The continuous price increase notice of electric vehicles has made many consumers love and hate.
Tesla has raised its price three times this year. On March 17, the Tesla Model Y rear-wheel drive version increased its price by 15,000. On March 15, the price of four domestic Tess models was raised, ranging from 14,200 yuan to 20,000 yuan. As recently as March 10, Tesla has raised the average price of some models by 10,000 yuan.
At the time of Tesla's price increase, BYD is not idle, and has also opened the second round of price adjustment action this year.
At 23:50 on the evening of March 15, BYD Automobile's official Weibo released a poster with the content of "Explanation on the Price Adjustment of Models", specifically "Affected by the continuous sharp rise in raw material prices, BYD Automobile will adjust the official guidance price of new energy models related to Dynasty Network and Ocean Network, with an increase of 3,000-6,000 yuan, for details, please consult the local dealers of BYD Automobile." ”
In addition, the price adjustment will take effect from 00:00 on March 16, and customers who have signed a deposit before that will not be affected by this price adjustment.
BYD's "midnight price increase" action has received a bunch of consumer reviews with very different attitudes.
"Ten minutes in advance, is there no pain in conscience?"
"I was thinking of buying a car on Saturday on the 19th, forget it, I don't buy BYD."
"Now the price of oil has risen so much, raw materials have also risen, the price has risen by several thousand, it is still very thick, fuel vehicles are almost unable to drive, or new energy incense."
Among them, the comment with the highest number of likes in the comment area was "The upstream material has risen too much, compared with a special 110,000 rise, BYD's thousands of thousands of rises, it is still quite thick." Those who bought early earned, those who did not buy quickly bought, and new energy vehicles will continue to increase in price this year. ”
The first price increase was due to the rise in raw material prices and the decline in subsidies for new energy vehicles, and the price increase ranged from 1,000 to 7,000 yuan. The second price adjustment is still the continuous rise in raw material prices, and the starting point of the price increase range is higher.
Judging from the reviews, consumers have mixed prices for BYD and Tesla. Behind the price increase, everyone is re-examining the cost performance of new energy vehicles.
Soaring raw materials
The price increase of new energy vehicles does not seem to have come to an end.
According to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of this year, more than 20 new energy vehicle companies and nearly 40 models have announced price increases. The reason for the price increase, in addition to the decline of subsidies for new energy vehicles, another major factor is the rise in raw material prices.
How much impact does the rise in raw material prices have on the price of the whole vehicle?
Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles are more dependent on materials such as nickel, lithium, cobalt and silicon-based chips. This is also the culprit that has led to the increase in the price of new energy vehicles.
Public data shows that the price of lithium carbonate rose to 300,000 yuan / ton in January this year, while the quotation in January last year was about 50,000 yuan / ton. In March this year, the price exceeded 500,000 yuan / ton. In addition, the east China market price of cobalt rose from less than 300,000 yuan / ton at the beginning of 2021 to 566,700 yuan / ton on March 15. According to the quotation on March 16, the latest price of nickel is 227,550 yuan / ton, and the price of nickel has increased by 36.64% in the past 60 days.
The impact of soaring raw material prices is rapidly transmitted to the consumer terminal market.
"We probably made a calculation, the price increase of 100,000 yuan of lithium carbonate, for the average model may be about 150,000 yuan, its cost impact is about 2,300 yuan." Xiong Yuzhou, fund manager of Harvest New Energy New Materials Equity Fund, said.
Another battery material industry insider said, "According to the calculation, each ton of nickel rose by 100,000 yuan to the battery factory with 50 kWh of electricity costs, at least 3, 4,000 yuan or more, high-end models of bicycle costs rose more." ”
Obviously, the longer the mileage and the higher the energy density of the power battery, the higher the cost growth rate will also be higher.
Who made the money?
The collective price of new energy vehicles has increased, the cost of consumer car purchase has increased, and who has earned the money?
"Counting the subsidies, the Euler Black Cat is now selling a machine and losing ten thousand." This is the reason given when Euler discontinued the production of the black and white cat models in February this year. And the relevant person in charge of Euler said that "the problems encountered by the Euler brand are also risks faced by the industry. ”
At the same time that Euler stopped selling black and white cats, Geely Geometry EX3 Kung Fu Niu and Changan Ben Ben E-Star were all suspended. In addition, more than 20 car companies, including Tesla, BYD, Xiaopeng and so on, have announced price increases for their new energy vehicles.
"The price of cobalt and nickel has risen so much, if the car does not raise the price, the whole electric vehicle will not have much profit." Liu Ke, dean of the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Southern University of Science and Technology, dean of the Clean Energy Research Institute and chair professor of the Department of Chemistry, said.
Obviously, behind the price increase of car companies, they are facing the pressure of compressed profit margins.
Public information shows that BYD's operating income in the third quarter of 2021 was 54.306 billion yuan, an increase of 21.98% year-on-year. Net profit was 1.269 billion yuan, down 27.5% year-on-year. Obviously, from BYD's financial report data, it can be seen that the growth of net profit has not increased with the growth of operating income.
In addition, in the third quarter of last year, Weilai's financial report showed that its revenue was 9.81 billion yuan, an increase of 116% year-on-year, and a net loss of 835.3 million yuan, down 20.2% year-on-year and 42.3% month-on-month. Although WEILAI's loss in the third quarter of last year declined year-on-year, the amount of loss continued to expand compared with the second quarter.
For car companies, although new energy sales are rising, money seems to be getting harder and harder to earn.
But for upstream raw material suppliers, last year was a bumper year.
On March 14, Ganfeng Lithium announced its 2021 performance report and the business status of the first two months of 2022. According to the financial report, Ganfeng Lithium achieved revenue of 11.162 billion yuan and net profit of 5.175 billion yuan in 2021. From January to February 2022, the company achieved operating income of about 3.6 billion yuan, deducting non-net profit of 1.8 billion yuan, an increase of about 1,000% year-on-year.
From the data, it can be seen that the net profit of Ganfeng Lithium in the first two months of this year was about 35% of the net profit of the whole year last year.
In addition, the forecast released by Huayou Cobalt at the beginning of the year shows that it is expected to achieve a net profit of 3.700 billion yuan to 4.200 billion yuan in 2021, and the net profit will increase by 217.64% to 260.56% year-on-year.
Ronbay Technology, which has a high nickel cathode materials business, released an annual performance report on February 24, showing that the operating income in 2021 was 10.464 billion yuan, an increase of 175.75% year-on-year; the deduction of non-net profit was 814 million yuan, an increase of 408.01% year-on-year.
Of course, in addition to raw material processing suppliers, last year also made a lot of money from raw material sellers. However, raw material resources such as nickel, cobalt and lithium are mainly stored in countries such as Congo and Russia, so for China, which has the largest sales volume of new energy vehicles in the world, the fluctuation of new energy vehicle prices is completely affected by the upstream supply chain.
Do electric vehicles still have advantages?
"This year's new energy vehicle market is in good condition, and there will be car companies that announce price increases next." Cui Dongshu thinks.
For the continuous price increase, an industry insider believes that "there is no profit in new energy vehicles without price increases, and more price increases will definitely inhibit consumer demand." Some pessimists even said that "electric vehicles have no future", while Liu Ke believes that "the price increase of electric vehicles is good for hybrid vehicles, because hybrid vehicles use less battery power." ”
Last year, China's annual sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 3 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year. Caambiz predicts that sales of new energy vehicles will reach 5 million this year, an increase of 47% year-on-year.
Obviously, the industry believes that new energy vehicles will no longer soar like last year. One of the reasons behind this is the chip problem.
From the end of 2020, the lack of core problems has not been completely solved until now. As the main carrier of the development of automobile intelligence and electrification, although electric vehicles do not have core components such as traditional fuel vehicle engines and transmissions, chips have become core technical problems restricting their development.
Last year, due to the lack of cores, the price of chips rose sharply, which also brought cost pressure to car companies, and many car companies reduced the terminal preferential range and increased the cost of car purchases for consumers. AFS data shows that due to the shortage of chips in 2021, the cumulative production reduction of the global automotive market is about 10.2 million units.
Although the lack of cores has allowed car companies to reduce the production of new cars, the recent financial report data released by Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz shows that last year's net profit increased significantly.
However, for new energy vehicles, under the influence of multiple factors such as lack of cores, soaring raw materials, and subsidy policies for new energy vehicles, they are facing an even worse dilemma.
In addition, from the perspective of consumption, new energy vehicle insurance rose quietly at the beginning of this year.
The most obvious example is that an insurance salesman said that after the launch of new energy captive insurance, Tesla's bicycle premium rose by about 1,000 yuan.
"After the new energy vehicle switched to new energy exclusive insurance, the premium generally rose by about 20%." A person in charge of an insurance company revealed, "At present, the preferential coefficient of new energy vehicles is mostly 1, or even 1.1, that is to say, there is basically no discount, and it may also float, while traditional fuel vehicles can enjoy low discounts." ”
With the rise in insurance premiums, many consumers will think of spontaneous combustion and fire accidents in new energy vehicles that have attracted much attention in recent years. According to the analysis report released by China Insurance Credit, the insurance rate of household new energy vehicles is 11.7 percentage points higher than that of non-new energy vehicles, and the loss rate is 5.4 percentage points higher.
Obviously, the higher insurance rate and loss ratio are the reasons for the rise in the premium of new energy vehicles.
This time, the large-scale price increase of new energy vehicles will once again test the attractiveness of electric vehicles to consumers. In the market-oriented car buying environment, new energy vehicles seem to have once again come to a crossroads.