Text | Zhang Xing
Edit | Wang Fangjie
In 2022, the epidemic continues and the world remains a continuous state of instability in Uka.
When we look back on 2021, we will think of the drastic adjustment of real estate, the sudden turn of the Internet, but if you want to find a bright color, new energy vehicles should be considered a lump sum.
At present, some media have used the "first year of the outbreak of new energy vehicles" to summarize the past year. The car-making "participants" who came down from each other also handed over their own very satisfactory report cards in the bells at the end of the year.
In particular, the three "Wei Xiaoli", which are known as the leaders of the new forces of car manufacturing, have come up with market performance that many people have unexpectedly. Interestingly, Weilai, who was originally at the top of the list, fell to the second, while Xiaopeng, who was originally at the end, achieved a headwind reversal.
According to the data, Xiaopeng Automobile has not moved since it sat at the top of the delivery list of new forces in October, with a cumulative delivery volume of 41,800 units in the fourth quarter, an increase of 63% month-on-month, and finally won the annual champion with a delivery volume of 98,000, subverting the original market pattern of "Wei Xiaoli".
Although the boss Weilai Automobile was trapped in production capacity fluctuations, although it won the top spot in the delivery list of new car-making forces in 7 months, it was slightly weak, delivering only 25,000 units in the fourth quarter, an increase of less than 600 units over the third quarter. From an annual point of view, NIO ranks second among the new forces with 91,000 deliveries.
The third ideal car was not pulled apart by Weilai, and the annual delivery volume was less than 1,000 units less than That of Weilai. Moreover, in the fourth quarter, Ideal ONE delivered a total of 35,000 units, an increase of 40.2% month-on-month, and the delivery volume in December alone exceeded 14,000 units, once again setting a record high.
Although the ranking of "Wei Xiaoli" has changed, the gap between the total annual delivery volume is not large. And compared with 2020, all three of them have leapfrogged market development. Therefore, when interviewed at the beginning of the year, the big guys have said that they are optimistic about the development of their own brands in 2022, and some even privately put forward the slogan of benchmarking Tesla.
What I didn't expect was that it was followed by a blow to the head.
On January 4, the official website of the Ministry of Finance officially published the "Notice on the Financial Subsidy Policy for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in 2022" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice") jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance and other four ministries and commissions. The "Notice", which completed all formalities on the last day of 2021, clarified that the subsidy standard for new energy vehicles in 2022 will be reduced by 30% compared with 2021.
"For the new car-making forces, the subsidy will decline by 30% in 2022, which is undoubtedly a huge test", Chen Yuhang, a senior auto industry expert, told "The Most Talking", the original price is the most powerful weapon for these new car-making forces to attract customers, "The next competitive situation depends on the insufficient preparation of each company."
The first to react was Xiaopeng.
01
Price increases and push for new products
On January 11, Xiaopeng Automobile released the news, officially announcing the latest subsidized prices of all models.
Among them, the Xiaopeng flagship sedan P7 series rose by 4300 to 5900 yuan, and the price after the latest subsidy was 224,200 to 409,900 yuan; the new P5 series rose by 4800 to 5400 yuan, and the price after the latest subsidy was 162,700 to 229,300 yuan; the SUV model G3i series rose by 4800 to 5400 yuan, and the latest subsidy price was 154,600 to 193,200 yuan.
Don't look at only a few thousand yuan, in fact, for Xiaopeng's competitiveness, the price weight is greater. Because among the three, Xiaopeng is the only brand of new car-making forces that has developed from low to high. And in order to highlight its competitiveness, the price of Xiaopeng Automobile is much lower than the other two, and even close to the lower limit of 100,000 yuan.
This is also an important reason why in 2021, Xiaopeng can turn the tables against the wind and win the first place in the top three of the new car-making forces. After all, BYD, the hegemon of domestic new energy vehicles, sells the best in the range of 100,000-200,000 yuan.
Although the other two have not made price adjustments for existing models at present, they have successively released new product plans, and from the information on the current market, the pricing of these sub-models that will be listed in 2022 will be higher than the previous models.
According to the plan, NIO will start delivering its first sedan, THEO ET7, in the first quarter of this year, as well as the ET5 launched in December last year. The two new cars are based on the NT 2.0 platform, and the other two new cars based on the platform are also advancing development work as planned, with deliveries expected to begin in the second half of the year. NIO has also set an ambitious annual production capacity target of 300,000 units for the NT 2.0 platform.
