Get together to increase the range, who can grab the last ticket?
@ Tech New Knowledge Original
Author 丨 Sakuragi Editor 丨 Moonmi
In March 2022, the pace of new domestic car-making forces suddenly began to accelerate.
The first to appear is Li Yinan, Niu Chuangxin Energy announced its first product, the mid-size SUV self-touring NV after 2 years.
Subsequently, AITO Automobile's Q&A M5 announced that it would be officially delivered on March 5. At the same time, Ideal Auto also announced on the official Weibo that the new range extender model L9 will be released at the Beijing Auto Show in April.
In addition to the dense and rapid pace, new players are all aiming at the segment of the range extender market, and the entry of Dongfeng's Lantu FREE has suddenly made the original controversial range increase market suddenly become a hot land for many competitions.
From the traditional experience, the development of enterprises always has to go with the trend, but the range extender companies seem to be moving against the wind.
As of February 21, the domestic No. 95 gasoline has been adjusted to 8.6 yuan, the range extender is generally 55L fuel tank, filling the ideal ONE has needed 473 yuan, after the cost of the car rises, the cost of the extended range electric vehicle is really high?
At the same time, the policy of the main sales city is not friendly to the technical route of the extender. On February 10, 2021, Shanghai issued the Implementation Measures for Encouraging the Purchase and Use of New Energy Vehicles in Shanghai (hereinafter referred to as the Measures), which clearly stipulates that from January 1, 2023, if consumers purchase plug-in hybrid (including range extender) vehicles, the city will no longer issue a special license quota.
Moving the line of sight to the overseas market, range extenders are also full of resistance, due to relatively loose carbon emission standards, overseas large car companies based on their own advantages, choose plug-in hybrid technology to occupy the market, the only few extenders because of the low cost performance, have also announced the suspension of production.
In the media event in May 2021, Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Ideal Automobile, said that the team has been established at present, which is now very seriously studying the laying of products and channels in overseas markets. But so far, the action of going to sea has also been limited to this.
On the one hand, it is a hot bet, on the other hand, it is not friendly external environment, the fate of the extended range is destined to be a race of time, the winner is as ideal, listing, financing, getting ferry tickets, for the next competition to raise enough capital for development, and the loser may only get the end of the eclipse.
Can't afford pure electricity
The production cycle of pure electric vehicles has always been a threshold restricting the entry of new forces.
The most typical representatives such as Weilai, Weilai in the 2019 Shanghai Auto Show has released a concept version of the electric car, so far 3 years have passed, the new car has not been mass production, the ultra-long mass production cycle, which means higher costs, here not only means the investment of funds, technology, talents, but also means that customers have longer waiting time and patience.
Xiaopeng Automobile, another new force of pure electricity, has also been hotly discussed this year because of delivery issues. According to media reports, a large number of Xiaopeng users booked cars in October 2021, as of February 2022, 4 months have passed, and they are still in the stage where the deposit has been paid or the agreement has been signed. When the user and Xiaopeng Automobile dock sales communication, the other party mostly prevaricates with words, and its behavior has constituted a breach of contract to a certain extent.
There are many reasons for supply chain instability, but the two most influential are the ones.
The first raw material price increase. The average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate on New Year's Day in 2022 was 300,000 yuan per ton, up 455% from 55,000 yuan per ton at the beginning of last year, and as of February 21, the comprehensive quotation of battery-grade lithium carbonate reached 438,000 yuan / ton, and the market supply and demand were tight. It has been calculated that for pure electric vehicles with 55 degrees of electricity, when lithium carbonate rises by 100,000 yuan / ton, the cost of each pure electric vehicle rises by about 3,000 yuan, that is to say, so far, the cost of lithium alone has risen by 11,000 yuan.
Second, in the battery supply chain, a second round of game is being played between car companies and battery manufacturers. On February 24, 2021, battery manufacturer Sunwoda issued an announcement of a capital increase proposal, in which 19 companies increased the capital of Sunwoda auto batteries by 2.43 billion yuan and subscribed to the new registered capital of Sunwoda automotive batteries of 1.237 billion yuan, corresponding to about 19.55% of the equity after the completion of the capital increase. Among them, Jiangsu Chehejia, an affiliate of Ideal Automobile (02015.HK/LI.US), Sky Top LLC, an affiliate of Xiaopeng Automobile (09868.HK/XPEV.US), and Weirui Investment, an affiliate of NIO Automobile (NIO.US), will increase the capital by 400 million yuan, 400 million yuan and 250 million yuan respectively, and the shareholding ratio will be 3.2%, 3.2% and 2.01% respectively.
