Benz and Audi have opened the delivery of the first electric SUV products, and BMW is relatively late for a year. No matter how loud the transformation slogan is, the monthly sales of the first two manufacturers' respective EVs are basically in the hundreds, and only the BMW iX3 climbs to more than 1,000 vehicles per month. Even so, it was still difficult to exchange for the official reduction of 70,000 yuan.
In terms of annual deliveries, the Mercedes-Benz EQC in 2021 is only 5411 units in China.
——This is the true portrayal of the new energy vehicle market in the context of the downturn in the fuel vehicle market.
Are young people going to abandon the BBA?
01 Channel stories are difficult to rewrite
Since the 1980s, the automotive industry has generally adopted the distribution model of "automaker + dealer", which has not changed much.
In this sales model, consumers buy a car, from obtaining preferential information, booking a test drive, arranging loans to the road, all of which are in contact with the dealer's 4S store, and the purchase experience depends entirely on the quality of the dealer's service.
In 2016, a HARRIS poll found that 87 percent of Americans don't like buying a car at a dealership, 61 percent feel they've been fooled by a dealership, and 52 percent feel anxious at a dealership.
Millennials prefer to go to dealerships, with 56 percent of young people saying they would rather spend their time doing things they don't bother to do, like cleaning their rooms, than negotiating face-to-face with car dealers, according to the data.
Therefore, for a new emerging force, direct sales channels are the only way to develop in the early stages. Because compared with the dealer model of traditional car companies, it has accumulated a sufficient user base, and everything for the new brand is starting from scratch. The key to success is not to rely on advanced products and technologies to "eat into fat people in one bite", but to adopt a meticulous operation model - fully tap the needs of users, and meticulous and efficient satisfaction.
As we all know, Weilai is the first to put forward the concept of user enterprises, users are its moat, and this moat also has the ability to evolve, because Weilai has an independent and vivid individual, rather than a general user portrait. It is precisely because of the consideration of the needs of each real user that there are more mature product forms of WEILAI ET7 and ET5.
For new forces such as Wei Xiaoli, whose financial strength is relatively strong, laying direct sales stores nationwide is its main strategy. In this process, large brands are often more "arrogant", in terms of area, they can achieve hundreds of square meters, and truly accommodate functional areas such as customer service, children's games and even coffee leisure, such as the main high-end Weilai.
Under the aura of first-line supermarkets, the new forces lacking the sales system of 4S stores have built a brand while providing high-end service experience through direct operation and establishing user cognition.
In fact, in 2015, BMW launched an agent model for its i-series electric vehicles. However, due to the complexity of the dealer's business by running the two models at the same time, and the manufacturer's own management ability did not keep up, the agent model was completely abolished after three years.
It can be said that doing direct sales channels has always been a problem in front of the BBA.
The author consulted several industry insiders, combed through and summarized the following reasons:
"Whether it is an agent or a direct operation, the responsibility for sales and the responsibility of the three guarantees of products lies entirely in the manufacturer, and it has nothing to do with the dealer." Rui Rui (pseudonym), who works on the automotive vertical network platform, told the author.
"In the past, these user feedback was collected by 4S stores and dealers, and car companies were responsible for handling this feedback, but the process of transmitting this information usually takes months or even longer."
It is true that the responsibility of the three guarantees has nothing to do with the dealer, and all need to be borne by the manufacturer, which means that product quality problems, customer complaint handling, etc., must be submitted to the manufacturer level, regardless of the size of the problem must be reported and approved at all levels.
"In the past, if the problem was not big, or if the money was lost or changed, etc., it was easy for dealers and consumers to talk about private solutions." A manager of a Xiaopeng agent direct store told the author that the cost of solving customer complaints by manufacturers will be relatively high. Either for the sake of word of mouth, admit compensation, suffer losses, or strong some like Tesla to fight a lawsuit, "equal to the cost of legal affairs is very high." ”
The invoicing flow does not pass through the dealer, "which will cause a new situation is a significant shrinkage in the size of the dealer." ”
The original annual turnover of tens of billions of dealer groups, if all the transformation of the agency system, there is no sales invoices and other flow, only agent commission income, the scale of business will soon shrink to 1 billion, or even 100 million. Such a situation, on the one hand, is difficult for dealers themselves to accept, on the other hand, "local governments will not be happy." ”
Because in the face of the huge dealer system, the establishment of a sales channel for through train enterprises is obviously to "cross the river and tear down the bridge".
"It also involves the issue of taxation. For example, if the consumption tax is changed to the consumption tax at the time of purchase, rather than being sandwiched between the production end, then you become the place where the consumption tax is paid to the place where the invoice is issued. That place doesn't support either. The manager of the above-mentioned direct-operated store also said.
02 Young people no longer pay for brand premiums
In the logic of a luxury fuel car, the first wave of BBA offensive - BMW iX3, Mercedes-Benz EQC, Audi e-tron, performance is excellent. But from the perspective of a smart electric vehicle, these cars seem to be invisible, and there is no explosive point.
Although the channel is an objective reason, the decisive factor is the difference in the position of car manufacturing.
As an example, in the face of market doubts, Audi designers have emphasized: "We don't want to turn Audi e-tron into the product of genetic mutations." In Audi's view, the e-tron should be an Audi car first, followed by a pure electric car.
This means that BBAas at least think so: the user base disk is large enough, consumers will recognize the BBA brand first, and then choose the car.
As a result, BBA has spent a lot of effort to make its own electric vehicles as close as possible to the original fuel vehicles from the exterior interior to the handling texture, rather than creating a new species.
The author's statistics on the official website of these car companies show that the BMW iX3 has an endurance of 500 kilometers, the Audi e-tron is 470 kilometers, and the Mercedes-Benz EQC has a range of only 415 kilometers.
In contrast, Tesla's domestic Model Y has a range of 594 kilometers, while Nio's products have a maximum endurance of 600 kilometers.
At the same time, according to Autohome data, the three electric vehicles of Mercedes-Benz EQC, BMW iX3 and Audi e-tron do not have the function of OTA upgrade. In the industry's view, electric vehicles that lack this function are no different from ordinary fuel vehicles, except in the power mode.
The electric vehicle products of Weilai and Tesla have the function of OTA upgrade and can achieve regular monthly or weekly upgrades.
Judging from the feedback from reality, although the BBA is invincible in the field of fuel vehicles, when it comes to new energy, it has not been able to set off a storm.
Many consumers told the author that when they chose P7, what they valued was its intelligence. Among them, the two major functions of automatic navigation assisted driving and parking lot memory parking are the trump cards of Xiaopeng intelligence and have also been recognized by many young consumers.
After 1995, Zhao Peng (pseudonym) experienced the automatic parking system of Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Xiaopeng P7 respectively. He told the author that compared with Mercedes-Benz, Xiaopeng is more intelligent in automatic parking. "I remotely controlled it through my mobile phone at that time, and Xiaopeng began to play wheel parking, and it was very accurate."
According to the "2020 China New Energy Automobile Industry White Paper" released by iResearch, 89% of new energy vehicle users said that they would pay attention to the level of intelligence of the car when buying a car.
At the same time, the tiger sniffing survey mentioned at the beginning of the article accounted for 50.2% of the "sense of science and technology" in the "reasons for choosing electric vehicles".
It can be said that the current mainstream design language of electric vehicles can only be close to the distance with young people to a certain extent if it is in line with the concept of science and technology and the future.
Another, more intuitive example of this is also supported by the fact that in the sales ranking of luxury mid-level cars in July this year, there are suddenly more new car-making forces. Among them, Model 3 occupies the 3rd place in the list, and Xiaopeng P7 enters the top 5 of the list, ranking 4th.
The reason why consumers with a budget of 300,000 yuan do not choose BBAs, they must be because the new forces are doing something right.
In the era of traditional fuel vehicles, consumers will pay for a certain car because of brand value, and traditional car groups have their own competitive barriers. For example, Japanese cars are known for their cost performance, and German car owners play power and chassis. With a strong product matrix and brand influence, they have divided almost two-thirds of the domestic luxury car market. But now, the logic of everything has changed. Generation Z, with a certain economic strength, like technology, cyberpunk, and pursuit of fashion. The BBA's brand logic seems to be difficult to work in the face of Gen Z.
"Brands such as Xiaopeng can rush into the list, on the one hand, because the main consumer population has changed. The post-95s and even post-00s are replacing the post-80s and post-70s to become the main force of automobile consumption, and they pay more attention to intelligence and a sense of technology, while traditional car companies have not yet established a totem in their hearts. One analyst noted.
03 Showdown 2025?
As we all know, the advantages of BBA were originally built on the "engine and gearbox". As the most core technology of the car, these two major parts are barriers accumulated over the past hundred years, and they will not be easily shown. And the electric car bypassed these two things at once, and the barrier collapsed.
Therefore, in 2017, some European car companies such as Volkswagen and Jaguar Land Rover finally began to develop pure electric platforms. After hesitating for a while, BMW took a seemingly "smarter" approach.
Strictly speaking, pure electric platforms and internal combustion engine platforms are not compatible. If you insist on "compatibility", it is easy to cause both models to do not do well - for example, in terms of battery protection, vehicle weight distribution is in conflict.
However, in order to be safe, BMW has developed such an integrated platform that supports both pure electric, plug-in hybrid, and internal combustion engines.
Udo Henler, BMW's head of production strategy, once said that the reason why the company did not develop a dedicated electric platform was that it did not want to reduce the production capacity of the existing plant. Transitioning with hybrid models contributes to financial health. "It will cost around €1 billion to build a new plant, while the investment in the existing facility to produce electric vehicles is only €3 million."
Indeed, when you can't see the future clearly, making two-handed preparations is undoubtedly a more "smart" strategy.
