Yuan Guobao
Internet trend observer, well-known financial writer, founder of New Alliance, senior media person, new media marketing and brand communication expert.
Brother said
The new energy automobile industry is about to usher in an explosive period.
In 2021, car companies are at stake. As a pillar industry of bulk consumption, the entire industrial chain of the automobile market is also like staging a domino effect, with one prosperity and one loss. For example, the shortage of chips and the high price of raw materials, such as the sequelae of the epidemic, linger.
What is valuable is that while the automotive industry has increased slightly, the new energy vehicle market has shown a strong upward trend against the trend. According to data from many parties, the cumulative production and sales of new energy vehicles in china will exceed 3 million in 2021.
The new energy vehicle sector is full of resilience, and capital is also flocking to it. According to the Tianyancha report, as of November 2021, China's new energy vehicle field has received more than 70 financings this year, with a total financing of more than 80 billion yuan, which has exceeded the total amount of financing in 2020.
It can be seen that the development of the mainland's new energy automobile industry has reached a new level. Looking back at the development of the new energy vehicle market in 2021, there are six strong market signals, indicating that this vertical industry is about to usher in an explosive period.
Contrarian growth, penetration rate increased significantly
The recovery of the automotive industry and the strength of new energy vehicles are enough to confirm a number of data. For example, from January to November this year, the cumulative production and sales of automobiles reached 23.172 million units and 23.489 million units, a slight increase year-on-year, and the total sales volume for the whole year is expected to increase by 3.1% year-on-year.
At the same time, affected by multiple factors in the policy and market, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in 2021 will increase significantly year-on-year, and by November 2021, the cumulative production and sales of new energy vehicles nationwide will reach 3.023 million and 2.990 million units respectively, an increase of 1.7 times year-on-year.
Image source: Network
It is worth mentioning that the penetration rate of the new energy vehicle market has also reached a new high. According to data from the China Automobile Association, in November this year, the retail penetration rate of domestic new energy passenger cars reached 20.8%.
Therefore, the general consensus in the industry is that the new energy of automobiles has become an unstoppable trend.
According to the analysis, the optimistic development trend of the new energy automobile industry also stems from the continuous improvement of the new energy vehicle supply chain, and the automobile production capacity and delivery capacity of the new car-making forces are constantly improving.
For example, in early November 2021, CATL became the first company with a market value of more than one trillion yuan on the ChiNext board and the highest market value in China's auto and parts industry. Behind the trillion market value, the production capacity and delivery capacity of batteries in the Ningde era have been greatly improved. The battery production site in Ningde, Fujian Province, now supplies approximately 2.2 million electric vehicles a year. You know, this number is more than half of the global sales of electric vehicles in 2020.
At the same time, in recent years, the new car-making forces represented by Ideal, Weilai and Xiaopeng have successively been mass-produced and listed, and have also entered the stage of large-scale production and delivery, which confirms that this market is gradually maturing.
According to the ranking of the number of insurances in compulsory traffic insurance from January to October 2021, the sales of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng Automobile have maintained a growth of more than 3 digits, accounting for more than 20% of the total sales of the eight new car-making forces.
Therefore, due to the influence of the policy environment, supply chain ecology, market demand and other aspects, the status of new energy vehicles in the automotive industry is very important. Moreover, although the external economic environment has had a negative impact on the automotive industry as a whole, the contrarian growth of the new energy automobile industry has become a foregone conclusion, and 2022 is also very promising.
Policy-driven to market-driven
The development of new energy vehicles has always relied on the promotion of macro policies and multi-dimensional policies, so that their marketization has begun to appear. Some insiders roughly estimate that for every 1 million new energy vehicles sold in the past two years, 800,000 cars are the factors driving the policy. Mainly manifested in:
Source: Zhidian Automobile
The first is to encourage the marketization of new energy vehicles. It mainly includes subsidies such as car purchase tax exemption and consumption tax exemption, as well as preferential policies in various places. It should be known that the approximate subsidy of the central government plus the local government every year can reach up to 120,000 yuan in the early years. In recent years, although policy subsidies have declined year by year, market demand has increased unabated.
Moreover, since 2019, the state and local governments have introduced "new policies" such as restarting cars to the countryside and promoting the scrapping and renewal of old cars. Under the influence of a series of policies, the automotive industry took the lead in recovering from the epidemic and achieved a V-shaped reversal, which is still growing strongly.
