Text: Zheng Driving @ Tan Qing said AI editor-in-chief
Although it is just the Spring Festival, the major new power brands have not forgotten the moment when the show delivered muscles at the beginning of the month. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, many new forces announced the delivery results for the first month of 2022 as scheduled.
Judging from the data situation, among the new power brands that have announced their results, there are three brands that have delivered more than 10,000 this month, namely Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 12,922 vehicles, ideal cars delivered 12,268 vehicles, and Nezha automobile delivered 11,009 vehicles.
If Nezha Automobile in 2021 has already let us see the strength of its dark horse, then who is it to force Weilai's zero run with the delivery of 8085 in January this year?
According to the Tianyancha APP, Zhejiang Zero Run Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2015 and was jointly invested and established by Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd. and its main founders. Dahua co., Ltd. is a video-centric smart IoT solution provider and operation service provider.
In Wei Xiaoli, who once stood in the first echelon, Xiaopeng and Ideal still led in delivery this month, while Weilai ranked fourth with a delivery performance of 9652 vehicles. Although the results are not bad, it is also true that it is not as good as the new dark horse Nezha Car in 2021.
Weilai, which has once again lost access to the Ten Thousand Vehicles Club, seems to have paved a layer of fog for its high-end road, and even under the ferocious pursuit of the new faces of low-end cars such as Nezha and Zero Run, will the future high-end market still be a place where electric vehicle companies must compete? It's worth some forward-looking analysis.
Cheng also high-end: Wei Xiaoli hitched a ride on Tesla's "second-stage rocket"
Before answering the question at the beginning of the article, we may wish to explore why many new forces in the past are cutting into the electric vehicle market from the middle and high end.
It is not difficult to find such a trend, whether it is Wei Xiaoli or a group of traditional car companies that hope to catch up with the opportunity of electrification, such as Dongfeng Lantu, SAIC Zhiji, Changan Avita, Geely Krypton, etc., in recent years, almost all of them are making efforts towards the high-end market.
First, market inclusion, since 2018, the annual sales of China's passenger car market have ushered in three consecutive declines, but high-end cars are a market segment that grows against the trend in the context of declining macro sales. At the same time, electric vehicles are still relatively new today, and the acceptance of the high-end market crowd is also better.
Second, the layout of the initial innovation force high-end existence advantage, car manufacturing in the capacity expansion, research and development and manufacturing and other aspects often need huge investment, Wei Xiaoli just came out, in the capital and manufacturing technology compared to the traditional car companies have no advantage, intelligent technology should also start from 0. How can this part of the cost be reduced? Cutting into the mid-to-high-end market with stronger premium capabilities is obviously a better way to play.
Why is it difficult to do early electric vehicles at the low end? The reason is that in the early stage of the development of electric vehicles, collaborative industries such as energy supplementation and insurance are very poor, and the sinking market is even worse, and in the face of the new thing of electric vehicles, consumers in the sinking market will also have a lag in acceptance.
If in the early years, you directly rely on low-end cars to compete with fuel vehicles, the difficulty can be imagined. After all, during the barbaric growth of electric vehicles, many car companies have become "old man music" manufacturers in the sinking market.
The third is to force high-end can help car companies to build a moat in the era of electrification, the era of internal combustion engines, engines and other core component technology is the foundation of car companies, with the intelligent second half of electric vehicles kicked off, the future only intelligent force can continue to consolidate their own barriers.
Nowadays, Wei Xiaoli can no longer die like a large number of "fraudulent" brands at the beginning of the chaos of new energy vehicles, on the one hand, it maintains the stability of the capital chain, on the other hand, it is also due to the fact that these brands have built their own barriers in many intelligent fields.
Such a high-end entry style actually follows the Rogers innovation diffusion curve very well. Let's take Tesla as an example to see the potential energy of the two-stage rocket in its high-to-low expansion play.
In the early years of Tesla, whether it was Model S or Roadster, the price of millions of dollars was actually trying to use high-end products to open up the price-insensitive group of "innovators", which was undoubtedly Tesla's first stage rocket.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that for electric vehicles, under the innovation diffusion curve, impressing "innovators" is like the tinder in the whole war, but the real difficulty is actually to open up the two groups of "early adopters" and "early volkswagen".
As early as 2014, Tesla entered the Chinese market with a catfish posture, but it continued to open source patents and codes in the future, which to a certain extent achieved a number of opponents such as Wei Xiaoli. Musk, who seems to have a big nerve on the surface, made this move, and is undoubtedly a shrewd businessman.
When a number of electric vehicle companies were inspired by Tesla's open source code to devote themselves to car manufacturing, in April 2016, model 3 was born, which made Tesla truly a force leading the global automotive industry.
Not only did the Model 3 successfully cut into the "early adopter" group, but also led a group of start-ups to put electric power
The car's cake is bigger, and Tesla's secondary rocket potential energy is full of power.
But then again, if electric cars stop at the "early adopters" tesla has opened up, then this grand electrification revolution will undoubtedly fail.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that the real mission of a group of new forces led by Wei Xiaoli is actually to race against Tesla and create a three-stage rocket potential energy for the industry, thus pushing this electrification revolution to an unstoppable position.
Defeat is also high-end: how does Wei Xiaoli build a "three-stage rocket" that meets the inflection point?
As EV penetration continues to climb, there seems to be a slight trend of transition from "early adopters" to "early volkswagens" in the industry.
Such a judgment is actually not empty, after all, Weilai, which has taken the top spot in the new forces because of the high-end market, has lost Nezha Automobile many times in the recent past, which has made many people see that the low-end electric vehicle consumer group is being awakened, and the inflection point of the domestic electric vehicle industry may have arrived.
So how will car companies grasp the industry's most critical "early Volkswagen" opportunities? It will be a new proposition for everyone in 2022.
The problem seems to come back to the market and products, although electric vehicles in the early stage of the impact on the high-end market is beautiful and moving, but this is a market segment, and now as this segment begins to become more crowded, how much dividend will there be in the future? It's worth putting a question mark on.
In recent months, the ideal and Weilai have occasionally "fallen behind" in terms of delivery, compared to the ideal lack of core, Weilai factory transformation these short-term objective factories, Tan Qing said that AI believes that in fact, the high-end market of electric vehicles is weak, low-end consumer groups began to be gradually awakened, is the Wei Xiaoli in sales began to be Nezha zero runners continue to approach to catch up, more essential reasons.
If Wei Xiaoli's three car companies want to become the Volkswagen in the era of electrification instead of Audi, in the face of the inflection point of the industry that is no longer far away, taking a new way of playing to bet on the future, it needs to be put on the agenda.
As the player with the most stable delivery volume in the camp of new forces in recent months, Xiaopeng Automobile has benefited in part from its competitiveness in price compared to Weili.
In the face of competitors emerging from the sinking market, Xiaopeng actually objectively has the advantage of technical differentiation, and it is the key to use this part of the advantage to accelerate the development and mass production of new models at a lower price in the future, so as to seize the gradual awakening of the sinking market.
For ideals, multi-route technology reserves are an inevitable task in their long-term strategy. Creating the ideal of the ideal ONE, there is no doubt that it has taken a very smart path in the short term, which not only alleviates the anxiety of replenishment, but also has price competitiveness compared to Weilai.
However, the range extender technology is essentially backward and environmentally friendly, although the new car ideal X01 has been put on the agenda, but there is not much surprise that X01 and the ideal ONE models and technical routes are more similar, and the price will be more expensive, which may make the ideal with the rapid development of the entire industry, the ability to resist risks is getting weaker and weaker.
For NIO, the way to create a new sub-brand seems to be a better solution to its betting on the inflection point of the industry. As a brand that benchmarks BBA, the overall price of NIO is the highest in Wei Xiaoli, and exploring new markets through unlimited price exploration will cause a split in its brand recognition.
At the same time, one of the core competitiveness of Weilai lies in user operation, but the user operation of boutique products often means that it is small and beautiful, and it is difficult to have both large and wide, just like the century-old BBA will never go to the sinking market to fight.
For Weilai, if you don't want to miss the inflection point opportunity, you can't indulge in becoming a BBA in the electric vehicle industry, but incubate your own red rice and glory, and then do a good job of cutting the products and services of the mother and child brands, and empower the new brand with technical competitiveness.
Although Wei Xiaoli's sales have not shrunk, and even have a year-on-year increase, the stronger growth rate of Nezha and Zero Run is also difficult to ignore. Are these two companies really the biggest winners who can seize the inflection point opportunities of the industry?
Nezha and Zero Run, the new forces closest to the inflection point?
"If it can't launch a $25,000 model on the market, Tesla will miss out on huge revenues over the next 10 years." Ali Faghri, an analyst at investment firm Guggenheim, has said.
From Ali's words, it is not difficult to see that in his eyes, A-class cars will be a key battle in the future electric vehicle market.
Looking at the sales of fuel vehicles over the years, in fact, most of the top ones are often A-class cars, and according to the annual sales data of Continental Automobile, A-class car sales can account for half of the overall car sales in Mainland China.
It is not difficult to find that when Wei Xiaoli is still fighting in the middle and high-end, the stage victory of Nezha and Zero Run is mainly because it has cut into the A-class car market that is not fierce but has the most extensive space.
This seems to let us see that Nezha and Zero Run have seized the opportunity to lay out the sinking market, and are expected to become the real beneficiaries of the inflection point of new energy vehicles in the future. But is this really the case?
Tan Qing said that AI believes that although new power brands such as Nezha and Zero Run have taken root in the sinking market and have accumulated more rich experience in operation and products, there will also be hidden worries in terms of brand power and product technology from the low end.
Low-end market consumers often have price, product sensitivity but brand insensitivity characteristics, the current Nezha and zero run to seize the price of the opportunity, but the entire electric vehicle industry is still overcoming technical problems, Nezha and zero run of the product moat is actually not stable.
Therefore, with the blessing of a large number of data assets that are the most valuable in intelligence, if Tesla and other players who have a longer development in automatic driving or smart cockpits begin to sink the market, it will be possible to cause a technical dimensionality reduction blow to it.
At the same time, low-priced cars below 100,000 yuan are more popular for the current Nezha zero runners, which is also a hidden danger that is difficult to develop in a balanced way in the sinking market.
According to Pacific Motors data, the sales of Nezha V, which has a price of 62,900 yuan from 2021, accounted for 71.25% of the total sales of Hezhong Automobile in the whole year, while the zero-run T03 mini car with a starting price of 59,800 yuan on the other side accounted for 89.62% of the company's total annual sales.
However, Nezha U and zero-run 150,000 C11 sales began to grow strongly at the end of last year, and these two models are expected to become their weapons to impact the 150,000-class passenger car market, at which time, the two players will be able to really gain a foothold in the A-class car market.
Leaving the market increment and the pursuit of interests, we look at it from the macro strategic level of the entire industry, Tan Qing said that AI believes that in the long run, it will make great preparations for the launch of competitive A-class pure trams, and for the new forces, looking at the world, this will also be an excellent opportunity for mainland car companies to achieve overtaking tesla in curves.
Looking at the industry today, we cannot deny that Tesla's technology moat is very deep, and it also has the strongest brand and product force in the global electric vehicle market, but in the face of the industry inflection point, Tesla in recent years seems to have some problems of taking care of one over the other.
At present, Tesla is facing the problem of more inclined strategic focus such as production capacity and self-driving technology research and development, not only that, as the soul of Tesla, Musk also needs to disperse a lot of energy to other personal companies such as SpaceX.
Recently, Musk has publicly denied the possibility of launching a $25,000 model this year, and said the company will focus its resources on launching fully autonomous driving technology and securing the supply of chips for models such as the Model 3 and Model Y.
If the outlet is a charming and dangerous word in the electric vehicle industry, then the inflection point is the essence of intertwining charm and danger.
When Tesla successfully released the potential energy of the first and second stage rockets, in such a day that requires the third stage rocket to successfully put the entire industry into orbit, whether it is a traditional car company at home and abroad, or a number of new forces in China, who can really become the biggest beneficiary of the potential energy of the third stage rocket? The answer seems to be not far away.