The wave of price increases in chips and batteries has brought about a straight rise in the cost of new energy vehicles, and some car companies have taken the lead in resisting the pressure and choosing not to take orders.
Recently, with the news of the suspension of the two models of Euler Black Cat and White Cat continuing to ferment, Euler officially issued a statement to clarify, saying that Black Cat and White Cat just no longer accept new orders, not the production of internet rumors.
As for the reason, Euler said that it is mainly because after the sharp rise in raw materials in 2022, the two models continued to produce and sell huge losses, of which the single loss of the black cat exceeded 10,000 yuan.
Not only the loss, but also the long lead time is another reason why Euler chose to stop taking orders.
According to Euler's estimates, the number of orders that need to be delivered to users has exceeded 20,000 units, and the delivery of new orders will not wait until the second half of 2022.
For Euler to stop taking orders, we can analyze from two aspects: where the new round of raw material price increases has risen, and why only Euler chose to stop taking orders, but other manufacturers did not respond.
Let's start with the first question.
A new round of raw material price increases, in addition to chips, power batteries have also begun to rise in price.
Among them, the lack of cores in the automotive industry has become a cliché, initially due to a series of chain reactions triggered by the fire of the Renesas chip factory in Japan, and then gradually evolved into commercial activities such as supplier speculation.
Today's new round of chip shortage, at present, mainly due to the direct or indirect production of semiconductor materials for chips in short supply, such as silicon wafers, electronic gases, photoresists and other materials, as well as due to the epidemic, some Southeast Asia and other places of chip factory production capacity decline caused.
If you want to solve the chip shortage, or you need to wait for the expansion of production to have hope to solve, and the existing factory expansion space has been limited, the new factory to build still need time, according to incomplete statistics, the world will have 10 fabs start this year.
Therefore, in the short term, the problem of chip shortage and chip price increase may be difficult to be completely solved.
According to the report of CCTV Finance, the price of cars and chips has risen across the board, and in the previous year, a core chip of the body electronic stability system with an original price of only about 20 yuan, the latest offer is 2800 yuan and does not include tax, the prices of other car chips are rising, and the increase is several times small.
In addition to the chip problem, the rising price of power batteries has become another direct factor driving the production cost of new energy vehicles.
In the past year, the price of power battery raw materials nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium and other valuable metals has risen rapidly, especially lithium carbonate for battery cathode materials has risen the most, almost a price a day, from about 40,000 yuan a ton last year, all the way to a ton of 470,000 yuan, an increase of nearly 12 times.
How much is a ternary lithium battery new energy vehicle with a ternary lithium battery with 60-70kWh of electricity affected by the price increase of lithium carbonate?
For the impact of car prices, it is estimated that for every 100,000 yuan increase in lithium carbonate, the cost of batteries increases by about 4,000 yuan, which shows that the cost increase is still very obvious.
Let's talk about the second question.
The double price increase of chips and batteries is undoubtedly very large for new energy vehicles, but why only Euler chose to stop taking orders, and other car companies did not have related actions?
In fact, since the middle of last year, due to the gradual rise in costs, more and more terminal transaction prices of new energy vehicles have begun to rise.
Some models that were previously very preferential, the preferential margin is getting less and less, or even no more preferential, which is also affected by market supply and demand to a certain extent, as well as the rise in raw materials.
And those new energy vehicles that have few preferential treatment before, then there are only two roads to choose from, either the official announcement of price increases, or the reduction of production scale and the improvement of the car pick-up cycle.
Taking the A00-class new energy vehicle Roewe Kelaiwei as an example, this car has gone from the initial terminal cash discount of 8,000 yuan to the sale at an affordable price in the past six months, and now there are no existing cars to sell at the dealership.
Models like Wuling NanoEV choose to increase prices, which are only about 3 months on the market A00-class new energy vehicle, the price of the whole series increased by 3,000 yuan, for the price of about 50,000 yuan, the increase is not low.
Back to Euler, Euler black cat, white cat two cars are also not high price, profit margin is relatively limited, in the case of rising raw materials, it is difficult to withstand the cost pressure.
Of course, this is only one aspect, in fact, for such new energy with small size and cheap price, even if the sale of cars does not make money, the contribution of new energy points to car companies is still a great wealth.
We analyze that the last straw that really triggered the cessation of orders for Euler's two cars is probably the problem of Euler's good cat chip door.
In response to the good cat chip incident, Euler paid a great cost to deal with follow-up problems, resulting in a large problem in the profitability of the entire brand, that is, the value of the points is accounted for, I am afraid it is not enough to deduct.
No business will make a money-losing business. Therefore, the suspension of the production of low-end models, the production and sales of high-end models, I am afraid that it is the main direction of Euler in the future for a period of time, including lightning cats, ballet cats have reached the final stage before the listing, and the follow-up will also become the main sales model of Euler together with good cats.