Text | Joey
What is the significance of the existence of micro-electric vehicles? That's a real problem.
A while ago, I went to Chongqing to participate in a test drive meeting of Young Light Small Products organized by the electric house brand. Not to mention the name of the car mixed with Chinese and English, just from the overall positioning of this car, it is completely opposite to the goal that today's pure electric vehicles want to achieve, eliminate anxiety and green travel.
408 km of endurance (may have to shrink a little water due to various environmental influences), 35kW of total power, 3.7 meters of car length of 2.4 meters wheelbase, from these digital indicators of the collection of Young Light Xiaoxin, in terms of positioning has been 800-1000 km of endurance, with super starting acceleration (including constantly refreshing the record drag coefficient), and the ever-increasing body size (after all, the longer the car the more batteries are installed) those products are contrary to those products. In fact, seeing this, you will definitely have the same questions as when I first started driving this car.
Can such a small or even micro-electric vehicle with a counter-mainstream design sell well? In fact, for now, such worries are a bit superfluous (I am not talking about Young Guangxin, but this type of micro-electric vehicle). Far from it, just looking at last year's SAIC-GM-Wuling god car - Wuling Hongguang MINIEV model, the annual sales of 400,000 vehicles, it seems that there is already a preliminary answer.
If it is anti-mainstream, Wuling Hongguang MINIEV is more thorough. The overall length of less than 3 meters, the endurance of the whole series of no more than 200 kilometers, and the minimalist configuration that is only one line away from the simple (some versions of the co-driver in the early stage did not have airbags, and later strengthened), all make people think that this car may be a big toy.
But the market feedback is often more staggering, and the actual sales have given a resounding slap to all those who were not optimistic about it in the early stages. As the saying goes, let the price of the price be bought, let the license plate be bought, let everyone get the car they need, is a really good car.
Even in the later stage, because of the restrictions of the car captain, it was no longer possible to get on the Shanghai license plate, but it still did not stop people's enthusiasm for this "god car". It plays a certain sound, plays a certain red book, launches a more popular macaron version and a co-branded version, and develops a convertible version and a variety of morphing cars. The unlocking of various novel postures has made people's perception of this car no longer just a tool for buying groceries, but also an essential EDC for fashion trends. This whole set of divine operations makes the traffic password clear and clear by SAIC-GM-Wuling.
Of course, the benefits cannot be monopolized by a company for a long time, and the innermost volume in this year is the inner volume itself. Subsequently, more and more manufacturers began to join the market of small or micro electric vehicles.
Choice and abandonment
On the streets of Shanghai this winter, a popular drink, mulled wine, has quietly become popular. Simple production method, ten dollars a cup, warm up more heart-warming. Even if it is only a health pot boiling, paper cup, standing on the street to drink, still let many fashionable urban youth feel unprecedented, cost-effective and elegant.
Of course, it is simple and easy to operate, and the process is easy to copy, which also makes it stand on the cusp of being copied a lot. From the initial ten yuan a cup, to the later eight yuan, five yuan, and then closed Zhang. A house of hot wine poured down, tens of millions of young people get the benefits. Similarly, such an inner-volume business logic applies to the field of micro-electric vehicles.
Just last year, Euler's good cat sold more than 50,000 vehicles, and the zero-run T03 also sold 40,000 vehicles. At the same time, more products have also joined the warband. Including Chery's QQ ice cream, Dongfeng's Scenery MINIEV, and the Baojun brand, which is also under the SAIC-GM-Wuling brand, have also launched a product called KiWi EV (including, of course, Young Guangxiaoxin, which I mentioned at the beginning). For a while almost everyone seemed to have discovered a whole new field, one that could lead to a rapid increase in sales.
In such an area, no manufacturer is trapped in the bottleneck of technology. It doesn't matter if there is no long battery life, it doesn't matter if there is no updated human-computer interaction, and it doesn't matter if there is no more powerful performance data. A thousand words come together in one sentence – cheap.
In this new segment of the market, where the highest price may not exceed 70,000 yuan, cheapness has become the ultimate weapon to eliminate all anxiety. People no longer measure the value of buying a car. After all, when the price is low to a certain extent, performance and intelligence, comfort and configuration can be completely abandoned.
More importantly, this restriction of the use scenarios caused by the small size of the body has almost reversed itself to become an important core competitiveness. After all, even if this small electric vehicle has four seats, it is almost unnecessary to be fully loaded, the storage space is almost useless, and the energy replenishment can be achieved quickly because the battery capacity is not large. What's more, there is virtually no need for parking assistance for anyone.
But for manufacturers, such a product is almost visible to the naked eye as a low-profit, or even unprofitable product category, what is the point of producing it? Is it just to make a profit?
Kung Fu is outside the poem
In fact, the development of mini-vehicles is not a product of the era of electric vehicles. In fact, in the earlier era, when China's automobile industry was just starting, mini cars have begun to become an important direction for Chinese domestic automakers to find breakthroughs.
At this point, we can refer to K-Car, an important branch of Japanese cars, for an analogy. The rise of K-Car is largely due to the good wishes of the Japanese economy after World War II, the urgent need to recover the Japanese economy, the urgent need to restart the automobile industry, and the Japanese people who do not have much money in their hands are also in urgent need of an automobile product that can be bought, used, and can be stopped (for Japan, which is too luxurious for Japan).
Nowadays, several famous Japanese cars that we are familiar with, such as Alto, Jimney, and Big Dipper, also belong to the category of K-Car.