An industry insider close to Mercedes-Benz told the author that some of the current electric products sold by BBA are still based on the electric improved version of fuel vehicles, in order to shorten the design time, oil to electricity is the first step, and some of the electric products launched are actually not well completed enough. After iterating to the second and third generations, it will gradually evolve into a new platform of electric design.
In the final analysis, "it is difficult for elephants to turn around, before they were all on the fuel vehicle architecture to do oil to electricity, not to develop a new vehicle architecture for pure electricity alone, there are many constraints, for example, the layout space of the battery pack is very limited." Automotive electronics engineer Cao Shufeng pointed out.
In fact, there are two paths on the road of electrification, one is to directly build a pure electric platform, and the other is to transform electric vehicles on the fuel vehicle platform.
Obviously, the BBA collectively chose the latter. The advantage of oil to electricity is low cost, but more problems are that because it is not produced on a pure electric platform, there is a lot of gap between the performance and intelligence of the electric vehicle produced on the pure electric platform and the pure electric vehicle produced on the pure electric platform.
Therefore, Manfred Sharch, chairman of the BMW Group Employees Committee, said: "If BMW does not want to be overtaken by competitors from China or California, such as Tesla, it must build a dedicated platform for electric vehicles." ”
In the midst of such controversy and vacillation, BMW launched the "oil to electricity" ix3. Unsurprisingly, ix3 sales were dismal.
Therefore, at the Munich Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz took the lead in carrying the banner of "electrification", and sub-brands have come up with electrification products - Mercedes-Benz EQE, EQS, Mercedes-Benz Maybach EQS concept car, EQG concept car, two months ago, Mercedes-Benz also announced the transformation strategy from "electric first" to "full electric".
In 2025, Mercedes-Benz plans to account for 50% of sales of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models, and all newly released model architectures are pure electric platforms, and each model will have a pure electric version. In 2030, Mercedes-Benz plans to fully electrify and only sell pure electric models.
Audi also set the time node of the last new fuel car in 2025, that is, there will be no new Audi fuel car after this.
Not only Mercedes-Benz and Audi are determined to enter new energy, BMW has finally decided to fight hard.
According to foreign media reports, the BMW Group's MINI brand will only sell pure electric vehicles from 2030, and the last MINI model with an internal combustion engine will be put on the market in 2025.
Judging from the ten-year plan of the MINI brand, BMW is already accelerating its entry into the new energy business.
According to BMW's plan, in 2023, BMW plans to expand its new energy vehicle products to 25 models, half of which are pure electric vehicles; in 2025, it plans to invest more than 30 billion euros in research and development such as hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Through the above information, we can see that BBA has an important time node worth paying attention to, that is, 2025.
Showdown 2025, is the BBA a little late?
Late is definitely a little late, but late has the "bitterness" of late. "The primary problem encountered by traditional car companies in the process of transformation to electrification is that double-line investment and single-line profitability are made." The Mercedes-Benz industry insider said that because of the decline in demand for fuel vehicles, the continued increase in emission regulations, and the tightening of tax penalties, the profit margin of the current BBA's money-making business has decreased year by year; however, the investment in new energy is increasing year by year, and it is not known when to wait for profit.
It can be said that the BBA ushered in a wave of dark moments: on the one hand, the profitability of fuel vehicles declined, and on the other hand, the investment in electric vehicles increased sharply.
"The first measure during the transition period is to control the amount of discharge - to maintain a certain size of the fuel vehicle with less investment, so as to support the new scale effect that must be amplified under the above adverse conditions."
What the BBA is going through is the process of controlling the amount of amplification.
In addition, to continue the aura of the past fuel car era, BBA in this process, than the general traditional car companies are more difficult.
Elephants have a hard time turning around, boats have a hard time turning around, and it seems that gradual improvement is their only option.
04 Conclusion
Amazon founder Bezos once said that he is often asked a question: What will happen in the next decade? But he is rarely asked: What will remain the same for the next decade? He thinks the second question is more important than the first because you need to base your strategy on things that don't change.
If you look at the automotive industry, the fastest change is undoubtedly technology, and the batteries and lasers used this year may fall behind next year. What's the same? Looking back, the direct-operated model or personalization will become a long-term trend. True high-end brands should discover user needs earlier than others, meet user needs faster than others, and even create needs for users.
Although in the Internet world, traditional luxury brands "once turned around immediately seconds Tesla" and "nokia in front of Tesla" for a while, if you are willing to calm down to observe and understand, it is not difficult to realize that the above two views are the oversimplification problems that are widely poisoned by the Internet today, either one or the other.
Under the obstruction of the three major moats of "manufacturer volume, product iteration, and market penetration", the Nokia moment of BBA will not come as quickly as Nokia. But the new forces are accelerating, and ordinary traditional car companies are also trying to stand up. The battle has already begun, but it will not end in a hurry.
The BBA has a difference in the progress of pure electricity, but none of them is decisively ahead or behind. Betting always depends on their chips, putting eggs in the same basket is the best decision to start empty-handed, for people who have cards to play, ensuring that they never play at the table is the most important.