Core lithium talk and new energy group original/production
Author | Dong Wuying
Edit | Lin Xiaochen
Human exploration of electric vehicles has actually begun since the birth of the automobile.
Before the German engineer Carl Benz invented the world's first modern car in 1885, the first electric car was already in 1881, but at that time, due to technical reasons, it did not show a satisfactory product.
Limited by the endurance of the power battery, electric vehicles were once considered to be just a concept, in order to achieve electrification, the earliest proposed solution by humans is the "hybrid" route.
In December 1997, Toyota Motor Corporation first launched the world's first mass-produced hybrid car, the Prius, on the Japanese market, kicking off the modern hybrid car.
Twelve years later, Chery launched the A5 BSG hybrid, introducing hybrid technology to China for the first time. At that time, it played the energy-saving and environmental protection card, and at a price of 74,800 yuan, it relied on cost-effectiveness to seize the market.
Starting from 2020, the era of new energy vehicles has officially arrived. After years of market education, fuel vehicles have been regarded as a thing of the past by many consumers, and new energy will be the new main force in the automobile market.
In this new energy transformation, pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles are regarded as the two most core technical routes at present. Among them, plug-in hybrid is compatible with two energy drive modes of oil and electricity, but it is only regarded as a transition scheme. In the capital market, plug-in hybrids, including range extenders, are not as popular as pure electric vehicles.
However, in 2021, this situation has changed dramatically, and plug-in hybrid, a technical route that was once regarded as a "chicken rib", is showing strong competitiveness.
From the mass production of the first hybrid vehicle to the current hybrid market in China, the dominant player is no longer Toyota or Chery, but a group of new energy vehicle companies that truly cater to the "carbon neutrality" policy and meet the needs of consumer car purchases.
At the same time, for traditional fuel vehicle companies that are eager to transform into new energy, the hybrid route is also the best connection solution for their transition. Hybrid vehicles are ushering in the beginning of sales explosions in the current new energy market.
/ 01 /
2021, the year of the rise of hybrid vehicles
From the beginning, hybrid has been regarded as a very "wall-riding" new energy solution. Compared with pure electric vehicles, it is not completely revolutionary for fuel vehicles.
The sales of high-end electric vehicles represented by Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, etc. have soared, and the low-end electric vehicles represented by the Great Wall Euler and Hongguang MINI have continued to expand their territory across the country, and the pure electric route has become a capital darling.
For the product of the transition stage of hybrid vehicles, the capital market is not optimistic, and there are not many car companies that devote themselves to the research and development of this route.
But the development of any trend is not smooth sailing, and new energy vehicles are bound to be the same.
The future of new energy is beautiful, but the process is destined to be tortuous. The world has vigorously developed wind and photovoltaic green electricity in the past few years, but last year it ushered in an energy shortage, and the price of fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas rose sharply. The same goes for cars, which are a revolution, but not perfect at the moment.
In this transition stage, hybrid vehicles as a connection between fuel vehicles and pure electric vehicles, the significance of existence began to be highlighted. That is to say, in the transition stage from gasoline to new energy, hybrid has a certain value. From the current point of view, it is completely correct that the market is highly optimistic about the future of pure electricity, but the significance of hybrid may be undervalued.
Hybrid, that is, hybrid. In the category of new energy vehicles in the mainland, hybrid vehicles only include plug-in hybrid and range extenders, and do not include other technical routes of hybrid vehicles such as HEV and 48V.
Judging from the data in 2021, hybrid vehicles, led by explosive models, still show good competitiveness compared with pure electric vehicles.
According to the statistics of the association, the retail sales of new energy vehicles in 2021 reached 2.989 million units, of which 2.444 million pure electric vehicles, an increase of 168.6% year-on-year; the sales of plug-in hybrid models, including range extenders, reached 545,000 units, an increase of 171.2% year-on-year, and the growth rate was slightly higher than that of pure electric vehicles.
Especially in the second half of last year, in addition to the impact of Tesla's end-of-quarter delivery impulse in September, in the other five months, the year-on-year growth rate of plug-in hybrid vehicle sales was significantly higher than that of pure electric vehicle sales.
If we focus further on the timeline, we can see that the share of plug-in hybrid vehicles has been increasing. According to the statistics of the Association, plug-in hybrids accounted for 15.9% of the overall share of new energy vehicles in December 2020, and by November 2021, the proportion of plug-in hybrid models sales has increased to 19.9%.
In 2021, under the leadership of BYD, Ideal and other brand car companies, plug-in hybrid vehicles, including range extenders, achieved rapid sales growth. Observed by the data, hybrid vehicles are beginning to rise.
/ 02 /
The logical underpinning behind the rise
The rise of hybrids in 2021 seems incredible at first glance, but after careful consideration, there is a solid logical support.
First of all, with the popularity of pure electric vehicles, imperfect supporting facilities and imperfect power battery material systems, pure electric vehicles can not completely replace traditional fuel vehicles at present. Relatively speaking, there are fewer short boards for plug-in hybrids and extenders.
In the past two years, the peak travel of electric vehicles on holidays is "difficult to charge", and problems such as sharp reduction in winter battery life have occurred frequently, which has made the use of electric vehicles very limited, prompting a large number of potential consumers of new energy with complex car use scenarios to turn to hybrid vehicles.
