Observation chamber
Written by | Liu Jihao
The car market in 2021, which has been tormented by chips, has finally come to an end, and the long-lost growth has given people hope for the coming year.
In the past year, new energy is undoubtedly the biggest winner, the overall sales increased by nearly 170% over the previous year, and the scale of the new energy passenger car sector alone has reached 3 million. But what many people don't notice is that in the field of fuel vehicles, hybrid power (HEV) has also shown a dark horse trend, after several years of "small fights" growth of about 20% or 30 percent, ushered in a real outbreak, an increase of more than 75%.
More importantly, new energy and hybrid power have become the main force leading the domestic auto market to continue to rise, and will play the leading role of the auto market in 2022 and even for a long time to come. With the rapid rise of new energy and hybrid power, the downward momentum of traditional fuel vehicles has been unable to stop the car.
Let's take a look at the three major trends in the auto market in 2022, and judge which car companies can seize the opportunity in this change and laugh out loud this time next year.
Trend one
Sales forecasts were raised from 4.8 million to 5.5 million, and new energy continued to go crazy
The popularity of the new energy market far exceeded people's expectations a year ago.
According to the statistics of the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, the cumulative sales of new energy passenger vehicles in 2021 are 2.899 million units, an increase of 169.1% compared with the scale of 1.111 million units a year ago, which is almost double the expected. What's more, this increase is 38 times that of the passenger car market in the same period, and the market penetration rate is close to 15%, almost 3 times that of a year ago.
According to the 2022 new energy subsidy policy announced by the four ministries and commissions, although the subsidy for bicycles is declining, the overall subsidy scale has not set an upper limit, and it will run through the whole year of 2022, which is doomed to the crazy growth momentum of new energy. In view of this, the HKCC has raised its original sales target of 4.8 million new energy passenger cars in 2022 to 5.5 million units, increasing the penetration rate to 25%.
This represents an increase of 2.5 million units and a net increase of 10 percentage points compared to the previous year. The cake has become more and more tempting, and who wouldn't want to take one more bite.
▲ New energy market sales distribution in recent years, data source: multiplying association
In the spring breeze of the new energy sector, pure electricity (BEV) is undoubtedly the largest, sales reached 2.444 million vehicles, Tesla, BYD and Wuling became the undisputed "three giants", the scale of more than 300,000 vehicles, and the remaining seven of the top ten in the pure electric plate are still generally in the 100,000 vehicle level, the echelon has seen the prototype.
But if we talk about the increase, the big chunk in the new energy is actually the plug and mix (PHEV), because its increase reached 171%, 3 percentage points higher than pure electricity. In this field, the big winner is BYD, with its new generation of plug-in and mixing technology DM-i, BYD Qin PLUS, Song PLUS, Tang three major car series have been able to soar - the data shows that BYD plug-and-mix models in 2021 sales of more than 270,000 vehicles, only less than 50,000 vehicles less than pure electricity, but the year-on-year increase of 467.6% is more than 3 times that of pure electricity.
It should be known that the cumulative increase in the passenger car market in 2021 is 340,000 vehicles, and BYD alone has contributed two-thirds. As for the remaining third, it is mainly the ideal contribution of the new forces (more than 90,000 vehicles), because in the official statistical caliber, PHEV and REEV are in the same category.
In the new year, with the Great Wall, Changan and other independent brand head car companies have successively laid out the plug-in market, the activity of this sector is bound to go to a higher level. In particular, with the advancement of technology, THE PURE ELECTRIC MILEAGE OF PHEV models has now exceeded the 200-kilometer mark, and daily commuting and long-distance travel have been well balanced, so that many families no longer need to be equipped with a fuel vehicle and an electric vehicle at the same time.
Pure electricity has a scale effect, plug-in mixing has also reached the flowering season, in the new energy market in 2022, major car companies are bound to let go of their hands and feet, including many old joint venture car companies that have a slow response.
Trend two
Don't just stare at new energy, HEV hybrid has also reached the stage of amplification
Compared with the hot state of new energy, it seems that not too many people pay attention to ordinary oil-electric hybrid (HEV) models, but this segment is actually earlier than new energy, because Toyota has begun to launch related products more than a decade ago, but due to patent obstacles and cost factors, the price of vehicles exceeds that of traditional fuel vehicles, and the cake has not been enlarged for a long time.
However, with Honda's efforts in the HEV field in recent years, Toyota has increased the launch of hybrid products, and its own brands have made breakthroughs in this field, this market is no longer an indispensable chicken rib - in 2021, the domestic hybrid market sales have exceeded 610,000 vehicles (this does not include imported hybrid models led by Lexus), an increase of 75.1%, becoming the third largest growth point after plug-in hybrid and pure electricity.
Similar to new energy, hybrids have gone through several years of mild development before the real outbreak, and more than 75% growth in 2021 is the real beginning. According to the planning of the 2.0 version of the national new energy roadmap, by 2035, the traditional fuel vehicles will all be replaced by HEVs, and like new energy, they will become half of the car market - that will be an 8-figure super pie, but now the hybrid market has only developed to 610,000 vehicles, how far away from that goal, how big the opportunities are in between.
