"Harbor Business Observation" Wang Xinyi Tao Yuan
New energy vehicles have become the hottest industry in the market in recent years. According to the China Automobile Association, sales of new energy vehicles reached 334,000 units in February, up 184.3% year-on-year.
Whether it is traditional manufacturers or new energy forces, the confidence of the track that is rushing in makes the future prospects of new energy vehicles full of unlimited imagination.
According to the data released by the Association, the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles reached 21.8% in February, an increase of 13% compared with the 8.1% penetration rate in February 2021. In February, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in independent brands reached 41.9%, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in luxury cars reached 17.4%, while the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in mainstream joint venture brands was only 3.5%.
At the same time, some well-known entrepreneurs in other industries have also expressed great interest in this. In 2021, it was rumored that Lei Jun, the helmsman of the Xiaomi system, would enter new energy vehicles, and was finally confirmed: on September 1, Lei Jun announced the establishment of Xiaomi Automobile Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 10 billion yuan, and he personally served as a legal representative. At the two sessions of 2022 just held recently, Lei Jun's four proposals are also directly related to new energy vehicles.
On February 16 this year, Midea Group laid the foundation stone for the strategic new base project of new energy auto parts, and it is reported that the total investment of the project is about 11 billion yuan, of which the investment in fixed investment and production is about 6.5 billion yuan. The first phase of the project is planned to use 458 acres of land, which is located in Yuanmeng New District, Anqing City, Anhui Province.
Under the hot situation, the strong trend of the new energy automobile industry chain in the past two years, whether it is the primary and secondary markets, or the many discussions of consumers in the streets and alleys, no one can turn a blind eye to this.
However, it is also worth paying great attention to the fact that incidents such as "spontaneous combustion of automobiles, power locking, delayed delivery, and shrinkage of configurations" have also repeatedly appeared in front of the public, and safety and "disposable consumption" have also become the status quo of many complainers in this field.
According to data released by the State Administration for Market Regulation on March 11, in 2021, the mainland implemented a total of 232 car recalls, involving 8.736 million vehicles, an increase of 16.6% and 28.8% respectively over the previous year. Among them, 59 new energy vehicle recalls were implemented, involving 830,000 vehicles, accounting for 9.5% of the total number of recalled vehicles in the whole year; the number of new energy vehicle recalls and recalls increased by 31.1% and 75.9% over the previous year. There were 3,033 cases of defect clues reported by new energy vehicles, reflecting that power batteries, motors, and electronic control system problems accounted for 52.5% of the defect clues of new energy vehicles.
01
New energy vehicle delivery problems
"I just graduated from college and wanted to buy a scooter, but I didn't know how to drive, so I bought it if I liked it." When the newly graduated pony talked about the situation of buying the first car, he all showed regret, "The problem of the chip did not break out before buying, and now I think more and more that the booking at that time was too hasty." ”
At the end of October 2021, Xiaoma ordered an Euler Black Cat 351 Endurance Comfort Edition offline, recalling the details of the fixed car, Xiaoma mentioned that the sales had said that they could mention the car in about two or three months, and when they asked to fill in the delivery date on the car purchase contract, they were rejected, and the sales said either wait or don't buy, thinking about the need for a useless car in a short period of time, the pony chose "Wait and wait." Whoever ever wanted to wait, waited for nearly five months.
While waiting patiently, Xiaoma found that someone on other social software platforms seemed to be late than he ordered a car, but mentioned the car earlier, suspected of being opaque. When asked about rights protection, Xiao ma said that it was not so easy, he had spontaneously defended his rights with other car owners, joined the group chat of hundreds of people, but it was not smooth: "At that time, a sharing form was created, and the information of three hundred car owners was collected, including the contact information of the booking time, etc., but later there was a situation of tampering with the owner's information, the information was confused, and the 'inner ghost' appeared more than once during the rights protection period." ”
After many rights protection, Xiaoma finally waited for the result, the October order was not delivered to the New Year, continue to wait for delivery, will give 60 yuan × 7 days, a total of 420 yuan subsidies. Interestingly, at the same time that the pony could not pick up the car, the official Douyin live broadcast room of Euler promised: "Complete the car within 50 days after the verification, and pay a subsidy of 2,000 yuan overdue." ”
(Screenshot of Euler's official live broadcast room, image source: Little Red Book)
The sales do not recognize the commitment of the online live broadcast room, inform the pony, unwilling to accept 420 yuan compensation and do not want to wait for the delivery of the car, it is recommended to refund the deposit or reduce the version, and the cute pet version is replaced by the cute version. Simply put, it is to reduce the allocation without reducing the price. The pony, which had spent several months, chose to refund the deposit without any compensation.
The Euler brand belongs to Great Wall Motors (601633. SH, 02333.HK), which claims to be the first independent new energy vehicle brand among China's mainstream independent car companies.
