Recently, BYD issued an official statement saying that from February 1, 2022, including the Current BYD Dynasty series models such as Han, Tang, Qin, Song and Yuan, as well as the Dolphin ocean series models, will usher in an official guidance price increase ranging from 1,000 yuan to 7,000 yuan. The specific model increase will be subject to the latest news from the dealer. It is worth mentioning that contracted customers who pay a deposit before February 1 will not be affected by this price increase.
Why did the collective price increase of new energy vehicles?
Presumably, friends who know a little about China's new energy automobile industry are very clear that BYD is not the first new energy vehicle company to announce the price increase of its models. As early as April last year, Extreme Krypton was dissatisfied with users because of the price increase, and was collectively defended by car owners. Following the extreme krypton, Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Nezha, Weima and other new car-making forces have also increased prices. Compared with the radical new car-making forces, BYD is actually a car company with a relatively slow price increase.
The reasons for the price increase of these new energy vehicles invariably point to two directions: the decline of subsidies for new energy vehicles and the rise of raw materials for new energy vehicles. In Xiao Lei's view, in fact, no matter what the reason is, the price increase of new energy vehicles can be described as a sign of early warning, and it can even be said that it is late but arriving.
In terms of subsidy decline, the four ministries and commissions of the mainland jointly issued the "Notice on the Financial Subsidy Policy for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in 2022" (hereinafter referred to as the "Subsidy Policy") on the last day of 2021. The "Subsidy Policy" pointed out that the overall subsidy for new energy vehicles in the mainland this year decreased by 30% compared with 2021. Among them, the subsidy for pure electric vehicle models below 300,000 yuan will be reduced by 5400 yuan, and the subsidy amount of plug-in hybrid models will be reduced by 2040 yuan.
In fact, in the field of new energy vehicles in the mainland, new energy vehicle subsidies have been an old topic that has been talked about for nearly a decade, and the subsidy decline has also set the tone in 2020. In the "Subsidy Policy" released in 2020, it is pointed out that in order to smooth the intensity and rhythm of subsidy decline, the subsidy standards for 2020-2022 will be reduced by 10%, 20% and 30% respectively on the basis of the previous year. Therefore, by the end of this year, the subsidy has fallen to 30%, and the price increase brought to the retail end is also expected by many people.
On the other hand, the increase in the price of raw materials for new energy vehicles has also brought great pressure to new energy vehicle companies, which is also one of the main reasons for the collective price increase of new energy vehicle companies. As we all know, cobalt is an important part of the anode material of ternary lithium batteries. However, the high cost of cobalt has prompted many power battery manufacturers to turn to the development of cobalt-free batteries.
Even in this case, the price of cobalt is still soaring. According to business agency data, as of January 23, the price of cobalt has exceeded 500,000 / ton, which has risen more than 1 times since January last year. As the world's largest battery producer, China's battery price is 41,060 US dollars / ton, which is more than 5 times higher than last January.
In order to reduce the cost of batteries, many car companies have chosen to switch to lithium iron phosphate batteries with lower costs but weaker endurance, which is the main reason why the market position of lithium iron phosphate batteries has risen sharply in 2021. With the turn of new energy vehicle companies, the market demand for lithium iron phosphate batteries is increasing, far beyond the original production capacity layout of the industrial chain. The sudden surge in demand has also triggered a chain reaction, causing lithium iron phosphate battery raw materials to soar with it.
Subsidies are getting less and less, and the cost is getting higher and higher, which is worse for new energy vehicles that are not profitable. In order to cope with the decline in subsidies and the rise in the cost of raw materials for power batteries, the current practice of most new car-making forces is to take advantage of the subsidy decline to take advantage of the opportunity to increase prices to reduce internal cost pressure. Traditional car companies are mostly more conservative, and they basically carry out "hidden price increases" by adjusting the preferential margin of the terminal.
In Xiao Lei's view, compared with other traditional car companies that dare not blatantly raise prices, BYD's price increase is quite radical. Xiao Lei believes that the reason why BYD can blatantly increase prices is mainly because the price increase is beneficial to BYD and harmless.
BYD has basically completed the transformation of new energy and transformed into a new energy vehicle company. Compared with BYD, once the price of new energy vehicles under other traditional car companies that are transforming new energy increases, the terminal price of new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles will be further increased. Such a situation may lead to consumers being more inclined to choose their traditional fuel vehicles, thereby slowing down the pace of their transformation into new energy vehicle companies.
