At the beginning of 2022, domestic car companies have announced the annual automobile production and sales data for 2021. Despite the chip shortage crisis, the sales of self-owned brands represented by Geely Automobile, Great Wall Motors and BYD have shown a significant growth trend. Among them, Geely and Great Wall's annual automobile sales have once again exceeded one million. By comparison, BYD only crossed the threshold of 740,000 vehicles in the whole year.
However, in terms of new energy vehicles, the sales of the top three have reversed: BYD's new energy vehicles have sold more than 600,000 vehicles in the whole year, while Geely and Great Wall's new energy vehicles have only cut to a market share of more than 100,000 vehicles.
In terms of the sales volume of new energy vehicles, IND not only crushed the above two strong, but also left Tesla, Xiaopeng Automobile and other "new car-making forces" far behind.
Driven by the continuous hot sales volume, BYD's stock price has also risen. In the second half of 2021, BYD's market value once exceeded 900 billion yuan, properly occupying the C position of major domestic new energy vehicle companies. But at the same time, the pursuit of Geely and the Great Wall has not stopped for a moment, and the three-strong competition of the new energy vehicle market has entered a state of battle.
01, BYD's moat
Traditional fuel vehicles have been developed for a hundred years, and core technical components such as engines and transmissions tend to be perfect. The time for new energy vehicles to really enter the fast lane is not long, and advanced motors and high batteries have become the highlands that major new energy automobile companies are competing for.
Compared with the two rivals of Geely and the Great Wall, BYD, which has long stockpiled ammunition in power batteries and electric vehicle technology, has indeed taken the lead.
In 1995, Wang Chuanfu founded BYD in Shenzhen, starting with the production of second-charge batteries, and began mass production of lithium-ion batteries in 1997, and sales exceeded 100 million yuan that year. In 2003, it began to lay out the new energy automobile industry, and three years later, it successfully developed a pure electric car F3e, which is equipped with the world's first iron-powered battery ET-POWER, which was independently developed.
(City Boundary Shooting)
In the following ten years, BYD has opened all the way and successively launched popular models such as pure electric buses, pure electric cars e-series, and Han EV. Among them, the Han EV equipped with BYD blade battery technology is well received by the market. In the past year, the monthly sales of Han EV have reached 10,000 vehicles, which is comparable to Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW 5 Series in terms of word of mouth.
In the view of Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Association, BYD's blade battery technology has indeed effectively improved the energy density and safety of the battery, reduced the weight of the battery, and has outstanding advantages over ordinary lithium iron phosphate batteries.
In addition to batteries, BYD also has a deep layout in the motor system of new energy vehicles. Its motors are used in MANY MODELS SUCH ASD TANG DM, QIN EV, AND HAN EV. From 2020 to 2021, the monthly installed capacity of BYD motors will be stable in the top three in the domestic industry, forming a corner with Tesla and Ningbo Shuanglin.
With core technologies such as self-developed batteries and motor systems, BYD has not only taken the lead in gaining a firm foothold in the new energy vehicle market, but also greatly improved its ability to resist risks.
(BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu)
Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology, believes that in the complex context of the sharp rise in global battery raw material prices in 2021 and the lack of "cores" in the whole industry, BYD, which sits on its own battery and chip technology, has been relatively affected.
Although Geely and the Great Wall have also laid out key technologies for new energy vehicles such as batteries and motors, there is indeed a long way to catch up compared with BYD's early technology entry time, many product iterations, and a wide range of product loading models.
An industry insider introduced that as Geely's high-end pure electric brand, only part of The Krypton motor and battery pack comes from Geely's electric technology company Weirui, and some of it is provided by CATL and Nidec; the battery of Great Wall Euler Automobile is only partly provided by The Great Wall's Hive Energy, and the motor is from United Electronics.
In Cui Dongshu's view, BYD is the most complete layout among domestic independent car companies in the three-electric system, and therefore has obvious control over the upstream and downstream of the industry.
But what is obvious is that Geely and Great Wall are also aware of their own shortcomings, and have played their own "differentiated" advantages to catch up with BYD from the aspects of hybrid technology.
On October 31, 2021, Geely released its own "Ray God Intelligence Engine Hi · X Hybrid Platform". Great Wall recently launched its first hybrid models Wei brand Machido DHT-PHEV, Wei brand Mocha DHT- PHEV, and byddy Song DM-i, Tang DM-i and other models head-on.
02, BYD's C position is not stable
Since the launch of the first pure electric sedan F3e in 2006, BYD's new energy product matrix has expanded into e6, Qin, Tang, Song and other models, and has become the annual sales champion of new energy passenger cars in the world for several consecutive years.
