Produced by | Tiger sniff car group
Author | Zhang Bowen
Header image | IC Photo
Because of the rising cost, the price of new energy vehicles this year has become a common practice, and there are already brands that cannot be carried.
On the evening of February 23, the Great Wall's Euler brand issued an announcement in the form of an open letter from CEO Dong Yudong. It said that Euler's black/white cat models temporarily stopped receiving orders, because after the sharp rise in raw material prices in 2022, the loss of a single unit exceeded 10,000 yuan.
Although in the announcement the Great Wall emphasized with an exclamation point, "We did encounter difficulties!" ", but still promised that the 20,000 units waiting for delivery will continue to be produced and delivered, all after-sales services of the black/white cat models will continue to be maintained, will not be affected by the cessation of orders, and Euler will be responsible for customers to the end.
And in media interviews, CEO Dong Yudong said many times that this is not a suspension statement.
A very shocking statistic is that the pre-price of the two models is 6.98-8.48 million yuan and 718-8.88 million yuan. Euler has calculated that if the black/white cat models continue to sell, it will probably increase the price by more than 17,000 to maintain no loss or slight profitability in the current situation.
In other words, the cost gap is nearly 30% of the price of the vehicle.
The entire new energy industry is running too fast, running faster than mining and refining lithium. The core materials for the production of batteries are all driving up prices. A media company called the Star Channel calculated that 1 kWh requires 0.6 - 0.8 kg of lithium carbonate. If the price of lithium carbonate of 50,000 yuan / ton from January 2021 is compared with the price of 450,000 yuan / ton today, a 60-degree battery pack, the battery cost will rise by about 14400 yuan, which is just the price of lithium carbonate as a raw material.
There is also a more pessimistic thing is that the supply of lithium battery raw materials can not be rapidly improved in the short term, the cost of raw materials can not be reduced, in the next two years, electric vehicles may always face a price increase.
Everyone is raising prices, but none like Euler, if they want to go up, they have to go up 30% of the price. So it is impossible to understand why Euler simply stopped receiving orders.
Because if you want to continue to take orders, for every 5800 vehicles sold, Euler will lose 100 million, assuming that Euler's market sales this year have not increased significantly, and the sales volume of 135,000 units in 2021 is consistent, in 2022, Euler will lose nearly 2.3 billion yuan. The 2021 net profit of Euler's parent company Great Wall Motors is only 6.781 billion yuan.
But if Euler increases the price, the price will come to the range of 100,000 yuan, the original cost-effective label will disappear in the face of competitors, and the 150,000 owners who have bought the car will steal the fun, but the follow-up consumers, probably no one dares to place an order.
Why some electric vehicles can still be sold normally even if the price increases, and some electric vehicles, as long as the price increases, can not be sold.
It's time to reflect on the product pricing leader and the product owner.
Let's start with two short stories that are relevant.
Last year, Japan's NHK television station did a program in which a professor named Masayoshi Yamamoto dismantled Hiromitsu Goryo's mini EV. The purpose of the dismantling is very simple, the Japanese want to see why their own automobile industry is so good at cutting costs, making a car with almost the same size as the Wuling Hongguang mini EV, the price is close to 100,000 yuan, but the Wuling Hongguang mini EV only sells for thirty or forty thousand.
The Japanese dismantled the top of the Hongguang MINI EV electric vehicle of 38,800 yuan, and the dismantling results surprised them, the 13.9kWh lithium-ion battery was about 0.9 million yuan; the electric motor, reducer, inverter, etc. was about 0.28 million yuan; the charger, DC-DC converter, etc. was about 0.34 million yuan; the body, The interior is about 0.28 million yuan, the tire suspension of the driving system is about 0.22 million yuan, the air conditioning compressor is about 0.34 million yuan, and the assembly and sales service is about 0.34 million yuan, with a total cost of about 26,900 yuan.
The Japanese professor found that the MINI EV simplified some devices, such as the energy recovery part, and the electric motor water cooling was changed to air cooling. The most interesting thing is that in some parts, Hongguang MINI EV does not use vehicle-grade products, but uses ordinary commercial products. For example, chargers, inverters, chips, bearings, relatively speaking, the service life will be shorter, but the overall impact is not large. Even Wuling Hongguang also used the idea of "modularity", if these parts are broken, then it is more convenient to replace, the cost is not high, and the owner's experience is also reasonable.
Finally, nihon Keizai Shimbun summarized the reasons for the success of the Goryo Hiroko mini EV, using cheap, less durable parts and assembling them in an easy-to-replace way. The Macro mini EV has the characteristics of "easy to damage, but easy to repair".
The Japanese also do not think that this is called "cutting corners", but praise the Chinese car company Wuling in the car research and development has a unique sense of innovation, which is worth learning from Japanese companies.
