After being "suspended to take orders", the Euler brand finally spoke up.
On the evening of February 23, in response to the news that Euler white cats and black cats were discontinued on the Internet, Euler officially gave an official statement.
In this letter from Euler brand CEO Dong Yudong, the reason for Euler's "suspension of orders" is given in detail - serious losses.
"Although the Euler brand has the advantages of the industrial chain behind it, this fashionable and people-friendly car still brings huge losses to the company." Taking black cats as an example, after the sharp rise in raw material prices in 2022, the loss of a single unit exceeded 10,000 yuan. Stopping the order is a helpless move, in the lack of core and less electricity environment, black and white cats waiting to deliver orders to users cumulatively exceeded 20,000 units, according to the current production volume, if you continue to receive orders, the delivery of new orders will wait until the second half of 2022. ”
At the same time, Dong Yudong also publicly stated two points: first, these two cars are by no means discontinued, and more than 20,000 orders will continue to be produced; second, the after-sales service of purchased owners will not be affected at all.
It is worth mentioning that this is the first new energy vehicle company to publicly admit the loss of selling cars, although this has become an unspeakable secret for many new energy vehicle companies.
The dilemma of entry-level new energy vehicles
Lack of cores, epidemics, rising raw materials...
Despite the problems in the automotive supply chain in 2021, the opposite is the boom in the sales terminal.
In 2021, The production and sales of new energy vehicles in China were 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, and the annual retail penetration rate reached 14.8%, of which the penetration rate in December was as high as 22.6%, of which the polarization of the sales structure is more worth pondering.
In the sales structure, the micro-electric vehicle represented by Euler black and white cat and the mid-to-high-end car market represented by Tesla and "Wei Xiaoli" grew the fastest, but among them, the lower price A00-class car was obviously under more obvious pressure.
For car companies, the poor sales of the lowest-end models mean that the electrification transformation of car companies is not thorough enough, and the future development will be at a disadvantage; and if the sales are good enough, they will face the dilemma of Euler: the higher the sales, the more losses.
In this regard, Euler calculated an account, if the black and white cat continues to sell, it will probably increase the price by more than 17,000 yuan in order to maintain no loss or slight profit in the current situation, and from the price point of view, the price of the Euler black and white cat - 6.98-8.48 million yuan and 7.18-8.88 million yuan, in the A00 class pure electric models is an absolute high price, and the user of this price point is extremely sensitive to the price, a small price increase not only can not solve the problem, but also cause users to complain, but the sharp price increase obviously loses the core advantage of this model.
The most obvious example is zero running. It is understood that in 2022, after the price increase of the zero-run T03, the order decline was as high as more than 50%.
Therefore, Euler did not choose to increase the price hard. Dong Yudong said: "We are actively looking for ways to improve and develop improvement strategies. ”
At present, Euler has delivered the order in October 2021, in addition to the existing orders are still continuing to be delivered, "in the subsequent time, we will actively seek raw materials, strive for the maximum resources, and quickly realize the delivery of existing orders." Dong Yudong said.
Although Euler chose this gentle approach, for most car companies, price increases are the decisions that have to be made.
Behind the collective price increase of car companies
Since the end of last year, some car companies have successively announced price increases.
At the end of last year, Tesla announced that the price of the rear-wheel drive version of the Model 3 and Model Y was raised by 10,000 yuan and 21,000 yuan respectively; among the new car-making forces, Xiaopeng, which stabilized monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles in 2021, rose by 4,300 yuan to 5,900 yuan; Nezha rose by 2,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan; the price increase of the zero-run minimum model was 8,000 yuan to 9,000 yuan; the pole star rose by about 5,000 yuan; the price of GAC Aean LX rose by 4,000 yuan; and the price of the Volkswagen ID series increased by 5,400 yuan.
On January 21 this year, BYD officially released news that BYD Automobile will adjust the official guidance price of new energy models related to Dynasty Network and Ocean Network, ranging from 1000-7000 yuan, and the price adjustment will take effect on February 1, and customers who have paid a deposit before signing a deposit will not be affected by this price adjustment.
The reason behind the collective price increase in the industry lies mainly in two points - subsidy decline and supply chain price increase.
