After January this year, the Volkswagen ID. series has spent a full sales year in the Chinese market.
How were Volkswagen ID sales last year? Under the influence of chips and the epidemic, the cumulative sales of the ID.series that have just entered the Chinese market in 2021 did not exceed 100,000 vehicles, and did not reach the sales target of that year. At the beginning of the new year, we ushered in the decline of new energy subsidies and the increase in battery prices, followed by a wave of price increases in pure electricity products.
Volkswagen ID products are also listed in this wave of price increases, but what we see in the terminal market is somewhat contrasting.
Price increases have become the norm, will the industry continue to rise?
In this round of new energy price increases, Tesla is the first to announce price increases in China's new energy market in 2022, and it is also a new energy vehicle company that has raised prices twice in 5 days in March.
Tesla raised the price of the Model 3 high-performance version and the Model Y long-endurance version/high-performance version by 10,000 on March 10. On March 15, Tesla's official website update showed that the Moedl Y long-endurance version and the high-performance version were raised by 20,000 yuan respectively; the Model 3 high-performance version was raised by 18,000 yuan; and the Moedl 3 standard version also increased by 14,000 yuan.
On the whole, within 5 days, tesla Model Y long-endurance version and high-performance version, respectively, the price increased by 30,000 yuan; model 3 high-performance version of the cumulative price increase of 28,000 yuan.
We magnify the reasons behind the price increase, the price increase is a global market adjustment, Tesla in China and the US market are also rising prices. Smooth out the logic, electric vehicle sales in recent years continue to rise, whether in the domestic market or overseas market has been in a growth trend, car companies to accelerate the transformation of pure electricity field, traditional car giants also joined the field of pure electricity; at that time, the battery that was barely enough, put it now seems more rare, especially battery raw materials.
When the market demand is greater than the supply, price increases are inevitable, even the car companies that lay out the lithium ore industry cannot avoid this wave of price increases, and have entered the second price adjustment this year. Even Tesla, whose gross profit margin has reached about 30%, cannot withstand the trend of rising prices of battery raw materials, rising twice in 5 days. 30% gross profit margin This is the gross profit margin after Tesla's sophisticated cost control, like the traditional car companies Toyota and Volkswagen are also around 19% and 17%.
Successive car companies have made price adjustments, which has led to a question of how long will the industry rise? First answer the first, the pure electric automobile industry still has room for price increases, under the premise that the chip problem has not been alleviated, and a wave of battery raw material prices have been added, and the price of new energy models has some room for improvement before the expansion of production capacity of battery companies. As for the limit of price increases, it will be directly linked to the cost of chips and raw materials.
In this context, mainstream companies are adjusting prices, but Volkswagen is operating in the opposite direction.
Volkswagen ID. Status quo, there are equity subsidies
Regarding the current situation of the Volkswagen ID. series end market, we went to FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen 4S stores on the afternoon of one working day this week to understand. Probably due to the reasons of the working day, the flow of customers in several stores is not much, and some of the sales staff of the Volkswagen ID. series in the store are still on vacation to find other employees in the store to receive.
The situation in the store is roughly as follows, the showroom is still dominated by fuel vehicles, the ID.series is mostly placed around the showroom, and the hot-selling fuel models are placed in the center of the showroom. Understanding the situation of several stores, if the sales of SAIC Volkswagen ID. series single store are good, there are about 20 cars in total; FAW-Volkswagen single store sales in a single month, the best situation is also within 30 units.
Taking the Beijing area as an example, several stores will not have too many inventory cars, even if you can see a large part of the ID.4 and part of the ID.6 inventory car in the parking lot, but the staff also said that these cars we can see are basically the vehicles ordered by customers to be delivered. There may be a certain amount of stock cars that can be sold, but the exact number of units is not accurate, and if you order a car, it is expected that there will be a car arriving in two weeks at the earliest. The volkswagen ID. series with better sales are ID.4 and ID.6, and SAIC Volkswagen's ID.3 is regarded as a product that is not easy to sell by the store staff, because the price of expensive cars is still small, but the other two in FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen sales are not bad.
Coming to the key link of this visit, is there any discount for the Volkswagen ID.series? This question is still a bit sensitive when asked in the dealer store, and it is "corrected" by the staff that this is a "limited-time right", and the specific explanation is that there may be no time-limited right after March or there will be adjustments.
SAIC Volkswagen's rights and interests subsidy, Volkswagen ID.4 X subsidy of 23,000 yuan, replacement subsidy of 6,000 yuan, Volkswagen ID.6 X subsidy of 21,000 yuan, replacement subsidy of 6,000 yuan. FAW-Volkswagen also has such subsidy policies in stores, but the intensity is not as high as SAIC Volkswagen, and the comprehensive subsidy is also between 22,000 and 27,000.
What else is worth seeing behind the insured price?
To summarize the content after visiting several stores, there are a small number of inventory cars that can be sold as existing cars; the time-limited subsidy policy is currently only a subsidy within March, and it is unknown whether there is any after that; the car pick-up cycle is about 2 weeks to 2 months (personalized customization); car users mostly buy with the family's N+1 car, and there are very few people who buy cars with oil labels; Beijing has begun to stock up on stock cars for the new indicators of electric vehicles in May.
Some people may wonder why the Volkswagen ID. series did not increase the price of 10,000 yuan like Tesla in this wave of price adjustment? The biggest difference between Volkswagen and the new car manufacturers is that it is a traditional car manufacturing company with a huge fuel vehicle market. The fuel vehicle segment is the main source of Volkswagen's profitability, with a profit after tax of 15.4 billion euros in 2021, relying on about 8.2 million fuel vehicles + about 450,000 electric vehicles worldwide.
Personally, I think that Volkswagen, which is new to the field of new energy, should not expect the Volkswagen ID. series to be profitable immediately except for the European market, but lay the foundation for a "good impression". The long-term goal of Volkswagen electrification should be on the models built with the SSP platform, which is expected to be around 2026, which is the key project of Volkswagen electrification. Now there is no rush to increase prices, and it can be understood that although the direct operation model has the initiative to adjust prices, it is not necessary to adjust prices because of the small sales scale, and it may have a good effect to continue to benefit consumers.
What is consumer demand for pure electric models? People who buy new energy vehicles are divided into two types, the first car at home and the Nth car at home, the common demand is cheap, one is to just need and the other is to keep the indicators vacant. Now the pricing of the Volkswagen ID. series is reasonable for volkswagen ID.4 and ID.6, and after counting subsidies, about 250,000 medium and high-end products can get Volkswagen ID.6. After the Volkswagen will be cheaper, wait until the Volkswagen CTC battery cell self-production, the cost of the saved parts in the large-scale mass production and loading, the cost advantage will be more obviously reflected in the terminal price.
This is not a good time for the Volkswagen ID series. Even though Volkswagen has a large part of the fuel vehicle base in the Chinese market, the people who exchange fuel vehicles for electric vehicles are still in the minority. Wait a few more years, wait until the software-driven SSP platform, standardized batteries, L4 level automatic driving, CARIAD software platform, and then Volkswagen's fuel vehicle chassis may be activated.