Under the "double carbon" target, the new energy wave is also sweeping the commercial vehicle market. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, domestic new energy commercial vehicle sales reached 186,000 units in 2021, achieving a year-on-year increase of 54%, in stark contrast to the negative growth of 6.6% for commercial vehicles as a whole. In the field of urban distribution logistics, domestic new energy logistics vehicles will sell 131,000 vehicles in 2021, reaching 2.26 times that of the previous year.
While new energy commercial vehicles have become a fast-growing new blue ocean, the entire industry is facing many pain points.
"At this stage, many users still have concerns about new energy commercial vehicles, the supporting service guarantee of merchants is not perfect, and operators in the terminal market are always facing operational difficulties such as large financial pressure and small profit space", some insiders pointed out that "the new energy commercial vehicle market should continue to move forward, and efforts need to be made to solve these problems."
End-user pain points
Counting carefully, the domestic new energy commercial vehicle industry has a history of development for more than ten years, and the industry has indeed been in a high-speed development channel in the past two years, but it is still full of problems.
"Many users still have doubts about new energy vehicles, and most businesses still stay at the level of providing a single vehicle to the market, which also limits the further growth of new energy commercial vehicles in the market side", the person analyzed, "The entire industry has been lacking service guarantees for the whole life cycle of user vehicles, and new energy commercial vehicles due to special car use scenarios, users' demand for supporting service products is actually more intense."
A user first has to consider whether the new energy commercial vehicle products can meet the high-intensity transportation scenario, and the passenger car tidal use characteristics are different, commercial vehicles are often all-weather operation, the use of high intensity, which also leads to the new energy commercial vehicles on the energy and other support services demand is also frequent.
Moreover, commercial vehicles are means of production, and once the use guarantee cannot keep up, users have to bear the direct economic losses caused by the interruption of transportation capacity, which is also an important reason why users still have doubts about the product. The later asset treatment is also a problem, the power battery decays quickly, and the depreciation of new energy vehicles is usually relatively large.
It can be said that at this stage, new energy commercial vehicle merchants have not actually solved the various pain points faced by users in use. The lack of confidence of end users and the relatively high price of bicycles have led to the gradual transition from the initial direct sales and distribution model to the operation model of the domestic new energy commercial vehicle market promotion model. At present, among the new energy commercial vehicle users in the market, leasing users account for about 70%, and only 30% directly purchase, and new energy commercial vehicle operators have become the mainstream of terminal market promotion.
Operators struggling to move forward in the blue ocean market
At present, the number of logistics vehicles in China's urban distribution vehicles is about 20 million, and the penetration rate of new energy is about 3%. With the full implementation of the National VI policy, it is expected that the penetration rate of new energy logistics vehicles will gradually reach 30%-40% in the next few years.
However, on the other side of the rapid growth of the market, operators face high operating risks and a small market pattern under heavy costs, low gross profits. Operators not only bear the same financial pressure on vehicles as new car sellers, but also have much smaller profit margins than the latter.
Taking a medium-sized operator with 100 vehicles as an example, the current purchase price of a mainstream brand new energy van is about 150,000, and the vehicle procurement cost alone needs 15 million. The monthly rent of this type of new car is about 4500 yuan, even if it has been renting, the cycle of bicycle cost recovery is about 3 years. If the depreciation cost of labor, ancillary service equipment and new vehicles is included, the profit cycle will be longer.
Behind the heavy capital and low returns is the fragmentation of the entire market. At present, there are about 1.8 million logistics service providers in China, generally fleets or small cities with 3PL (third-party logistics companies), the operation industry serving 3PL also shows a scattered pattern, the operation industry has not formed a significant scale effect, and the terminal has always faced a series of operational pain points.
"For small and medium-sized operators, the first pain point is funding. In the self-purchased vehicle mode, it can only be a small step forward rolling development. While external demand is growing rapidly, it is difficult to grasp. And now operators generally only rely on car rental to make money, lack of the ability to develop supporting value-added services," said an operator in Shanghai.
The single profit structure and small profit margins make it difficult for operators to continue to grow bigger and stronger, and the whole has been in an extensive operating state, which ultimately causes high liquidity of operators.