Judging from the pricing of the new models currently quoted, if purchased by battery rental, consumers can basically avoid the price impact of subsidies, which may be an important factor for Weilai to be confident at present.
The ideal side, according to the plan will be in 2022 to completely get rid of the "only child" to break into the market embarrassment, will launch a new "X" platform, while will release a new full-size luxury intelligent extender electric SUV - X01.
In addition, last year, Ideal gave a timetable, and it is expected to start laying out pure electric models in 2023, and new cars will be developed based on whale and Shark platforms. The new model will also use the ideal 4C battery pack, which is fast charged for 10 minutes and can last up to 400 kilometers.
Key in 2021, the gross profit margin of the top three new car-making forces generally exceeded that of traditional car companies, giving them the courage to cope with subsidy decline and new product research and development.
According to the latest financial report, in the third quarter of 2021, the ideal with a gross profit margin of 21.1%, more than the world's most profitable traditional car company Toyota 18% gross profit margin; and Weilai's third quarter gross profit margin is equal to Toyota; even the lowest gross profit margin of Xiaopeng, although only 14.4%, compared with last year's 4.6% gross profit margin is simply an earth-shaking change.
However, the rise in gross profit and the launch of new products are certainly gratifying, but in 2021, Wei Xiaoli is still losing money.
02
Unavoidable losses
Although the current four-quarter report and annual report have not come out, it can be seen from the three three quarterly reports that in 2021, none of them are not selling cars at a loss.
Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile, the delivery volume surpassed Weilai and ranked first among the new car-making forces, and the net loss also ranked first among the three. The third quarterly report showed a net loss of 1.59 billion yuan in the third quarter, exceeding the market expectation of 1.177 billion.
NIO and Ideal are also "bleeding", of which NIO's net loss in the third quarter was 835 million yuan, while the ideal recorded an operating loss of 98 million yuan in the third quarter, with a net loss of 21.5 million yuan.
At the same time as the gross profit rose, there was no stop loss, and there were two key reasons, one was marketing and management expenses, and the other was research and development.
According to the third quarterly report, NIO's expenses reached 3.01 billion yuan, of which sales and management expenses were 1.82 billion yuan and research and development expenses were 1.19 billion yuan; Xiaopeng's expenses in the third quarter exceeded 2.8 billion yuan, of which sales and marketing expenses were 1.538 billion yuan and research and development expenses were 1.264 billion yuan; while the ideal two expenses were 1.02 billion yuan and 890 million yuan, respectively.
For Weilai, customer service is the lifeblood of Weilai, even if you only have the intention to buy a car, Weilai also dares to spend money to invite you to see concerts, performances, and even a high-end racing car, and the whole process matches the service with wine and food, the purpose is to let you have a deep connection with the brand.
Such a brand service concept will inevitably make its marketing costs high.
For Xiaopeng, due to the adoption of the "brand direct store + franchise store" sales model, channel sales share is a large part of Xiaopeng's marketing expenses. According to the data, as of the end of September, Xiaopeng's dealer network accounted for 36.5% of franchise stores.
However, although the sales growth of Xiaopeng Automobile is the fiercest in the three Wei Xiaoli, due to the low revenue and gross profit margin of bicycles, not only many securities companies estimate that it will be later than Weilai and the ideal profit, but also for the channel, the low revenue and gross profit margin of the bicycle means that the commission is low, and the enthusiasm of the channel can be imagined.
It is conceivable that in order to improve the enthusiasm of the channel, Xiaopeng had to increase the proportion and absolute amount of the car commission, which invisibly burdened it with high marketing costs.
For the ideal, it ranks low, and if there is no huge advertising expenditure, the stability of its sales is difficult to guarantee. Moreover, the ideal store is the least of the three, although the efficiency is relatively high, but the scarcity of store outlets will also weaken the brand's offline reach to consumers. In order to make up for this shortcoming, increasing advertising investment is an inevitable choice.
The problem is that the current Internet advertising has gradually entered a bottleneck period, especially for long-chain industries. It seems that all platforms are cultivating these long-chain industries as "long-term wallets", and innovative advertising products are given priority to long-chain industry customers. Although some do have an effect on drainage, more experimental advertising has brought a lot of waste to advertising and marketing expenses.