BYD's passenger car sales in 2021 will be 730093, of which new energy vehicle sales are as high as 593745, and new energy vehicles account for 81% of his annual passenger car sales. Obviously, BYD has basically transformed into a new energy vehicle company.
Traditional fuel vehicles are a backbone that must survive for other traditional car companies that have not yet been successfully transformed, but for BYD, which is dominated by new energy vehicle sales, it is just a tasteless and regrettable chicken rib.
In addition, BYD is currently in a difficult stage of capacity climbing, and its sales volume is much higher than that of production capacity. Therefore, even if the price increase will have an impact on BYD's new energy vehicle sales, it will only alleviate its production capacity problem. Therefore, Xiao Lei believes that under the background of all new energy vehicles are rising in price, the price increase of bydying the BYD brand is difficult to bring unfavorable factors to it.
What is the impact of collective price increases on the new energy automobile industry?
In Xiao Lei's view, with the decline of subsidies and the rise in the price of raw materials for power batteries, new energy vehicles may break the balance between subsidies and costs in the next few years, resulting in rising retail prices of automobiles becoming a trend.
According to the original policy assumption, the new energy vehicle subsidy policy is to bear the cost of expensive power batteries for consumers in the early stage of the development of new energy vehicles, thereby promoting the development of the new energy automobile industry. Nowadays, the development of new energy vehicles has become a general trend, and this trend has even broken the balance of supply and demand from the raw material end to the vehicle level.
Affected by costs, the future development of new energy vehicles may encounter cost bottlenecks, and new energy vehicles that have developed rapidly in the past decade may enter a cooling state. The technological development of new energy vehicles will be more inclined to make up for shortcomings under the condition of controllable costs, rather than blindly increasing the energy density of high-cost power batteries and pursuing ultra-long cruising range.
The reason why Xiao Lei has such a view on the future development trend of new energy vehicles is not only from the perspective of cost, but also the subsidy policy of our country as early as last year has revealed this information.
In fact, the mainland's policies have always been guiding the development of China's new energy automobile industry. Before 2016, the endurance of new energy vehicles in mainland China was generally insufficient. In 2016, the mainland's new energy vehicle subsidy policy for the first time proposed battery energy density as a reference indicator, the higher the density, the higher the subsidy.
This policy once forced BYD, which uses lithium iron phosphate batteries, to switch to ternary lithium batteries, and the Ningde era also seized the crazy rise of the policy outlet at this time. After 2016, the energy density and mileage of China's new energy vehicles have increased rapidly. Nowadays, the endurance of new energy vehicles in mainland China has basically been able to meet the needs of consumers.
In 2021, the subsidy policy that the mainland has gradually begun to decline has added a reference indicator, that is, in addition to the replacement model, the price of pure electric vehicles needs to be within 300,000 yuan to receive subsidies. In Xiao Lei's view, the mainland has already discovered the drawbacks that new energy vehicles will bring about at any cost and crazy energy density at this time.
Sure enough, with the rapid growth of new energy vehicle sales, and car companies and consumers are too pursuit of endurance, the imbalance between supply and demand of raw materials finally began to appear in 2021.
In Xiao Lei's view, a mature product needs a bucket effect, and endurance is one of the development factors of pure electric vehicles, but not the only development factor. Including power endurance and fast charging, there are still many shortcomings in the current pure electric vehicles. Since the price of battery raw materials cannot fall in a short period of time, it is likely that car companies will turn to make up for the shortcomings of new energy vehicles that do not rely too much on raw materials.
summary
In Xiao Lei's view, the price increase of new energy vehicles is not a good thing for the development of China's new energy vehicle industry, because there are many problems in the rapid development of new energy vehicles, and it requires cooling time in the development process. The development of China's new energy automobile industry should not be limited to the development of a certain technology, but need to be analyzed from a macro perspective.
Among them, pure electric vehicles support the top-level structure of automobile transformation, while hybrid models are responsible for replacing traditional fuel vehicles, thereby completing the transformation of low-carbon travel. In the future, when hydrogen energy matures, hybrid models only need to replace the fuel range extender with a hydrogen fuel range extender to completely complete the transformation of China's new energy vehicles and further reduce their dependence on oil.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet