Produced by | Tiger sniff car group
Author | Zhang Bowen
Header image | IC Photo
At the end of last night's Winter Olympics, Norway was at the top of the medal table with 16 gold medals, 8 silver medals and 13 bronze medals.
So today on the Internet, there are a lot of articles analyzing why Norway's Winter Olympics program is so strong. Read a few articles, the reasons are similar, nothing more than the support of the general environment, the large number of registered athletes, the low cost of people participating in ice and snow sports, and so on.
This small country with a population of only 5 million people Chinese the imprint of the Internet, in addition to the highlight moment that lasted for more than half a month at the Winter Olympics, the most discussed thing is Norway's market share of electric vehicles, which ranks first in the world.
In November 2021, The sales volume of electric vehicles in Norway reached 94.9% of the total number of vehicles sold in the month, including 11,274 pure electric vehicles, 3,288 plug-in hybrid vehicles, and only 416 fuel vehicles sold.
The whole country is limited by the population, and the absolute number of cars sold is not high, but the proportion of new energy vehicles is amazingly high. In 2021, pure electric vehicles sold in Norway accounted for 31.2% of the country's total sales, including plug-in hybrid models, all new energy vehicle sales have accounted for more than half of the country's sales.
The country's friendliness to new energy vehicles can be reflected in the tax and use support policies for new energy vehicles: free of import tax, free of 25% value-added tax, free of emission tax, free of tolls and ferry fees, annual road taxes can be discounted, free parking in public parking lots, and even company cars, as long as it is an electric vehicle, the vehicle tax can also be halved.
According to conventional reasoning, Norway should be a country that lacks oil resources, because it relies on oil imports, so it is fully committed to the development of electric vehicles.
In fact, Norway is the largest oil and gas producer in Northern Europe, and Norway's path is to use fossil energy sources such as oil and gas to sell money, increase national income, increase people's welfare, and then use extremely rich wind and hydropower resources to reduce the price of electricity as much as possible, encouraging citizens to approach free electricity as the main energy source in life.
In European countries, the people are rich, coupled with the friendliness of electric vehicles, Norway was soon targeted by Chinese brands that make electric vehicles.
In September 2019, SAIC MG ZS pure electric SUV was launched in Norway; in June 2020, SAIC Maxus announced the shipment of the first batch of 328 SAIC Maxus EV30s to Norway; BYD and Norwegian dealer RSA introduced its Tang EV to the Norwegian market; in the same year, Xiaopeng Motors cooperated with Norwegian dealer Zero Emission Mobility AS (ZEM) to export the Xiaopeng G3i to Norway for sale.
In May 2021, WEILAI also announced its official entry into the Norwegian market, which is different from the previous cooperation model between car companies and dealers, and Weilai emphasizes direct sales, building infrastructure at home, and directly serving users.
In September 2021, Hongqi partnered with Norwegian distributors to send its pure electric flagship SUV to Norway at a slightly lower price than the domestic price in China.
In February this year, Lando also announced that it was working with distributors to prepare to go to Sea norway.
It seems that if you do not compete for the Norwegian market, it does not mean that your electric vehicles have led the world.
In the official propaganda copy of each company that disseminated its own voyage to Norway, there were only a few reasons to enter Norway:
1. Norway has a good environmental foundation for electric vehicles.
2. Norway is a Nordic country, cold, if it sells well to prove that its own products have a good battery life, it can also be opened in winter.
3. China's car manufacturing is very strong, overtaking in curves, and has been sold to Europe, the birthplace of the car.
4. The Norwegian market is not large, but it can be the first stop for its own brands to occupy the European market.
The spread is huge, but it seems that all the actions stop at going to sea and landing, no one releases follow-up sales, Chinese Internet public opinion's understanding of the Norwegian electric vehicle market is limited to this.
This is the case.
Although Norway is a Nordic country and is located on the edge of the Arctic Circle, compared with the same high-latitude inland areas, the Atlantic Current gives Norway a fairly distinct four seasons, with summers less than 20 degrees and winter minimum temperatures of only minus five degrees.
There is no extremely hot climate, avoiding the risk of combustion of some electric vehicles, the minimum temperature of minus five degrees, but also can make the heat pump of electric vehicles work normally, will not affect the winter endurance too much.
Norway, so to speak, is even a better place to drive an electric car than Beijing. The Norwegian Nordic environment spread by manufacturers can prove the advantages of electric vehicle winter endurance, which is almost untenable.
Norway's good situation of selling electric vehicles is not only due to the support of policies for electric vehicles, but also the suppression of fuel vehicles has become a decisive factor.
After the first oil crisis in 1973, the Netherlands, a major European gas exporter, received significant revenues from natural gas exports due to high energy prices, which greatly increased the level of social welfare of the country. However, with the increase in natural gas exports, the exchange rate of the Dutch national currency, the guilder, also rose, and the wages of workers also rose, resulting in a sharp rise in production costs and a sharp decline in the international competitiveness of industrial products, resulting in economic deterioration. As the economy deteriorated, the fiscal deficit increased rapidly as the burden on the social security system, which had increased sharply during the economic growth period, put enormous pressure on government finances.
In order to avoid the country falling into the "Dutch disease" and the economy's excessive dependence on non-renewable chemical resources, Norway has reduced oil and natural gas production year by year, while establishing one of the world's largest national wealth sovereign funds to ensure the increase of national wealth, on the other hand, through high oil prices, high fuel vehicle costs, from the people's basic awareness, reduce the people's dependence on fuel resources.
So Norway has about 16 yuan / liter, the highest oil price in the world, because of the strict tariffs, the price of fuel vehicles in the Norwegian market, but also the most expensive level in the whole of Europe, the same fuel model, the Price of the Norwegian market is 50% higher than that of Germany and the United Kingdom.
Fuel is expensive, the price of fuel vehicles is also expensive, the cost of electric vehicles is extremely low, and the climate will not have a great adverse impact on the experience of electric vehicles, which is also easy to understand why Norway sells electric vehicles.
But it is also a variety of special factors that make Norway an extremely unique and non-reference electric vehicle market compared to the whole of Europe and even the whole world.
The so-called domestic car companies regard Norway as a test field for entering the European market, except that Norway is a European country in terms of geographical relations, and from the perspective of market development path, it is almost not established.
Most directly, because Norway is extremely strong in the country's financial resources and is not willing to live with other poor European brothers, Norway has not even joined the European Union. Norway's customs entry policy and product standards for imported electric vehicles are different from those in the European Union.
The biggest role of the Norwegian market for domestic car companies is only: in a country with high acceptance of consumer electric vehicles, with its own products, it is serious with the electric models of overseas car companies, and truly stands on the same stage.
Unfortunately, the performance of Chinese electric models in the Norwegian market is not good.
In the November 2021 Norwegian new energy sales list, none of the Chinese car companies that entered the Norwegian market with great fanfare entered the top 10, the highest ranking, ranked 14th, sold nearly 400 cars by BYD Tang, and then, the Weilai ES8, which sold nearly 200 cars, ranked 30th in the list.
The Norwegian electric vehicle market, and even the entire car sales market, is almost "ruled" by three forces, one is Tesla, which has established the largest delivery center in Europe in Norway; and the other is the Japanese and Korean car companies represented by Nissan and Hyundai, including Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Kona and IONIQ 5, which are not recognized in China. The other is the MEB platform electric vehicle under the Volkswagen Group, which includes the Volkswagen ID4, which has been listed in the Chinese market, the Audi Q4 E-tron that has not yet been listed in China, and the Skoda brand that has almost disappeared in China.
The intelligence that Chinese car companies are good at in the era of electrification has not been recognized by consumers in the Norwegian market.
In an interview at the Norwegian overseas press conference, Li Bin told the media: WEILAI's attitude towards the Norwegian market and the Chinese market, as well as WEILAI's strategy, there is no essential change, how to do it in China, how to treat users, how to do services, in the future in different countries' markets will also be doing the same. However, it will be revised according to local market regulations, as well as public sentiments and cultural influences.
Now it seems that there are still many corrections that need to be corrected.
It cannot be ignored that China's pure electric vehicle market has grown into a place with strong differences from other overseas markets in the rapid growth of recent years.
When overseas consumers choose electric vehicles, they are more likely to regard electric vehicles as a driving form of private transportation that can reduce the cost of use to a certain extent. And China, obviously has stronger expectations for electric vehicles, expecting electric vehicles like China's smart phones, with enough and fancy functions, hoping that electric vehicles can have the possibility of OTA software updates under a fixed hardware basis, hoping that electric vehicles can not only have fixed speed cruise, lane keeping, but also hope that electric vehicles can automatically change lanes, and even automatically drive.
It is also this huge difference that has given birth to several new car-making forces that seem to be quite successful in China, and has also made overseas traditional car companies that are deeply trapped in the elephant turning around frustrated again and again in the Chinese market, and have to gradually increase the manpower reserves and research and development investment exclusive to the Chinese market, changing the traditional model of dealers selling cars with goods.
At such a time node, Chinese car companies sell cars in overseas markets through overseas dealers, in addition to the short-term communication significance of self-satisfaction, it is definitely a crooked road in the path of new energy vehicle technology and commercial development.
Not to mention, because of the zero tariff on electric vehicles in the Norwegian market, the price of electric vehicles imported into Norway is lower than that of the Chinese market, which has a negative impact on the public opinion of domestic electric vehicle brands.
Flipping through the Chinese Internet to discuss the content of China's electric vehicles going to sea, the most common thing that appears in the comment area is: harvesting the money of China's rich to subsidize foreigners.
Carrying such a notoriety, harvesting sales of a few hundred vehicles in the Norwegian market is quite unworthy.
The proportion of electric vehicle sales in the Chinese market only accounts for more than ten percent of the total number of automobiles produced and sold in China every year, and the market space is still very large.
When China's electric vehicles truly become the world leader, the demand of overseas markets will take the initiative.