In this context, the occurrence of subsidy decline can basically clearly postpone the time for these three companies to make profits. After all, the fact of Tesla's rise tells us that new energy vehicles are an industry with scale that brings profitability.
In the first few years, 100,000 to 200,000 deliveries per year did not bring profitability to Tesla, and it was not until more than one million deliveries in 2020 that Tesla really achieved profitability. Such a fact will inevitably increase the determination of the three new forces of car manufacturing to seize the user increment.
However, the price itself is not low, coupled with the decline in subsidies, how many new car owners will give priority to the three new forces of car manufacturing in 2022, I am afraid that no one can estimate.
"In the last quarter of last year, the sales volume of the three companies broke out, not to take into account the subsidy in 2022 to retreat, the factor of early release of consumer demand in it", Chen Yuhang believes that it is not a bad thing for everyone to return to a new starting line, "the car is still a traditional industry, and scale is the root of profitability."
In his view, there are many lessons that "Wei Xiaoli" needs to make up, the most important of which is supply chain management.
03
Trapped in the supply chain
An important reason why Weilai gave up the top spot of the new forces in 2021 is that there is a big problem in supply chain management. In August last year, NIO announced that it would lower its delivery forecast for the third quarter from 23,000-25,000 units to 22,500-23,500 units, which is the first downward revision of each quarter's production capacity expectations since Weilai built cars. The explanation given by Weilai is that the supply chain parts are not matched in time and cannot be produced.
The situation of the remaining two is not ideal, basically consumers generally queue up for more than three months to buy a car.
According to media reports, this situation is caused by the "lack of core" of the car. According to foreign media statistics, due to the impact of the epidemic and other factors, the global supply of automotive chips has become very tight since the end of 2020, and the average delivery cycle has been extended from the previous 13 weeks to 22.3 weeks. AFS data shows that as of December last year, the global automotive industry lost 10.23 million units due to lack of cores, and Chinese manufacturers cut production by 1.982 million units.
But the more important problem is that although "Wei Xiaoli" has begun to lay out the independent research and development of the three-electric system since 2020, because this is in the most basic technical field of electric vehicles, it is not possible to achieve technological breakthroughs in two or three years. This means that as of now, whether it is Weilai, Ideal or Xiaopeng, all core components rely on the supply chain.
In 2021, due to factors such as rising raw materials, increased sales and hot markets, supply chain manufacturers have invariably implemented limited sales, price increases, etc. to improve efficiency, which makes "Wei Xiaoli" feel headaches.
For example, in the field of batteries, the three companies use ternary lithium batteries, rather than lithium iron phosphate batteries, and the emphasis is on the large capacity and fast charging and discharging of ternary lithium batteries.
The problem is that in 2021, due to the soaring sales of new energy vehicles around the world, the battle for battery production capacity has become a problem that almost all new energy vehicle manufacturers must face.
The data shows that by 2023, the global demand for electric vehicles for power batteries will reach 406 gigawatt hours (GWH), while the power battery supply is expected to be about 18% to 335 gigawatt hours (GWH), and it is predicted that by 2025, this gap will expand to about 40%.
In such a case, in order to obtain battery production capacity, each car company has almost all means to use its extremes. For example, Mercedes-Benz found Fu Neng Technology to sign a contract, prepaid 1 billion yuan, and asked the battery manufacturer to use all the technology and production equipment and plant counter-guarantee, thereby eating up the production capacity of all the ternary lithium batteries in the company within 2 years.
Of course, "Wei Xiaoli" can't run away. Before, Xiaopeng Automobile also had the rumor that in order to smoothly "get goods" from the Ningde era, it had to go to the Ningde era to garrison the "squatting point" for a week.
The key is that although the three companies have a large amount of R & D investment every year, most of the funds are invested in the field of automatic driving, which also makes the owners of "Wei Xiaoli" shout science fiction, improving user satisfaction and loyalty. But they still don't invest enough in car-making hardware, and with the further upgrading of driverless technology, the number of semiconductor chips and induction devices required by the car itself is also increasing.
The data shows that in the traditional automotive field, the application of automotive semiconductors is very limited. But for today's cars, the car can be seen as a robot. At present, the number of high-end car ECUs (electronic control units) has exceeded 79, and the cost accounts for more than 50%.