Therefore, choosing such a car as the direction for Chinese auto companies to find a breakthrough is actually a very correct choice. In that era when the overall manufacturing process of Chinese automobiles and the three major pieces were in a weak position, cheaper and more tolerant cars that allowed people to tolerate the technical content of products were undoubtedly an important wealth code for these manufacturers.
Today, we are familiar with chery QQ, the originator of a generation of small cars, as well as Geely's panda and Chang'an's Benben, which have all achieved sales results of more than 10,000 sales per month. Although the profits they bring are very thin and the wealth is not large, it can make more people accept the lack of technical strength of Chinese auto products, continue to promote sales, and continue to carry the influence of hot brands, which is undoubtedly a good product.
Of course, times have changed.
Today's Chinese auto companies have undoubtedly supported. Whether it is the difficulty of a car for the Tank 300, or the comprehensive benchmarking of the European joint venture brand in terms of performance and design; whether it is the electric vehicle of "Wei Xiaoli" that is not afraid of the European and American automobile manufacturers in terms of product technology, or Gaohe and Zhiji want to go one step further and enter the field of luxury cars.
Therefore, the question now is: whether it is a new or old Chinese automobile brand, do they still need products such as mini cars to fight in the era of electric vehicles?
Points and Valuation
Obviously, the reason for "fighting the country" is completely too much, as far as the practical examples of the small or micro electric vehicle products I am currently around, almost all of them will consider buying such electric vehicle products after first having a higher level and a higher brand of traditional fuel vehicle products.
After all, this safety configuration is not complete, the battery life is not long, and the entertainment configuration is not rich enough for electric vehicle products, almost all of which are only used for short-distance commuting at home and the driving radius is not more than 50 kilometers.
But for manufacturers, the function of such small and even micro electric vehicles is obviously not only to take off with sales to drive profits. Because, for traditional manufacturers, electric vehicles are more important to bring carbon credits.
Just recently, BMW announced that it will continue to produce large-displacement fuel vehicles. At a glance, this is an operation against the trend of history, after all, energy conservation and emission reduction is already the trend of the times. However, the safe use experience brought by large-displacement fuel vehicles and the cooler driving experience have always been loved. Therefore, how to balance the requirements of energy conservation and emission reduction, as well as to achieve a balance between the visible consumer demand for internal combustion engines, the simultaneous production of electric vehicles is particularly important.
After all, under the current energy-saving and emission-reduction policy, every new energy vehicle produced and sold can obtain a certain carbon credit. The goal of carbon credits for automobile manufacturers is more to offset the fines generated by the excess carbon credits caused by traditional energy vehicles. Therefore, the emergence of every new energy vehicle shoulders the heavy responsibility of offsetting the excess.
More importantly, once the points of new energy vehicles exceed the goal of their own carbon credits, these car companies can also resell the excess points. In the first half of last year alone, the price of carbon credits rose from about 300 yuan per cent to about 2500-3000 yuan per cent.
Tesla, for example, made $1.58 billion in 2020 just by selling carbon credits; in the first half of 2021, Tesla also earned $872 million by selling carbon credits. There is no doubt that carbon credits are the real profit cows of pure electric vehicle brands. At this time, we should understand what the traditional car manufacturers who want to produce cheap pure electric cars and expect them to sell well are calculating.
The possibility of striving for carbon credit balance in order to continue to manufacture traditional energy vehicles, and at the same time selling excess carbon credits on hand, is undoubtedly a way for traditional car manufacturers to get rich . And for new car manufacturers like Tesla, is carbon credit the source of all their profits? Obviously, it's not entirely true.
Sales don't stop at sales
Yes, sales are king. Whether it is "Wei Xiaoli" or the second echelon of Nezha and Zero Run, all of them are sharpening their heads and fighting for sales. But the purpose of fighting for sales is not simply to make a profit, because it is still too early to talk about profitability.
Just last year, wei Xiaoli three companies are almost close to the annual sales of 100,000 vehicles, it seems that they have successfully stepped out of the uncertain area, in the world of automobile manufacturing to gain a firm foothold, but in fact, to say that it is really stable, the difference is still a little much.
According to the data that can be found at present, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal lost 1.59 billion yuan, 835 million yuan and 0.215 billion yuan of ideals in the first three quarters of last year. Although it has narrowed compared with the same period in 2020, the three or even more second- and third-echelon new forces are facing continuous investment in product research and development, continuous investment in outlets and supporting facilities, and continuous construction and purchase of various plant equipment.
And these manufacturers who are born with capital branding, since they cannot balance their income and expenditure from the consumer market and the carbon credit sales market in a short period of time, the feasible way to continue to obtain a source of funds is to continue to look for them in the capital market. If you want to continue to raise funds smoothly, you need better market share and sales data to stabilize and enhance investor confidence.
In these enterprises that produce small and micro electric vehicles, except for some brands that rely on the traditional energy vehicle tree and can continue to obtain blood transfusions, the others have to rely on their own sales to work hard. This includes brands such as Nezha and Zero Run.
Yes, the logic is so smooth, small electric vehicles sell well and do not make money, but they can make money by selling carbon credits, and they can rely on sales data to continue to raise funds. This is also the opening electric house such as the small business of new cars, may survive, continue to get funds to develop a second product of the few choices and hopes.
So, we come back to the opening question, do everyone like micro-electric vehicles, do everyone want to make micro-electric vehicles? In fact, such a product has its own market demand, but it is obviously unrealistic to really want to make a lot of money on it. Relying on such products to let new car brands find their own vitality and win the first-line possibility of becoming a century-old brand may be much more logical.