The appearance of the three "Wei Xiaoli" shows that their respective companies are looking for suppliers other than the Ningde era to be deeply involved in the battery supply chain and deal with potential risks. However, it is worth mentioning that range extended electric vehicles, due to their smaller capacity battery packs, are to some extent affected by the battery supply chain much less than pure electricity.
On the other hand, compared with the ultra-long production cycle and unstable delivery of pure electric new energy vehicle companies, the range extender technology route car companies are different landscapes. On January 12, 2022, Niuchuang From Youjia NV announced the official map of Self-Youjia NV for the first time, released a new car and began trial production in March, and promised to start official mass production in September. AITO asks the M5 faster, on December 23, 2021, Huawei Yu Chengdong announced the new car at the press conference, and by March 4, 2022, AITO has released information on the official website, and the M5 has begun to be delivered nationwide.
In addition to the stable delivery speed, the ideal product and financial success also gives entrants the motivation to follow suit. According to the industrial securities research report. As a model that has only been born for half a year, the technical performance of the ideal ONE is not weaker than other cars in this segment. In the first quarter of 2020, the gross profit of Ideal Automobile was 68.288 million yuan, with a gross profit margin of 8.02%, of which the gross profit margin of vehicle sales was 8.45%, and the speed of positive gross profit margin was the highest in the industry. After the mainstream funds have been laid out in Wei Xiaoli, the technical route with short-term and efficient financial returns is a way to impress investors.
Replicating ideals is not easy
For car companies, extending the range is the most cost-effective choice at present, but it is not easy to replicate the ideal success.
In November 2019, when the ideal ONE was just listed, mileage anxiety or ideal talked about the most marketing points, horizontal comparison with the other two new forces, Weilai at that time in the same price range only ES6 model, mileage basic version of 410km, far lower than the ideal ONE first generation said 800km, and Xiaopeng almost no same type of products, G3 can not be regarded as the same level of products in terms of price or model size. At that time, tesla Model Y had not yet been listed in China.
The product vacancy created by the time node is the basic factor for the success of the ideal ONE.
At the same time, the precision of product positioning and the all-round thinking of user experience have made the reputation of the ideal ONE continue to ferment, and the design of the family six seats, heated massage seats, all-round voice wake-up, and triple screen is in a leading position compared with the market at that time. Under the combination of external force and internal force, the single product was generated, and it was listed in November 2019 in June 2020, and the 10,000th ideal ONE has been delivered.
However, the car manufacturing environment is changing rapidly, first of all, the increase in the endurance of pure electric new energy vehicles, compared with the medium-sized SUVs of the same level of 300,000 or so, the new NIO ES6 can already reach the NEDC standard 610km endurance, and the Tesla Model Y long endurance version with the same price has also reached the CLTC standard of 660km. At the same time, the popularization and development of technologies such as supercharger stations and power exchanges in terms of infrastructure has almost solved the pain point of mileage anxiety. The biggest advantage of the extender is gradually dissipating.
On the other hand, with the continuous introduction of new cars of the same type (medium and large range extender SUVs), the product experience has been unable to open up the obvious position, and the experiential "stacking" has now appeared in most range extender products, making the granularity of the competition more detailed.
In addition to the ideal ONE, the new range extensions have their own characteristics, relying on Dongfeng's Lantu FREE in technology and performance breakthroughs, air suspension, heated massage seats, leading intelligent parking system, as well as the lifting triple screen, color-changing sunroof and other configurations, in addition to the six-seat design part, can almost be said to be an upgraded version of the ideal ONE.
The M5 tries to stand out with a lower price (250,000 yuan) and a higher cost performance ratio, and the fourth-generation range extender and Huawei's strong technical support and seamless connection of Huawei products are good selling points.