In December 2021 alone, BYD's new energy vehicle sales reached 93,900 units, an increase of 225.73% year-on-year, and it has exceeded the 90,000-unit mark for two consecutive months.
On the other hand, geely, until the acquisition of Volvo in 2010, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, frankly stated that one of the reasons for the acquisition of Volvo was that it had a rich accumulation of new energy technology. At that time, Geely was full of hopes for the future of new energy vehicles, but in the following four or five years, it did not really exert its strength on this track.
(Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holding Group)
By the end of 2015, when a new round of heat waves of electric vehicles around the world rolled in, Geely, which had been dormant for a long time, announced a large-scale invasion of this battlefield. When releasing the "Blue Geely Action" plan, Geely was full of pride, claiming that by 2020, the sales of new energy vehicles would account for more than 90% of its overall sales.
In order to achieve this goal, Geely, which is known for its marketing, "fights fast and fast". First, in 2017, it spun off the new energy vehicle brand "Pole Star" from Volvo, and then released the new energy brand "Geometry" in 2019; in 2021, Geely established new energy brands such as "Maple Leaf" and "Extreme Krypton" through group incubation and joint venture formation, in order to classify and improve its new energy vehicle layout.
According to an informed source who left geely's new energy vehicle system, in order to build a new energy brand and quickly win the share of electric vehicles, Geely recruited talents in marketing, "including extending an olive branch to some backbones of its number one competitor BYD". "But soon, some of the big names who issued military orders left, because the market really didn't think it was as easy to do."
According to the newly released data of Geely Group, in 2021, Geely Automobile's overall sales volume was 1.328 million units, and the sales of new energy vehicles were 104415 units, accounting for only 7.9% of the overall sales.
In Zhang Xiang's view, Geely has long focused on international business and has not invested enough in new energy vehicle products, resulting in its sales of new energy vehicle products lagging behind BYD.
Great Wall Motors, like Geely, is also trying to quickly win the highlands of the new energy vehicle market. In 2021, Great Wall Motors made a big splash: by 2025, among the 4 million vehicles sold by Great Wall Motors in the world, new energy vehicles should account for 80% of the share, and the operating income should exceed 600 billion yuan.
The Great Wall is rapidly developing on the new energy vehicle track, revealing its sense of crisis about the great changes in the logic of the future automobile travel market.
In 2018, Great Wall Motors, which has made a lot of money in the traditional SUV car market, is determined to separate its Euler brand and launch the first model Euler iQ, decisively transforming to new energy and electrification. Although the sales of Euler automobiles in the past two years have been good, the sales of new energy vehicles represented by Euler have only accounted for 10.7% of the overall sales of the Great Wall.
The slowest pace is not a step, but a wandering; the fastest step is not sprinting, but persistence. An industry researcher at Beijing Pan-Xincai Data Company believes that although Geely and Great Wall have a "latecomer disadvantage" over BYD in terms of new energy vehicles, with the launch of new models such as Geely Kr 001 and Great Wall Wei brand Mocha DHT-PHEV, BYD's challenges will become increasingly large.
In addition, the dilemma of BYD's new energy vehicles "selling well and not making money" is also a fact for all to see.
Judging from the financial performance in the first half of 2021, although the revenue of the three independent brands has increased significantly, BYD's shortcomings have been revealed. In terms of net profit attributable to shareholders, Great Wall performed the best, reaching 3.53 billion yuan, an increase of more than 200%; Geely's net profit increased slightly by 3%; while BYD's profit in the same period was not only lower than the first two, but even decreased by 30%.
In addition, in recent years, geely and Great Wall's fuel vehicle production and sales have performed well: Geely's Lynk & Co brand sold more than 220,000 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 26% year-on-year; Great Wall's Haval brand car sales reached 770,000 units, surpassing BYD's overall car sales.
The huge sales of fuel vehicles and the cash flow and profits they bring are the abundant grain and grass of Geely and the Great Wall to the "Long March" to the new energy track. For the new energy vehicle market, which is still on the eve of volume growth, BYD's temporary sales scale and market share are not the "talisman" to defend its future C position.
03, the leader of the air dark battle
For any business, the style of the founder or leader will more or less project into the long-term strategy and daily operation of the enterprise.
BYD's Wang Chuanfu has always been known for its technology. He once said: Technology can make entrepreneurs smarter and make entrepreneurs look more long-term.