Li Tianci, a partner at Guangdong Yue Qilan Law Firm and the chief lawyer in the field of civil and commercial affairs, told Harbor Business Observation: "The delivery date of the verbal promise is legally valid, and article 601 of the Civil Code stipulates that the seller shall deliver the subject matter in accordance with the agreed time. If a delivery period is agreed upon, the seller may deliver at any time within that delivery period. Therefore, if the car seller fails to deliver within the time limit, it constitutes a breach of contract, and the consumer can claim rights and interests in this regard, such as claiming compensation for the losses caused by the other party's delay in performance. ”
For the delivery problem, the CEO of the Euler brand responded: "The black and white cats stopped taking orders, not stopped production, and after the sharp rise in raw material prices, the loss of black cats exceeded 10,000 yuan." ”
Coincidentally, in recent times, new energy vehicles seem to be facing the problem of delivery. In February 2022, the owner of Nezha Vpro complained about the delivery problem, and in the same month, a number of consumers also complained on the multi-platform that the Xiaopeng P5 460E was not delivered on time.
Xiaopeng Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaopeng Automobile", 09868.HK, XPEV. US) responded: "The P5 460 order could not be delivered due to the impact of the epidemic and the industry is facing an extreme strain on the supply of core components. Users who have postponed delivery can choose to unsubscribe, reassign or continue to wait, there is currently no compensation plan. ”
It seems that consumers and capital markets have little confidence in Xiaopeng Motors. From July 7, 2021 to March 11, 2022, in the eight months since the listing of Xiaopeng Motors, the stock has fallen by 37.26%, and the stock price is HK$105.400, which is still quite a bit broken compared with last year's issue price of HK$165.
And in terms of legal operation, Xiaopeng Automobile still needs to pay more attention. According to Tianyancha data, on February 23, 2022, Beijing Xiaopeng Automobile Co., Ltd. was administratively punished for tax issues, with a penalty amount of 102,700 yuan. Harbor Business Watch contacted Xiaopeng Motors on related issues, but failed to get a response.
Yu Fenghui, an economist and new financial expert, told Harbor Business Observation: "Regarding the existing Wall Street-listed companies such as Xiaopeng, Weilai and Ideal in China, the stocks are indeed falling sharply. The main reasons include two aspects, one is that the United States is now more stringent on the disclosure requirements of Chinese stocks, and the other is that the domestic management and supervision of this new format is still very strict, so under the pressure of macro policies and the SEC in the United States, the internal and external environment is not good, and naturally there is a decline. ”
In general, the existing new energy automobile enterprises due to the shortage of chips, raw material prices increased, resulting in the failure to hand over the car, but also confirmed the fact that the company's chip reserves are insufficient, raw material reserves are insufficient, and risk estimation is not done.
02
Technology needs to be strengthened, how to ensure quality
If the price increase of materials and the shortage of chips are uncontrollable factors, which has led to problems in the delivery of new energy vehicles in recent times, then the mastery and quality of new energy vehicle publicity have always maintained the same heat, which is also the topic that consumers are most concerned about, and it also needs to be implemented with abundant capabilities that need to be improved.
Xiao Jie and Lei Lei, who are still struggling to defend their rights, are the owners of the good cats that were exposed to the "chip door" incident. "It wasn't until the chip wasn't in the right version that I remembered to buy a car contract, when the contract for signing and selling cars was taken back by the 4S store and only gave an invoice."
"Harbor Business Observation" learned that although euler good cat "chip door" has passed several months, and at that time Great Wall Motors proposed 10,000 yuan of compensation for charging rights and interests in cash, there are still many car owners who believe that the chip incident is a vehicle fraud and demand "one refund and three losses".
As of March 12, 2022, great wall motors were searched on the black cat complaint platform, and a total of 289 complaints were made, 194 of which had been replied to and 91 had been completed. There were 83 complaints in the last thirty days, and the main problems still focused on the non-delivery and quality of the car. Consumers "accumulate grievances", a number of Euler car owners told the "Harbor Business Observation" that the company eats ugly, regardless of production capacity when receiving orders, and after-sales is not well handled.
(Image source: Black Cat Complaint)
Euler, who calls himself "more in love with women", is losing trust among consumers. In the survey, Harbor Business Observation found that many consumers did go with good looks and trust in national brands. Pony said: "At that time, looking at the road was all this model, it just so happened that I didn't know how to drive, and I wanted to buy a small car to go." ”
From the perspective of financial data, Great Wall Motor's operating income in the first three quarters of 2021 was 90.797 billion yuan, an increase of 46.11% year-on-year, and net profit was 4.945 billion yuan, an increase of 91.13% year-on-year. As of the end of the third quarter of 2021, Great Wall Motor's sales expenses were 1.144 billion yuan, 2.444 billion yuan and 3.907 billion yuan, respectively, an increase of 161.1%, 126.9% and 71.1% year-on-year.
Also doubling marketing expenses is Weilai Automobile. From NIO Automobile (09866. HK，NIO. US) third quarter report, the third quarter net loss of 835 million yuan, the cost of sales of 7.812 billion yuan, an increase of 98.3% over the third quarter of 2020. In addition, sales, general and administrative expenses for the third quarter were $1,825 million, an increase of 94.1% over the third quarter of 2020.