In the context of the current shortage of chip manufacturing capacity, coupled with the outbreak of the ST Malaysia sealing and testing factory, Infineon's turn to the shortage of system chips and other news, "Wei Xiaoli" continues to invest heavily in the control system, matching more and more sensors to the vehicle technology, so that they have to buy more chips, thus entering a supply chain "dead cycle".
In addition, including active safety systems, brakes and other auto parts, according to industry insiders, due to the surge in demand and the rise in sales of new energy vehicles, the general price increase of 10%-15%, and the market has appeared a shortage, although the amount is not large, but indeed the production capacity of brand suppliers began to appear in short supply.
This has brought great uncertainty to the impact of "Wei Xiaoli" on profitability and scale effects.
04 Shackles of precious metals
There is another factor that is ignored by most people, but the capital market has noticed.
That is, as of now, all new energy vehicles are inseparable from the support of extremely precious metals in the application. The three main uses ternary lithium batteries in "Wei Xiaoli", which contain lithium that is not abundant in reserves and cobalt that is even rarer.
The current mainstream lithium battery cathode material system is mainly divided into lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganate, lithium iron phosphate and ternary materials and other technical routes, as a comparison, specific capacity, cycle life, cost and safety are the core indicators of cathode materials.
Among them, the theoretical specific capacity of ternary materials is as high as 280mAh /g, and the working voltage is close to 3.7V, so the energy density of ternary lithium batteries is theoretically the highest in the mainstream lithium batteries, as the lithium cobalt oxide battery that can also achieve high energy density has been gradually eliminated by the market because of its low safety.
The core of the ternary material is cobalt, which can occupy nearly 70% of the raw material cost of ternary lithium batteries. As a rare mineral, cobalt mining conditions are extremely unstable and expensive, resulting in a fragile supply chain and easy to affect downstream industries. At the beginning of 2021, the average price of cobalt per ton was still around 280,000 yuan, and by December, the average price per ton had reached about 490,000 yuan. In one year, cobalt prices soared by 75%.
Based on the spot price of Shanghai Nonferrous Metals Network on December 21, among the direct raw materials of ternary precursors, the average price of cobalt sulfate (≥ 20.5% domestic) is as high as 99,250 yuan per ton, the average price of battery-grade nickel sulfate is 34,750 yuan per ton, and the average price of battery-grade manganese sulfate is only about 10,000 yuan per ton.
Therefore, automakers are carrying out research on the removal of cobalt components from ternary lithium batteries, but unfortunately, at present, cobalt plays a role in thermal stability and promotes chemical benefits in the entire ternary lithium battery system, and there is no corresponding safe and easy-to-collect element to replace.
The production of cobalt in the world is very scarce and in the hands of a few companies. With the continuous expansion of the production capacity of new energy vehicles and the continuous promotion of the application range of ternary lithium batteries, the price of cobalt will inevitably rise, which is an indisputable fact.
In addition, the price increase of lithium is also very obvious. For the whole year of 2021, the price of lithium carbonate, the main raw material for power batteries, rose by more than 400%. The latest news shows that the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in East China on January 13 was 336,000 yuan / ton, which was 10.53% higher than the beginning of the week (the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in East China on January 9 was 304,000 yuan / ton).
The current lithium carbonate used in ternary lithium batteries will basically increase by 8-12% per week in price, which means that the ex-factory price of a single battery will also rise.
This is actually a potentially very fatal negative factor for "Wei Xiaoli", who wants to achieve breakeven or even profitability in 2022.
In addition, a new energy vehicle will also use some other rare precious metals, especially in areas such as conductivity and chips. New energy vehicles use many new technologies, many technologies from the laboratory to the industrial environment, have not undergone too long of polishing, and there is no alternative solution.
This also means that in 2022, "Wei Xiaoli" will not only encounter the fact that marketing and research and development costs will continue to rise, but also the production cost of individual cars will probably continue to rise.
Even if the price of this precious metal is allowed to continue to develop, it may become a fact that automakers work for mines.
In such a situation, the new energy subsidies given by the state are actually a very important revenue supplement for "Wei Xiaoli". The impact of the subsidy decline on these three new car-making forces is probably not as simple as the increase or decrease in income figures.
After all, the landlord's family had no surplus grain.