On December 31, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Development and Reform Commission issued the Notice on the Financial Subsidy Policy for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in 2022, which clearly stated that the current framework and threshold requirements for the technical indicator system of purchase subsidies will remain unchanged in 2022, but the subsidy standards for new energy vehicles will decline by 30% on the basis of 2021.
This means that after the national subsidy of 30% of the slope, the subsidy for pure electric vehicle models with a pure electric mileage of 300-400 kilometers is adjusted to 0.91 million yuan, a decrease of 3900 yuan compared with last year; the subsidy for pure electric vehicle models with a pure electric mileage of 400 kilometers or equal to 400 kilometers and priced within 300,000 yuan is adjusted to 12,600 yuan, a decrease of 5,400 yuan compared with last year.
At the same time, the upstream raw materials will rise sharply throughout 2021, which is a visible pressure for car companies.
As the most important component of new energy vehicles, the power battery itself accounts for 30% to 40% of the entire cost of new energy vehicles, and in 2021, the supply chain of power batteries has seen an overall price increase.
It is understood that the price of lithium iron phosphate (power type) rose from 40,000 yuan / ton at the beginning of 2021 to 111,000 yuan / ton at the end of the year, an increase of up to 177.5%; while the prices of the three most commonly used models of ternary materials, type 523, type 622 and type 811, respectively, rose from 123,500 yuan / ton, 145,500 yuan / ton and 170,000 yuan / ton at the end of the year to 248,000 yuan / ton, 266,000 yuan / ton and 276,000 yuan / ton, with an increase of 100%, 83% and 62% respectively. This also makes the price of power batteries in 2022 not only will not fall, but also rise.
Taking lithium iron phosphate battery as an example, a new energy vehicle with 50KWH with electricity, 1GWH power battery can meet the needs of 20,000 new energy vehicles, so a car will consume 0.11 tons to 0.125 tons of lithium iron phosphate cathode material, according to its up to 177.5% increase in calculation, the cost of each vehicle or will rise by about 7,000 yuan.
In the context of the sharp rise in costs, Euler's decisive cut off of the low-end market is indeed a good way to stop losses in time, but it also reflects another major trend in the industry:
Rising costs have forced car companies to rise
Regarding the new energy automobile industry, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, once expressed such a view: only by making efforts to the high-end, through high-end and intelligence, can the problem of electric vehicles be solved.
This has also been confirmed by the high-end new energy vehicle companies represented by Tesla and "Wei Xiaoli".
For example, Tesla's bicycle gross profit margin last year was as high as 30.6%, becoming one of the few car companies that can make money from selling the car itself; but this is also a situation that was ushered in after more than ten consecutive years of losses; and although the domestic "new car-making forces" have not yet made a profit on the car, the situation has improved significantly compared with previous years.
Judging from the financial report of "Wei Xiaoli" in the first three quarters of last year, although the three car companies still lost money, revenue and gross profit achieved substantial growth. In this regard, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of WEILAI Automobile, said that from the third quarter of 2021, the gross profit created by WEILAI's car sales has been able to fully cover the two expenses of marketing and management, and the loss part is mainly used for research and development.
On the other hand, the head enterprises of independent brands have launched independent high-end new energy brands, which also proves that most car companies have realized the importance of high-end new energy brands.
Back to Euler, from its product layout, we also see Euler's intention to seek an upward breakthrough.
It is reported that this year,the Euler brand also has new cars such as ballet cats, lightning cats, punk cats and cherry cats, and the price of these new cars will be more than 150,000 yuan, driving the Euler brand to continue to rise. But for Euler, how to complete the orders of black and white cats that have been ordered is an important means to dispel consumers' concerns at present.
Write at the end:
There are two sides to everything.
Euler's statement this time, in the short term, will inevitably bring pain to car companies and car owners, but in the long run, Euler's courage to face the problem is also worthy of praise, it unveiled one of the most difficult contradictions in the current industry.
But the more positive side is that behind this incident, the various car companies can find the fundamental contradiction where, with the development of the automotive industry, this matter may become a booster, to promote the entire new energy brand as a whole upward breakthrough, and the focus of the breakthrough is not to give up the entry-level market, the launch of high-quality products, is the future.