Marketing publicity is inevitable, but if the product has no core competitiveness, or even no basic security guarantee, the consequences can be imagined. In recent years, the quality problems of new energy vehicles can be described as endless failures: charging failures, lack of power, virtual endurance, abnormal noise in the car, interconnection failures, body resonances and so on.
In March 2022, consumers launched a collective complaint on the black cat complaint platform, saying that after the first batch of 670s of Xiaopeng Automobile p7 was recalled, the battery life was locked for no reason, and the 80.3kw battery capacity could only be installed with about 70kw.
In the same month, the frequency of complaints by Changan car owners was quite high. On the black cat complaint platform, in the past thirty days, a search of Changan Automobile found that the number of complaints was as high as 263, with an average of 8 complaints per day. Such as: Changan Ben E-Star national version of the direction can not automatically return to the correct, Changan CS55 battery power loss is serious, at the Changan press conference, Changan Chairman Zhu Huarong promoted the UNIK has L3 automatic driving, APA6.0 automatic parking function, and the real car does not.
In February 2022, there were media reports that a Jiangsu car owner reported that the 2021 Nezha U Pro 400 endurance version he purchased officially claimed that the cruising range could reach 400 kilometers, but in fact the endurance was only 165 kilometers. It is almost 40% off the officially advertised mileage, and the mileage is seriously inflated.
In July 2021, taiyuan, Shanxi, had several incidents in which the Great Wall Euler iQ car spontaneously combusted while charging, and after the vehicle was recalled, it was complained by consumers that there was a suspicion of locking electricity, and the battery life was greatly reduced. Recently, the ideal ONE of the fire also appeared to spontaneously ignite after hitting the cement pier in the middle of the road.
"No diamonds, no porcelain work." When the technology is not mature enough, but the propaganda is exaggerated, it is easy to "eat its own fruit".
Li Tianci mentioned: "Article 9 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law stipulates that business operators shall not use advertising and other methods to make misleading false publicity about the quality, production composition, performance, use, producer, expiration date, and place of origin of goods. Advertising operators must not act, design, produce, or publish false advertisements with knowledge or should have known.
False or misleading commercial publicity on the sales status of goods, user evaluations, honors, etc., deceiving or misleading consumers, and helping other business operators to carry out false publicity by organizing false transactions and other means may be found to be false publicity. ”
Regarding the false or exaggerated publicity of new energy vehicles, Li Tianci said: "The use of advertising slogans that are explicitly prohibited by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology constitutes an act of unfair competition. Consumers can legitimately defend their rights in this regard, such as complaining to consumer associations, and caused losses can go through litigation procedures to seek compensation. The litigation period for compensation for personal injury caused by product defects is two years, and if ordinary procedures are applied, the trial shall generally be concluded within six months from the date of filing the case. ”
Similarly, the frequent occurrence of safety problems shows that new energy technology still has a lot of room for improvement. The lack of core components such as chips and critical materials for batteries will inevitably affect safety issues and delivery. After the rise in oil prices, it may also cause a large demand for new energy vehicles, and the guarantee of safety problems still needs to be polished from technology research and development.
The gross profit of scientific and technological research and development enterprises that master the core technology will generally be maintained at a high level. In terms of gross margin, Ideal Auto (02015. HK, LI.US) gross margin reached 23.3%, up 3.5% year-on-year; NIO's third-quarter gross margin was 20.3%, up 7.4% year-on-year; Xiaopeng Automobile's gross profit margin in the third quarter was the lowest at 14.4%, compared with 4.6% in the same period of 2020, up 9.8% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that although the gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Automobile has increased, it does not seem to have made money. Net profit for the third quarter of 2021 was -1.594 billion yuan, compared with a net profit of -1.149 billion yuan in the same period last year. From the perspective of R&D data, Xiaopeng Automobile invested 1.264 billion yuan in research and development in the third quarter, 864 million yuan in the second quarter, 535 million yuan in the first quarter, and the total R&D investment in the first three quarters was 2.663 billion yuan. High R & D investment, gross profit is inferior to the same industry, perhaps Xiaopeng Automobile's research and development capabilities still need to be optimized
"For manufacturers, competitors' confusing behavior, false publicity behavior, and unfair competition behavior will affect the development of enterprises, and at present, the awareness of consumer rights and interests protection is constantly increasing, and enterprises must go far and steady, not only to pay attention to protecting their own rights and interests, but also to take users as the center to protect the rights and interests of consumers." Li Tianci suggested so.
With the increasing attention of consumers to their own rights and interests, new energy vehicle companies can only come up with enough strength to stand in the industry, for enterprises, to ensure safety and quality as the fundamental, how to reduce subsidies, lack of materials is also a major problem. Harbor Business Watch will also continue to pay close attention to the industry. (In the text, Xiao Ma, Xiao Jie and Min Min are pseudonyms) (Produced by Harbor Finance)