Secondly, the explosive hybrid vehicle directly undertakes the fuel vehicle market and can face a larger consumer group.
As of now, the domestic pure electric vehicle market is still polarized. At one end are more than 200,000 high-end models represented by brands such as Weilai, Tesla, and Xiaopeng, and at the other end are 50,000 and below models represented by Hongguang MINI. In the middle of these two price bands, although there are pure electric brands such as Nezha and GAC Aean, the overall model is less and the brand influence is even less.
However, the price range of 50,000-200,000 is the largest market for domestic fuel vehicles, that is to say, the replacement of pure electric vehicles for traditional fuel vehicles still does not fully touch the core users.
This actually leaves an opportunity for the hybrid route. From the use scenario, the hybrid completely undertakes the fuel vehicle. More importantly, in this price range, there are explosive products with strong market influence.
The domestic hybrid market is dominated by BYD and Ideal. In 2021, the sum of their sales will account for more than 60% of the hybrid market. Among them, the ideal layout is high-end, and BYD, with the full outbreak in recent years, has become a leader in domestic new energy vehicles and has a strong brand influence. BYD's hybrid models are a comprehensive market covering high, medium and low end.
From the perspective of the whole year, bydir Qin DM-i has 83,400 units, Song DM-i 63,700 units, Tang DM-i 46,100 units, and Han PHEV insurance number of 30,000 units. It should be noted that from Han to Qin, the starting price is getting lower and lower, and the price of Qin DM-i is only 100,000 yuan, corresponding to the higher and higher number of insurance.
Sales prove that the market that was previously considered to be dominated by traditional fuel vehicles also has a huge demand for new energy vehicles. More importantly, the lower the price, the greater the demand. For this price band, high-end electric vehicle brands disdain to do it, and low-end electric vehicles are not competitive enough, so they have become the soil for the outbreak of cost-effective hybrid models.
It is driven by these two factors that hybrid vehicles will achieve rapid growth in 2021.
/ 03 /
2022, the first year of the outbreak of hybrid vehicles
At present, 2022 is expected to become the first year of the outbreak of hybrid vehicles.
On the one hand, pure electric vehicles are subject to both the rise in the price of battery raw materials and the huge impact of subsidy decline, while hybrid vehicles are relatively little affected.
According to Dongxing Securities' calculations, according to the new subsidy scheme, pure electric vehicles with a range of 300-400 kilometers and more than 400 kilometers will be reduced by 3900 and 5400 yuan in 2022 compared with 2021, respectively, while the subsidy for plug-in hybrid vehicles will be reduced by 2000 yuan.
After the subsidy decline, as of now, pure electric brands such as Xiaopeng Automobile, Tesla, Volkswagen, Eian, and Nezha have announced price increase plans, which further highlights the cost-effective advantage of hybrid vehicles.
On the other hand, the market participants in hybrid models are becoming more and more, and the increase in models is expected to drive consumer awareness of hybrids.
After the two successful cases of ideal and BYD, both newly entered car companies and traditional fuel vehicle companies have begun to tilt towards the field of hybrid.
Ideal to achieve monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles at a price of more than 300,000, even in the era of fuel vehicles, it is also a very good result, which can be called the benchmark of extended range vehicles.
After the ideal, we see that Li Yinan, the founder of Maverick Electric, dabbled in new energy vehicles and founded the brand "NIUTRON", the first model is a medium and large SUV of nearly 5 meters, providing pure electric and extended range versions, which are very similar to the ideal and will be delivered in September.
In addition, Huawei, which cooperates with Xiaokang Xilis, the new car Q&CÉ M5 is a mid-size SUV with a range extender, and the price is only 10,000 8% different from the ideal ONE; Nezha's high-end model Nezha S has also launched an extended range version to enter the high-end market of hybrid vehicles.
At the same time, with the success of BYD DM-i, traditional fuel vehicle companies have launched their own hybrid platforms and accelerated the listing of corresponding models.
Great Wall Motor released the lemon hybrid DHT technology platform in December 2020, and launched three plug-in models of Mocha, Macchiato and WEY latte at the Guangzhou Auto Show last November, of which the Macchiato and WEY lattes were priced between 150,000 and 200,000, and the Mocha was priced at 223,800;
Changan Automobile launched its own hybrid system , the Blue Whale iDD system , in June last year, and recently launched a plug-in hybrid version of UNI-K, which is also priced at between 150,000 and 200,000 yuan;
Geely has a hybrid platform Thor Intelligence Engine Hi-X, and recently launched the platform's first model, Hoshigoku L Thor Hi· X oil-electric hybrid version, but the car only belongs to the HEV model, not in the category of new energy vehicles.
In addition, Chery, SAIC, etc. have their own hybrid platforms, and GAC directly undertakes Toyota's THS hybrid technology. It can be seen that hybrid is becoming one of the effective ways for traditional fuel vehicles to move towards the new energy era.
Compared with directly entering the electric, facing unfamiliar technologies and huge failure risks, the layout hybrid of fuel vehicle companies is a compromise but effective strategy: it can not only carry out new energy transformation under policy pressure, but also win a certain development time for full electrification.
With the listing of hybrid models, considering the huge substitution effect of the fuel vehicle market, hybrid vehicles are expected to continue the rise of 2021, and 2022 may become the first year of hybrid vehicle outbreak.