▲HeV hybrid model sales over the years, data source: the association
But in this sector, Toyota and Honda are still in an absolutely dominant position. Toyota's best harvest in the hybrid sector over the past year was around 350,000 units (more than 50,000 in the last month), followed by Honda with 234,000 units, both of which hit a record high.
Different from the new energy market, due to the particularity of HEV technology itself, not all car companies can make substantial breakthroughs in the short term, and at present, Geely, Great Wall and Changan have announced their own related technologies. We have seen the start of pre-sale of the Geely Star-More L Hi · X oil-electric hybrid version, the Great Wall is a big move, its Haval, WEY two major brands have been hybrid products for sale, and the follow-up will be fully rolled out.
Among the three head geese of the independent brand, now look at Changan's, the UNI-K iDD version that started the pre-sale is only a plug-in, but according to the manufacturer, the iDD technology is compatible with HEV and PHEV.
In the joint venture camp, Dongfeng Nissan is undoubtedly worth looking forward to, its e-Power technology has now officially landed in China, the first model to choose the largest sales volume Xuanyi, and by 2025 will launch a total of 6 new cars equipped with this technology, the intention of quickly sharing a piece of the pie has no need to hide.
In addition, Beijing Hyundai has also tried in the field of hybridization, and the new generation of Tucson, which has just been listed, has a HEV version, but the market response is flat, and I don't know what new actions the manufacturers will take next to speed up the pace of switching to the hybrid track.
Starting from the sales of 83,200 vehicles in the last month of 2021, the new year's hybrid market, at least one million, has begun to run, depending on who is fast and accurate.
Trend three
The passenger car market is expected to rise more than 8%, but conventional fuel vehicles may fall nearly 7%
2021 is a turning point for China's auto market, because of the harvest of the stop fall rebound, although the increase is only 4.4 percentage points, but this is of great significance to the entire industry - after all, before this, it has been three consecutive falls.
Considering the macroeconomic situation and consumption trends facing the entire industry, as well as the trend of the external environment such as chip matching, authoritative institutions are still optimistic about the auto market in 2022. At the "2022 China Auto Market Development Forecast Summit" held last month, the China Automobile Association expected that the passenger car market will grow by 8% in the new year, while the passenger car market is more optimistic because its pre-judgment target for new energy passenger cars is 5.5 million units, while the penetration rate is 25%, which means that the overall size of the passenger car market is 22 million units, an increase of 9.2% compared with the previous year.
Regardless of which end it is, let alone an 8 percentage point increase, at first glance, this should seem to be a happy situation for everyone, but things are really not so simple.
We take the data of the multiplication association as a benchmark to further dissect, new energy accounts for 5.5 million, HEV hybrid is expected to be 1 million -1.1 million, then the rest is the traditional fuel vehicles, how much is left? 15.4 million to 15.5 million vehicles.
▲Sales data of passenger car segments in recent years, unit: 10,000 units. Source: Multiplying Association
From the above table, it is not difficult to find that since reaching the peak in 2017, the passenger car market and traditional fuel vehicles are all going down, and by 2021, the passenger car market has turned upwards, but traditional fuel vehicles are still declining. The only change is that the decline of traditional fuel vehicles is generally more than 8% compared with 2018-2020, and it is only about 7 percentage points today.
However, from the following figure, we can clearly see that the position of traditional fuel vehicles is being swallowed up step by step by new energy and hybrids, because the "horn mouth" between the two lines has become more and more obvious.
▲Sales trend of passenger cars and traditional fuel vehicles, data source: Passenger Car Association
In this regard, not only the sales figures will speak, even the flow of market terminal practitioners can also see the hint, in the past few months when the author visited the market, I found that the traditional 4S store has a lot of known sales consultants have jumped ship, and go, basically sell new energy vehicles.
Therefore, in the face of the overall upward situation of the passenger car market, how big the action of traditional car companies in the field of new energy and hybrid will directly determine whether they can laugh out loud at the end of the year. After all, the future of fuel vehicles is only hybrid, if you do not get on this train, you can only throw yourself into the embrace of new energy.
『 Final Remarks 』
In a word, grasping the new energy, leaning on the hybrid, the days of 2022 are destined not to be bad.
But a good day does not mean eating meat every day, in the expectation of the federation, in 2022, the Chinese car market will usher in the overall trend of "before the low and then high", because the chip supply problem that has lasted for more than a year will not be completely alleviated until the middle of 2022. Fortunately, this does not prevent the car market from further improving throughout the year, because as the global economy gradually gets out of the impact of the epidemic, the recovery of the car market is inevitable.
Moreover, car companies need to pay attention to how to grasp the degree of force of the two tracks of new energy and hybrid under the national "double carbon" strategy, especially the veteran car companies. After all, the transformation of new energy, switching the hybrid ship on the track, in the short and medium term, needs the profits of traditional fuel vehicles to support, and it is not possible to achieve results overnight.
The rules of the game have been rewritten, and the next step is for the players to perform, and we look forward to hearing more car companies' laughter at the end of the year.
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