New energy vehicles are shifting from the "policy greenhouse" to the "wild".
On February 21, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance and other 12 departments issued documents to determine that in 2022, preferential policies such as new energy vehicle purchase subsidies, charging facility awards, vehicle and vessel tax reductions and exemptions will continue to be implemented, and the subsidy rate will be 30% lower than in 2021, and will be officially terminated in 2022, and vehicles licensed after December 31, 2022 will no longer be subsidized.
Image source: Electric Vehicle Watcher
In fact, due to the impact of the epidemic and other factors, the plan to drive new energy vehicles out of the "greenhouse" has been postponed for two years, according to incomplete statistics, from 2019 to now, the mainland's new energy subsidy funds have exceeded 147.8 billion, involving 1.9159 million new energy vehicles.
Although in the early years, new energy vehicle fraud incidents emerged in an endless stream, once caused a bad impression on domestic consumers, but by BYD as the representative of many car companies focused on technology research and development, after the initial stage, the state in 2017, 2018 decisively reduced subsidies, forcing car companies to improve the technical level and product competitiveness.
In order to form a "catfish effect" in the new energy industry, Shanghai directly introduced Tesla-owned factories, and gave the greatest policy support, under the fierce competition, those new energy vehicle companies without core technology have fallen one after another, and the entire industry has re-entered the "reshuffle" stage.
It can be seen that after nearly 13 years of market cultivation, domestic new energy vehicles have also grown from toddlers to vigorous young adults, which is intuitively reflected in the market performance.
In July 2020, BYD surpassed Tesla in sales and became the top car sales company in the domestic new energy vehicle market. In the same year, BYD and auto giant Toyota established a joint venture company and exported its reverse technology, marking that the mainland's new energy vehicle technology has finally caught up with the world's car giants.
At the same time, the new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" has also crossed the life-and-death line of sales, and the stock price has repeatedly reached new highs, making the mainland new energy vehicles enter the second stage of intelligence and networking earlier than other countries.
According to data from the China Automobile Association, the domestic automobile production and sales data in 2021 ended the decline for three consecutive years since 2018. Among them, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units, respectively, an increase of 159.5% and 157.5% year-on-year, and the market share increased to 13.4%. The momentum of new energy vehicles all the way to 2022 also continued, from the perspective of market share, the market share of new energy vehicles reached 17% in January, and the market share of new energy passenger vehicles reached 19.2%, which was higher than the level of last year.
It can be seen that the big knife of the era of change has been cut to fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles have also changed from policy-oriented to market-oriented, and the role of government subsidies has become smaller and smaller. Even without subsidies, automakers and capital are willing to invest in new energy vehicles continuously, and the new energy automobile industry will not lose competitiveness. Earlier, Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, also said that from the perspective of the growth of non-restricted cities, the consumption of new energy vehicles has completely moved towards marketization.
However, in the case that the decline of subsidy policies has become an established fact, going out of the "greenhouse" will still have a certain impact on some new energy models.
Taking the ordinary pure electric passenger car with a mileage of 300-400 kilometers as an example, the current model subsidy is 9100 yuan, which is 3800 yuan less than the subsidy in 2021, and most of the models with the mileage level are micro or small pure trams (zero-run T03, Euler black cat / white cat, etc.), due to their low price, the profit margin of the model is small, so the increase in vehicle cost has become inevitable.
In order to reduce the adverse impact caused by policy changes, the 2022 zero-run T03 will directly raise the price of the vehicle by about 10,000 yuan, and enhance the competitiveness of the model by upgrading the configuration of vehicle intelligence and assisted driving; the black cat and white cat under Euler' subsidy decline are stopped by the trend, and the good cat with good market performance will impact the more high-end market segment.
For the decline of purchase subsidies and the cancellation of the year-end, the response of each car company is different, whether it is the choice of cost control (castration configuration, materials), or the introduction of increased prices, consumers should understand the manufacturers' market basics in 2022, such as zero-run T03, EAN Y and other intelligent functions of new models to upgrade, increase the behavior has been considered a conscience operation. Although the price has increased, these smart upgrade packages can make users feel it and be more psychologically acceptable.
In this regard, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, once made it clear that "price increase is a short-term phenomenon, from the perspective of market competition, as more and more car companies begin to transform new energy and technological progress, price decline will become a long-term trend."
From alleviating the national financial pressure to the development of domestic new energy vehicles all the way, the new energy subsidy policy has indeed reached the time of retirement. At the same time, the promotion of new energy vehicles by the state will not change due to the cancellation of subsidies, and as the policy support for new energy vehicles gradually decreases, it is bound to strengthen the policy suppression of fuel vehicles. For the majority of car companies, the double credit policy will turn into a fierce leather whip, constantly spurring them to transform into new energy vehicles.