But what makes japanese professors desperate is that the mini EV's whole car does not have any Japanese parts, the core components are made in China, and the parts from Europe and the United States are not vehicle standard grades, but ordinary commercial grades, which means that if Japan wants to copy a mini EV, the cost will not be so low.
The second story comes from Tesla. Han Yiqi, senior director of intelligent driving and intelligent transportation at WM, summarized Tesla's cost reduction strategy.
As we all know, Musk is a cost control maniac, whether it is Tesla, or Space X, commercial success basically comes from the continuous reduction of costs.
Tesla's model 3 car to reduce all aspects of hardware costs, including driver assistance systems, in the way to get rid of the traditional Tier1, or even Tier 2 supply chain system as much as possible.
The high-priced millimeter-wave radar is only used for one, making full use of the cheap ultrasonic radar, and the cheap camera, and then integrating with the advantage of identification, fusion and control algorithm software, so that the effect can exceed the "luxury hardware configuration" used by BBA.
In order for Tesla's own software to run smoothly and with enough room to upgrade the computing power over the life of the vehicle, Musk no longer relies on the traditional supply chain.
In Musk's eyes, NVIDIA is only a traditional supplier in the IT industry, unable to keep up with his rhythm, so as to develop its own core computing chips.
Because it is self-developed, the underlying software of the chip and controller does not have to rely on the chip supplier and does not have to pay the high autosar license fee. Musk's goal is that HW3.0 will be a standard accessory for the Model 3, not an option.
After the large amount, the cost of hardware per piece and the cost of third-party platform software loaded on it cannibalize Tesla's gross profit.
If you choose the hardware of traditional suppliers, you will either share mainstream (mediocre) technology (not leading technology) with other OEMs, or the research and development costs you invest in your suppliers will soon be sold by Tie1 suppliers to other OEMs through parts. The technological advantages don't last long.
Tesla has chosen to focus its resources on its own software research and development investments, which are internal secrets of the enterprise and can maintain a longer technological lead.
Because Tesla's software builds its own architecture, and there are massive "shadow mode" data continuous training updates, even if some competitors poach some of his engineers, they can only copy the technology at a certain point in the past, and there is nothing after leaving Tesla.
Chip design is also essentially a kind of software, which is software solidified on silicon wafers, and it is also protected by intellectual property rights, and it is not easy to copy.
Moreover, because the chips and algorithm software are self-developed and deeply coupled, other companies copy any part of it and cannot work.
Tesla has always maintained a technical advantage over competitors by simplifying hardware, reducing BOM costs, and strengthening software. Moreover, the marginal cost of software for sales is 0.
In essence, Tesla is using "first principles" as a methodology to reduce costs at the R&D and manufacturing levels. The most intuitive example, but also the most easily found and referenced by other car companies, is Tesla's original use of large die casting machines, although in the short term, will increase cost expenditure, but in the long run, more than 70 parts can be reduced to 1, the innovative application of such technologies, will continue to dilute manufacturing costs.
Tesla is very clear that the hardware-level cost reduction skills will be learned by friends after a period of time, but the advantages of chips and software will become larger and larger with time and with the increase of consumer demand for smart cars.
Back to Euler's dilemma.
Euler's pricing strategy is a simple logic that is easy to speculate, small profits and high sales, car companies hope that with the increase in order demand, the price of the supply chain will also decrease with the increase of shipments, and then they can gradually realize the increase of their own profits.
In fact, not only Euler, there are a large number of pure electric vehicle companies in China are this kind of product idea. Because of this product logic, in line with the procurement tradition of domestic brands, that is, to put forward demand to the supply chain, and then wait for suppliers to kill each other, undercut each other's prices, and then choose the right supplier from them, and finally deliver a cost-effective model.
The domestic fuel vehicles we see in the fuel vehicle market today, the price of more than 100,000 yuan, can provide high-tech functions provided by 300,000 or 400,000 luxury brands, basically, they are born out of this supply chain control model.
The logic is also very simple, luxury brands have a fairly high brand premium, there are also higher quality standards than the industry standard, but also cultivate a number of domestic suppliers. When suppliers who have served luxury brands face domestic brands, they are naturally familiar with the road, and the cost has long been controlled reasonably.
But the field of electric vehicles is different, and the world core of electric vehicle research and development, manufacturing and production is in China.
Putting aside the rising battery raw materials, which Tesla can not avoid the reality of factors, Chinese manufacturers, if they want to overtake through electric vehicle curves, instead of simply counting on the scale effect of suppliers to reduce costs and improve cost performance, the most important thing they should do is to lead industry innovation through their own investment.
In the current environment, manufacturers who do not have the ability to resist price changes in the supply chain should also be abandoned by consumers and sit back and watch other competitors get sales and occupy the market.
For consumers, the price increase of electric vehicles seems to increase their own car purchase expenditure, but to some extent, the times are also gradually tearing down the last fig leaf of some brands in the field of electric vehicles, whose products are strong, whose models are good, the answer will be clearly dangling in front of consumers.