Self-touring NV has less information, but from the first appearance of the sample car, Self-Touring NV tries to make differentiated products from outdoor, hardcore off-road and other life scenarios.
The product experience is not different, and the number of channels will become the key to determining the winner or loser in the competition. However, the ideal of having a first-mover advantage has already taken advantage in terms of channels.
According to ideal official data, as of February 28, 2022, ideal automobile has 220 retail centers in the country, covering 105 cities; 279 after-sales maintenance centers and authorized sheet metal spray centers, covering 204 cities. Among the new forces, the closest is the M5, in the official report, the delivery on March 4, 2022 in 36 cities, more than 100 Huawei user centers synchronously launched, despite this, the number of channels is still much less than ideal. As of November 30, 2011, only 37 directly operated stores had been opened in 22 cities across the country, which was a big gap. Although each company is speeding up the pace of opening stores, but the excellent position of key cities, almost all of them are occupied by the first mover, in the survey, "new entropy" found that the exhibition hall of Lantu FREE is almost on the second floor or higher of the mall, or a relatively partial position, which is a certain drag on brand promotion.
In addition to the disadvantage of the number of channels, the strength of ideal ONE for the new forces is also reflected in its huge cumulative delivery number, according to the ideal ONE official display, as of February 2022, the ideal ONE cumulative delivery volume has reached 144,770 vehicles. The huge delivery volume means more user feedback and car data collection, which means that in the next intelligent competition, the ideal still occupies the first-mover advantage. At the same time, if you want to replicate the ideal success, the road of new car companies is doomed to bumps.
The oppression of giants and the countdown to listing
In February 2021, Li wanted to release an internal letter to all employees of Ideal Automobile, in which he talked about his vision for Ideal Automobile in 2025: "Only in 2025 will we get more than 20% of the market share of China's intelligent electric vehicles and become a recognized head enterprise, so that we can have enough talent, technology and capital reserves to participate in the more fierce global market competition in 2030." ”
The wording here is full of crisis, and this 2025 timetable will actually be more stringent for most of the new power car companies that want to survive. From the current point of view, there are many competitors, and the same medium-sized SUV has the listing of two blockbuster models, Weilai ES7 and Xiaopeng G9.
In terms of technology, these two cars cover many of today's technical highlights. According to the information on the official website of Xiaopeng G9, the G9 will be equipped with x-eea 3.0 electronic and electrical architecture, as well as XPower 3.0 power system, at the same time, Xiaopeng G9 will become the first mass production vehicle based on the 800v high-voltage SiC platform in China. The official claim is that as long as the charge takes 5 minutes, it can replenish the endurance of 200km.
According to Weilai co-founder Qin Lihong, ES7 is the previously rumored Gemini (Gemini), based on the Weilai NT2.0 platform, the intelligent level of ES7 may be significantly improved compared to Weilai's current SUV products.
The advantages of WEILAI and Xiaopeng are not only in technology, but also in the parallel production of previous models, which will greatly reduce costs, at the same time, the support of financing, the accumulation of data and the advantages of marketing networks are also the chips for Weilai and Xiaopeng to win.
In addition to the challenge of domestic pure electricity, the new actions of foreign giants will also become another threat to the new program increase. Tesla, which focuses on the 4680 battery, has successfully started trial production at the Shangguan Xuan Berlin Gigafactory on Twitter. Deliveries of the new Tesla with 4680 batteries are expected to begin in the second half of the year, along with a body with integrated die-casting technology, which will enable higher endurance and cheaper prices. However, not only the new recruits, but also the pressure of the three Wei Xiaoli families will gradually increase.
Not only that, Ford recently officially announced that it will split its electric vehicle and fuel vehicle business into two separate divisions, Ford Model E and Ford Blue, and said that by 2026, it will increase spending on electric vehicles from $30 billion to $50 billion.
In the face of so much pressure, the new forces of the extender want to break through the siege, and stable delivery volume and listing are the first hurdles.
Reviewing history, Wei Xiaoli almost always completed the listing within one year after the delivery of the first model, and the success of the listing means more sufficient bullets, while accumulating capital for subsequent development. Such standards can only be faster in today's more competitive world.
According to the data of the Association of Passenger Transporters, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in 2022 has reached 21%, which means that the remaining tickets have been counted.