The second is the preferential policy of license. As we all know, the "license plate" of the first-tier cities has been suffering for a long time. However, the purchase policy of new energy vehicles is very relaxed. It is understood that in the 6 major cities in China, passenger cars together account for only 10%, but new energy vehicles account for 46.9%; it can be seen that the car purchase policy is tilted towards new energy vehicles.
The third is the intervention and promotion of industry policies in specific areas. For example, in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, there are mandatory requirements for taxis and rental cars, and taxis and rental cars need to be new energy vehicles, and the effect of this policy orientation is also very obvious. At present, 80-90% of rental cars are new energy vehicles. However, in places where there are no policy restrictions, such as Hefei and Chongqing, the proportion of new energy vehicles in taxis is only 5-20%.
It can be seen that in the process of switching from the traditional fuel vehicle market to new energy vehicles, the policy-driven factors of new energy vehicles are very obvious.
However, with the formation of market trends, the value of new energy vehicles to consumers is higher and more cost-effective than that of fuel vehicles, so the trend of users voluntarily purchasing new energy vehicles is becoming increasingly obvious, and even after the subsidy policies of new energy vehicles have declined, the purchasing power of consumers is still strong. As a result, the new energy vehicle market, which used to be driven by policies, has gradually shifted to market-driven.
Intelligence and networking have become the trend of the times
100 million people, 50 billion market, grain provinces coupled with a long history of wine culture, as one of the largest liquor markets in China,
In recent years, with the advent of the era of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, intelligent cars have also come out one after another and become the trend of the times. The combination of smart cars and new energy vehicles is one of the tracks where major technology companies bet heavily.
For example, baidu, Huawei, xiaomi and other technology companies have come down to build cars. On the surface, it is chasing the new energy vehicle market, but in fact, it is aiming at the smart car market.
It is understood that Baidu's entry into the smart car is a joint traditional car brand on Geely, launched the Jidu intelligent car, and announced the first concept car in the first half of 2022, relying on intelligent technology to infiltrate new energy vehicles.
Trillion-level intelligent electric vehicles also bring unprecedented opportunities to parts suppliers. For example, on December 23, the M5, which was created by Huawei, was officially launched. It is worth mentioning that this is an AITO brand model with almost all parts and components from Huawei. This also means that not only the new energy vehicle has a huge market capacity, but also the corresponding parts supply will be a big cake.
In addition, the layout of industry data has also become a place where soldiers must compete. Multinational car companies such as BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler and Ford, for example, will set up data centers on the mainland to store locally the data generated by their cars. Ford said it had already set up data centers on the mainland in the first half of 2020. It is foreseeable that the future of smart electric vehicle manufacturers based on data, will not be willing to be behind.
All kinds of indications show that under the trend of electrification and intelligence, the right to speak in the industrial chain is moving forward, and the new forces of car manufacturing that originally did not seem to have too high a threshold can gradually establish industry barriers with the help of intelligent technology, automobile supply chain, and industry big data.
Auto consumers' awareness of rights protection has awakened
On April 19, 2021, a car owner wearing a T-shirt printed with "brake failure" stood on the roof of a Tesla car to defend his rights at the Shanghai Auto Show. The incident also continued to ferment, sending Tesla to the cusp of public opinion. It is worth mentioning that the privacy protection issues involved in this incident have also aroused great concern.
The cause was that after the rights protection incident, Tesla released the driving data of 1 minute before the accident to the media without the consent of the owner. Putting aside the hidden dangers of quality such as brake failure, the exposure of Tesla's user data safety problems is also the same as the previous period, Xiaopeng collected face data and was fined by the regulatory authorities.
At that time, Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales service Co., Ltd. was fined 100,000 yuan by the Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, and the reason for the punishment was that the parties purchased 22 camera devices with face recognition functions and installed them in their stores, so as to count the number of people entering the store and analyze the proportion of men and women, age, etc. Moreover, Xiaopeng is not the only car company to be punished. It is understood that BMW 4S stores, Kohler sanitary ware, MaxMara and other brands have been fined 500,000 yuan for illegally collecting faces.
In fact, the previous national multi-departmental jointly issued the "Several Regulations on the Safety Management of Automotive Data Security (Trial)", which was implemented from October 1, 2021. Moreover, the "Personal Information Protection Law" promulgated this year also clearly stipulates that it is not allowed to excessively collect personal information, kill big data, regulate the handling of sensitive personal information such as face information, and improve the work mechanism for personal information protection complaints and reports.