Operators usually cooperate with express delivery, logistics, and trading companies, and often have a source of goods, and the profit cycle of the rental and sales model is long and the profit is low, and some operators have to diversify their operations, such as bearing the transportation capacity for customers. However, diversified operations are easy to cause operators to have unclear development directions, if the transportation profits are high, they will be more inclined to the transportation business, and operators will become freight companies, which is also an important reason for the large liquidity of the operating industry and the difficulty of forming a scale.
The external environment is also promoting a new round of reshuffle in the operating industry, yang Dong, vice president of Geely Commercial Vehicle Group and general manager of Green Huilian, believes that supply chain problems such as rising battery raw material prices and chip shortages will be passed on layer by layer since 2021. By 2022, the situation of operators under pressure will be more obvious, and the market may enter a new round of adjustment period.
The transformation and upgrading of operators is imminent.
What will the operators of the future look like?
How to solve user pain points and further open up the terminal market? Where is the future direction of operator development? Green Huilian, the head operation platform of domestic new energy commercial vehicles, gave a plan.
On February 22, Green Huilian released a new commercial product pedigree. As an enterprise that has been deeply engaged in the industry for five years, Green Huilian will complete the transformation of the operation platform in 2021, and build a three-level architecture of the whole network operation platform + regional operation center + regional operator to fully empower operators.
The release of this commercial product lineage marks that Green Huilian has completed the coverage of the whole life cycle of new energy commercial vehicle use services, which is also the first in the industry. The commercial product pedigree of Green Huilian not only solves the pain points of end users, but also brings more imagination space to the operating industry.
The new commercial product lineage includes three major sections: Huilian Car Rental, Huilian Car Service, and Huilian Intelligent Control.
Among them, Huilian Car Rental includes three leasing products: worry-free leasing, trial leasing and spare leasing: worry-free leasing focuses on the needs of all categories of urban logistics vehicles, provides flexible new energy commercial vehicle leasing services and more than 20 value-added services such as replacement cars and insurance, and operators can also expand the scale of business with less cost; trial leasing and standby leasing are products for users to try cars before purchasing and spare cars in emergency situations.
Huilian car service includes two major value-added products of fragile damage insurance and tire insurance, as well as two major protection products of hui bao value and hui insurance, which not only further dispel the user's concerns in the vehicle residual value, but also covers various just-needed supplies such as car insurance and replacement tires in the use of vehicles, and uses the advantages of large-scale collection to help users reduce costs.
Huilian Zhikong is committed to helping customers realize online services such as digital intelligence replenishment and intelligent management vehicles through smart car networking technology, and promoting the digital transformation of the operation industry, and currently has two major products, Hui Charging and Hui Guan Car.
Among them, Hui Charging has been connected to 300,000+ charging piles, covering more than 80% of the country's electric pile resources. In addition, it also provides core functions such as enterprise electrical cards, intelligent vehicle identification, and black and white lists of pile stations. While providing fleet users with the convenience of one multi-board and multi-charge, it can also allow operators to find new profit growth points.
The Wise Tube Vehicle Platform can not only provide operators and fleet users with one-stop monitoring of vehicle trajectory, mileage, etc., but also facilitate vehicle asset management. Through the accumulation of operational data, operators and users can further improve operational efficiency and truly realize digital intelligent management.
The new commercial product lineage not only solves the user's pain points, but also dispels the concerns about the use of new energy commercial vehicles. At the same time, it is also expanding the depth of operators' business, reducing operators' marginal costs, increasing profit points, and further developing the market.
"Through a complete commercial product lineage, we hope to promote the transformation of operators from vehicle rental providers with a single business structure to comprehensive service providers, and fully seize the dividend period in the next few years," Yang Dong said.
Green Huilian's product strategy is also based on thinking about the development trend of the entire operating industry. At present, the industry generally believes that the future operator should be based on vehicle leasing, with service as the core, extending to the whole value chain of user demand, and at the same time can achieve intelligent and refined management through digital tools.
Such operators not only have a diversified business structure and profit points, but also have stronger user stickiness and market competitiveness. Through the all-round empowerment of operators, Green Huilian will promote the development of the entire operating industry in the direction of scale and specialization.