Blue Whale Automobile, February 24, yesterday afternoon, Euler Automobile convened the media to hold a symposium, at which the recent situation about Euler black cat, white cat stopped receiving orders was explained, and its brand CEO Mr. Tang Yudong stressed that black and white cats only stopped accepting new car orders, not production stopped, and the orders received will continue to be produced and delivered in order. For the after-sales problems that car owners are concerned about, they said that they were not affected at all.
Why a stone stirs up a thousand layers of waves
It is understood that the cause of the matter is that on the evening of February 14, Euler internally conveyed the news of stopping orders to dealers, and then caused widespread concern among consumers and society, and then Euler officials issued a statement in various channels, saying that the reason for stopping orders was the shortage of chips, the supply of parts and components could not guarantee production, and the delivery cycle was gradually lengthened, in order to avoid bad customer experience.
But the reliability of this remark has been questioned by the media and consumers, after all, the sales of good cats exceeded 10,000 in December last year, but these two entry-level models were discontinued.
Subsequently, under the questioning of many parties, the owners of the purchased cars continued to grow in worry, and the anxiety was mainly concentrated in the follow-up maintenance and repair. Although Euler also explained it in many ways, it had little effect.
"Routine operation" in desperation
For friends who understand Great Wall Motors, the suspension of some models is not a new thing, but for Great Wall Motors, it has long been commonplace. For example, the well-known Haval H series, in addition to the H6 and H9 is still on sale, other models are all discontinued, and the Wei brand VV series and P series are also discontinued.
But this time the black cat and the white cat stopped taking orders, but it was very different from the situation of these previous models. At the meeting, Euler CEO Tang Yudong specifically explained the more straightforward reasons behind it.
First of all, the rise in costs leads to a significant reduction in profits and even losses. According to the data released by market research institute IHS Markit, in the late 2021, the price of lithium-ion batteries rose by about 10% to 20%; and the increase in raw material lithium salts reached about 400%. According to data released by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a benchmark mineral intelligence agency, from January 2020 to January 2022, the prices of battery-grade cobalt, nickel sulfate and lithium carbonate rose by 119%, 55% and 569%, respectively. In ternary material batteries, the cost of cathode materials containing lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metal elements accounts for nearly 50% of the cost of battery materials. The popularity of the demand side and the lack of supply side have led to a sharp increase in battery costs, resulting in the production cost of the black cat and white cat's three-electric system accounting for 55%-60% of the vehicle cost, an increase of about 20% over the previous period.
According to the mileage and other related requirements, the subsidy of pure electric models will be reduced by 3900 or 5400 yuan, and the plug-in hybrid model (NEDC endurance is not less than 50km / WLTC endurance is not less than 43km, including range extender models) will be reduced by 2040 yuan. The Euler black and white cat belongs to the model that has been reduced by 3900 yuan, and from the price point of view, the subsidy accounts for more than 5% of the price of the two models in Euler.
Secondly, the impact of chip shortage does exist, the backlog of orders for black and white cat models gradually increases, which not only leads to the growth of the existing car purchase prospective car owner pick-up cycle, for the intended purchase of car owners, the long waiting period will also be a test of patience, in the current situation has not been significantly alleviated, the repeated delay in delivery time for the brand is a huge harm.
It is not difficult to see that this time the black and white cat stopped taking orders, which is really painful to cut love. Euler CEO Tang Yudong also introduced that the current loss of these two models exceeds expectations, in addition to the above two reasons, the overall upstream industry supply and demand relationship changes, double integral related income decline and other factors are inextricably linked. From the perspective of enterprises, there is nothing wrong with the purpose of profit, and stopping losses in a timely manner is like a hero breaking his wrist, avoiding a vicious circle and causing greater losses.
Doing subtraction is meant to be brand up
"We are actively looking for countermeasures, but we are unable to give a specific time to resume orders at this time." At the meeting, Euler CEO Tang Yudong explained the current progress, "It is possible to bring it to the market in the form of highly customized products. At the same time, he also stressed that there are many models on the market to take the way of price increases to cope with the rise in costs and subsidies, the reason why the black and white cat did not take the price increase, is because the model market positioning is different, as an A00-class model, the price sensitivity is relatively high, the black and white cat is not suitable for the price increase to make up for the loss caused by the rising cost, but also will have a negative impact on the brand.
In addition, he also reiterated many times that the Euler brand will adhere to the strategy of "car brand that loves women more", and the overall product will develop towards the waist (A-class car). As we all know, A-class vehicles, whether in fuel vehicles or new energy vehicles, are a must-fight place, the performance of the product is more advantageous than the A00-class car, but also more conducive to the development of the overall industry, the resources concentrated in this field, will be the main direction of the brand's future development.
For this year's sales target, in the current state of suspension of the two cars, the three new cars that will be listed will share the sales pressure. At the same time, together with other brands of the Great Wall, we will deepen the overseas market and increase the overall sales proportion of the overseas market, which will also be promoted as a key task.
Full text summary:
In the face of this incident of black and white cats, it obviously exceeded Euler's expectations, on the one hand, it did not expect to get such a high level of attention, on the other hand, the information was misinterpreted to a certain extent, causing a lot of public opinion pressure. But conversely, high attention is not a bad thing, indicating that in the eyes of consumers, these two products are still very competitive.
Under the background of increasing costs and declining subsidies, the sales of new energy models are rising steadily, and the problems in front of enterprises will be more complex and more contradictory. Euler's courage to make a decision this time is worthy of recognition, and the final effect is still left to the market to give the answer.