From the establishment of the factory in 1995 to produce secondary rechargeable batteries, to the launch of the world's first dual-mode electric vehicle F3DM that does not rely on professional charging stations in 2008, to the current blade battery, DM-i hybrid technology and vehicle-grade IGBT chips, Wang Chuanfu has stepped on the wave of technological change of new energy vehicles every step.
It is also the core technology of these new energy vehicles that enables BYD to take the lead in the transformation of the automobile industry and build its own technical moat according to the professional logic of the far-reaching development of the industry.
An employee of BYD said, "Mr. Wang feels like a technology entrepreneur, who usually looks very low-key, but when talking about work and BYD, he is very high-profile." ”
Compared with Wang Chuanfu's enthusiasm for technology, Li Shufu and Wei Jianjun present two different styles.
The word "raw" runs through Li Shufu's car-making career.
More than 20 years ago, Li Shufu, who made his fortune by making motorcycles, shocked the four seats with a famous saying that "the car is just four wheels, two sofas, and an iron shell", and won the title of "car maniac". To this day, this title is still appropriate.
From becoming the largest shareholder of British car manufacturer Manganese Copper in 2006, to the acquisition of Australian transmission manufacturer DSI in 2009, to the acquisition of the passenger car business of volvo, a world-renowned luxury car brand, for $1.8 billion in 2010, Li Shufu has "bought, bought" around the world, and has acquired a number of engine and transmission technologies.
It is understood that the acquisition of Volvo is a matter that Li Shufu has been planning since 2002. Through this "snake swallowing elephant" acquisition, Geely obtained many core technologies and many intellectual property rights of Volvo, laying a good foundation for the subsequent launch of high-end brands such as Lynk & Co.
And just when the outside world thought that the acquisition of Volvo was the limit of Geely's "madness", Li Shufu shot again. In February 2018, Geely Group announced that it would acquire 9.69% of the voting shares of Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, through its overseas corporate entities, becoming the largest shareholder of the latter that year.
Li Shufu, who has been agile in the automotive industry for more than 20 years, has not walked well in the field of new energy vehicles.
Li Shufu, who is good at current affairs, was not frustrated with the "Blue Geely Action" that did not end successfully as scheduled, and he believed that this was not a mistake in strategic direction or a failure in strategic implementation, but that the historical timing was not ripe and external strategic conditions were not formed. "Examples of such failures abound, including in Chinese car companies, and in European, American, Japanese and Korean car companies."
As the chairman of Great Wall Motors, Wei Jianjun has a hard-working style and is well-known in the industry. From betting on pickup trucks with low domestic recognition, to "dictatorial" research and development of the city SUV Haval, to entering the high-end SUV market and losing the annual salary of 56%, Wei Jianjun's sassy in the car industry has often become the theme of public discussion.
(Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motor)
"We mainly rely on coal power generation, in the process of energy conversion, in fact, electric vehicles are not energy-saving and environmentally friendly, electric buses are 10 times more polluting than natural gas buses." At the shareholders' meeting held in May 2016, Wei Jianjun exposed his "prejudice" against new energy vehicles.
Wei Jianjun and Great Wall Motors' layout in the field of new energy vehicles has also fallen behind. Up to now, the main products of new energy vehicles under the Great Wall are mainly from the sub-brand Euler. In 2021, the Euler brand sold 135,000 units, contributing more than 98% of Great Wall Motors' sales of new energy vehicles.
Interestingly, in August 2018, Great Wall Motors launched an independent brand of new energy vehicles "Euler ORA", and the company's annual report of the year frankly stated that "the competitiveness of the group's new energy products is insufficient, and it is necessary to create a variety of new energy vehicle products". From new cognition to new actions, Great Wall Motors spent a long three years, in August 2021, Great Wall's high-end intelligent pure electric brand "Sharon Zhixing" slowly entered the foreground; and in that month, BYD's new energy vehicle production and sales have reached 62,598 and 61,409 vehicles, respectively.
Li Shufu, who "does not accept defeat", and Wei Jianjun, who "does not play cards according to the rules", who is Wang Chuanfu's biggest opponent in the field of new energy vehicles? BYD, can it withstand the sniper attack of Geely and the Great Wall? Nothing is yet decided.
Moreover, under the new trend of "double carbon" and digital global technology, the competition in the automobile travel market is bound to interpret a new pattern around the "intelligent" business form in addition to the main line of "electrification". The strong people who have entered the game one after another are not only Geely and the Great Wall, but also countless powerful "new forces", all of which are unpredictable and huge challenges for BYD, the forerunner who is currently occupying the C position.
(Except for the separately marked source, the above picture is from Visual China)
(Author |.) Wu Kai Editor 丨Chu Xing)