Every time after visiting a Chinese brand dealership, there is a Chinese brand that is being recognized by a large part of the group, Changan, Great Wall, Geely and BYD, which are all good examples.
BYD is the first new energy company we visited after the price increase of new energy products this year. At the beginning of this year, there was a price increase for raw materials in the battery industry, which affected the entire new energy industry and also caught up with the change of subsidy decline. So what is the current situation in the end market?
I can answer you this way, much better than I thought.
To be honest, price increases have little impact on sales
A wave of battery price increases + new energy subsidies at the beginning of 2022 made consumers quite worried about the terminal price of new energy vehicles, and in the last month of the first quarter, we came to BYD stores to see the specific situation. From the perspective of passenger flow, even on weekdays and even in smaller urban exhibition halls, you can still see the flow of customers arriving in the store; there are more passenger flows in traditional 4S stores.
First of all, from the willingness to buy, consumers' willingness to buy BYD or new energy products is still strong.
We first went to Ocean Network's City Experience Store that morning, and there were two cars in the store, Song Plus EV and Song Plus DM-i. When I first entered the door, I thought I had walked into the experience store of Dynasty.com, and it was reasonable to say that the models on sale of Ocean.com should include a BYD Dolphin. But we didn't see dolphins in the store, and the staff said that it was luck to see the dolphin show car now.
Regarding the current situation of dolphins, there are no discounts in the whole series, and the current car is also very scarce, and even the exhibition car is sold in the store (it should not be an individual behavior of a single store), and it takes 2-3 months to book a car. The dealers who visited said that at the beginning of March, they had accumulated 6 dolphins waiting for delivery; now the dolphins are basically in the form of an order system, and they will sell a batch in batches, and there will basically be no inventory. It is understood that this store has not placed dolphin exhibition cars for a long time, and the single store currently arrives nearly 20 units per month.
BYD Dolphins are now in very good sales. This is the answer given by the staff in the store, which has been a state of sales growth from September last year to January this year, and has maintained sales of more than 10,000 for two months. The key point is that this car has no discount and has to wait at least 2 months.
Other products, Song Plus EV full series of discounts of 3,000, Song Plus DM-i full series of no discounts on the current car is not much, booking up to 2 months. Dynasty's BYD Qin Plus EV had a preferential price of up to 6,000 yuan a year ago, and after the price increase, the discount became 3,000 yuan, but the store staff said that if you order it, you can now talk about the discount of the previous year; Song Pro DM-i has no discount, but there are a small number of cash cars.
The biggest change in the discount of BYD Dynasty Network is Han EV, and the preferential treatment of old models can reach 15,000-60,000 + 10,000 yuan replacement subsidies, and the comprehensive discount is close to 30,000 yuan (you can also talk). The new model is preferential of 12,000 + 10,000 yuan replacement subsidy, and there is no higher preferential space. However, compared with the highest discount of 0.8 million-10,000 years ago, the price has been greatly improved.
Although BYD's current terminal market has been affected by price increases, the discount has been slightly tightened. However, the staff responded that the overall sales of a single store have not been affected too much, and the key influencing factor is not chips, but tight production capacity, especially BYD Dolphin.
BYD's best car is a dolphin
Launch the topic of the second part, behind the good sales of BYD dolphins, we should look at its production capacity, and why can it sell well? Dolphin is the first mass production car of BYD e platform 3.0, so Dolphin needs a new platform capacity climbing period, we look at its sales volume and terminal market conditions for several consecutive months, the climbing period is still continuing.
BYD Dolphin is produced by BYD Changsha Plant, Changzhou Plant, the former has a maximum monthly production capacity of 30,000 units, in addition to the production of Dolphins, but also to produce Qin Plus DM-i, Song MAX DM-i and other models, the more important task is to produce BYD DM-i power core components. Although the Changzhou plant started with 10,000 units, it plans to have an annual production capacity of 400,000 units, mainly producing BYD Dolphin, Seal and other marine network models.
Let's analyze the reason why there is no discount for BYD DM-i models now, there are too many orders and the core power parts can only be produced by Changsha factories, so most of the DM-i models we see in the terminal market are all series without discounts. In the future, it may be possible to allocate DM-i core power components to other factories, such as the Taiyuan plant, which has invested 2 billion yuan. In the case that the production capacity of the Changsha plant is almost shared by other models and DM-i parts, we can only hope that the Changzhou plant can complete the capacity climb as soon as possible.
The second question is, why can dolphins sell fire?
There are indeed many highlight technologies behind BYD Dolphin, e-platform 3.0, eight-in-one, 5-minute charging 150km endurance, etc., but are these really the main reasons for THE HOT SALES OF BYD Dolphins? After the market survey, some users pay more attention to the quality assurance of the three-electric system, bydIR Dolphin's first owner is not limited to mileage and age, if the battery life is used normally (no more than 30,000 kilometers per year) in the case of 20% recession can be replaced for free, which is also one of the reasons for attracting the vast majority of consumers. According to the feedback of the clerk, most of the owners who buy dolphins are the second car in the family, and the proportion of female owners (or women who can buy enough) is not low.
In the new energy small car of 80,000-100,000 yuan, you will find that in addition to BYD Dolphin, there are not many products that can meet these two labels. In addition, BYD's price of 96,800-124,800 is also grabbing the joint venture fuel vehicle market at the same price, such as Honda Fit and Volkswagen Polo. There is better space and lower cost of cars at the same price, which is one of the reasons why some people are willing to switch from fuel vehicles to new energy vehicles.
summary
BYD seems to have shaken off the impact of the chip famine, and after this visit, it was learned that one of the DM-i series is the Dolphin model. Why we need to wait is also due to the problem of DM-i core parts production capacity and dolphin production capacity. But if you have to say that the lack of chips, it is indeed a bit far-fetched, BYD Qin Plus EV can maintain the previous year's discount after the price increase, BYD Han EV discount is higher than last year.
The hot sales of BYD Dolphin, in addition to their own technical highlights, there are not many companies that can reduce the price of new energy small cars to 80,000-100,000 yuan, which is also a low-cost advantage of BYD's large-scale mass production. Therefore, buying a new energy small car within 100,000 yuan has become a car purchase label for some users when buying a car, but now it should be trapped by the production capacity of the new platform.