The successive introduction of data security regulations and personal information protection laws and regulations also shows that with the strengthening of consumer rights and interests protection awareness, the industry will bid farewell to the barbaric growth stage, and the standardized development of the entire new energy automobile industry has become inevitable.
Technology companies may become the main force
In 2021, the automotive industry is surging and the new energy automobile industry is full of joys and sorrows. After Xiaopeng, Weilai, Ideal and other new car-making forces successfully listed and completed the mass production of new cars, and brought sales to rise, they are also like car-making myths, becoming a benchmark for many companies to chase.
However, the bustling automobile market is a double day of ice and fire. On the one hand, the real estate giant Evergrande built cars for three years, almost no grain, and finally ended up with trillions of debts. On the other hand, traditional technology companies such as Xiaomi and Skyworth have successively entered the game. For example, Xiaomi Lei Jun has made a high-profile claim that it has prepared hundreds of billions of cash to build cars. Skyworth also rubbed the heat of new energy vehicles with the help of its subsidiary Tianmei.
Moreover, traditional car companies are also eager to try. For example, in addition to cooperating with Baidu to launch Jidu Automobile, Geely has also launched an independent new energy vehicle brand, Ji Kr. Traditional automakers such as Volkswagen and GM have directly targeted China, the world's largest new energy vehicle market, while the mainland's local company, BAIC, has also made it clear that it plans to realize the autonomy of new energy vehicles in 2025.
Image source: Forward-looking network
In fact, new energy vehicles that seem to be lower than the threshold for making fuel vehicles may also be full of pits. As Weilai founder Li Bin once said, without 20 billion yuan of capital reserves, do not come to build cars. However, Evergrande thunderstorm, the mass production model listing is far away, it seems to also hint that the necessary conditions for the victory of the track may not only require capital strength, but also the research and development capabilities of the three-electric system technology, as well as the supply chain resources of the whole vehicle, to match it.
Therefore, whether it is BYD, which has been laid out in the new energy vehicle track for a long time, or the new forces that have occupied the leading opportunity in the industry, Weilai, Xiaopeng and other head car-making forces, or the up-and-coming Xiaomi, Huawei and other technology companies, they will face a hard battle of funds and resources in the track. Who loses and who wins, I am afraid that the end is predicted.
Mergers and reorganizations, and accelerated elimination
In 2021, the economic environment is unpredictable, and the new energy automobile industry has also entered a reshuffle period. It is understood that more than 67 companies announced the completion of 85 mergers and acquisitions and restructuring events in the first half of the year.
Moreover, the number of companies that completed mergers and acquisitions accounted for 32.37% of the total number of A-share listed companies in the entire automotive industry in the first half of the year, and the mergers and acquisitions involved about 21.616 billion yuan, of which the merger and reorganization progress of Brilliance Group was quite concerned by capital.
In addition to bankruptcy and restructuring, some car companies choose to sell assets to save themselves. For example, Beijing Hyundai's production capacity cannot be effectively utilized, and its first factory in Shunyi, Beijing, officially "changed hands" this year, and the buyer is the ideal car.
In addition to the frequent mergers and acquisitions, the industry's talent flows frequently.
For example, since the beginning of this year, Yu Liguo, former president of Jihu Automobile, has officially joined Xiaomi Automobile; Zhu Jiang, former chief operating officer of Ford's China Electric Vehicle Division, has joined Jidu Automobile; and She Xiaoli, chief functional safety expert of Huawei Auto BU, has chosen to join Weilai as an internal expert in algorithm research... More and more automotive talents are beginning to flock to the electric smart car track, so that the talents in this industry are also waiting for the price.
For example, according to the headhunter of the automotive industry, in order to attract more talents, the salaries of new car-making forces in software research and development, automatic driving and other positions will be 30% to 100% higher than those of traditional car companies, which shows that this is not only a fierce market competition, but also a battle for talents.
2021 is undoubtedly a crucial year for the new energy automobile industry, which has the potential to stabilize the bulk consumer market in the context of the ongoing epidemic, and also has the market performance of turning the tide under the overall downward trend of the automotive industry, so it is placed high hopes.
When the industry gradually moves from policy-driven to market-driven, it also shows that the early stage of market education is basically completed, and under the visible growth rate of the industry, it will also be full of imagination in 2022.