On the surface, the development of the mainland's new energy automobile industry has entered a new stage; in essence, the development of the mainland's new energy automobile industry has entered a deep-water area.
The theoretical support of the former is that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the sales of new energy vehicles in mainland China increased from 507,000 units in 2016 to 1.367 million units in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of 28%; at the beginning of the "14th Five-Year Plan", the mainland new energy automobile industry handed over a more beautiful answer sheet, and the production and sales of new energy vehicles in 2021 both exceeded 3.5 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year. Production and sales ranked first in the world for seven consecutive years, with a cumulative promotion volume of more than 9 million vehicles. The ambition of the data exhibition is full of vitality, according to which the development of the mainland new energy automobile industry has entered a new stage of large-scale and rapid development.
The reality of the latter is that subsidies will be completely withdrawn next year; supplemented by the soaring rise of raw materials, new energy vehicles followed by price increases; the international situation is turbulent, chip shortages, and new energy vehicles are difficult to pick up...
If you add the clichéd battery safety issues, battery life anxiety problems, charging energy supplement problems and some emerging motor damage problems, OTA upgrade lock problems, upgrade and replacement problems, driving failure problems, charging compatibility problems, winter endurance shrinkage problems, vehicle failure problems, etc., leading to new energy vehicles becoming the hardest hit area of user complaints, because of the vital interests of consumers, often the perception will be more obvious, therefore, not only to ask, can new energy vehicles still be bought?
Of course, the reasons for the above problems are various, but in the end it is nothing more than external and internal factors, and the external factors are uncontrollable, and consumers can understand them; the internal factors are mostly new energy vehicle companies themselves "demon", which is unforgivable, and consumers need to use legal weapons and public opinion pressure to get justice for themselves.
However, considering the cost, energy, strength and many unpredictable risks, consumers often do not have sufficient confidence in this protracted war of attrition; if they can further enhance consumer discourse power, improve efficiency and crackdown at the legal level, then there may not be consumers who think they are unlucky because they "can't twist their arms and thighs". However, today we only talk about the problem of the collective price increase and difficulty of lifting electric vehicles due to external factors, and try to sort out the logical relationship for consumers' reference.
Presumably, many people understand that the domestic new energy automobile industry can have today's scale and level, mainly thanks to the "five major protectors": subsidies, licenses, right of way, tax exemption, and double points. Among them, financial subsidies and consumer car purchases are the most closely related, but financial subsidies are not indefinite, nor are they available, but after a round of reduction and retreat, from the barbaric stage of "60,000 pieces of car supplementation" 10 years ago, to the highest only 12,600 yuan (with a range of more than 400km pure electric vehicles) this year, next year will be completely cleared, and financial subsidies will officially become history.
However, the good news is that there is no upper limit on the scale of financial subsidies this year (2 million in 2021), which means that capable new energy vehicle companies can build it, sell as much as they want, and expand the scale of subsidies, which will also be the last carnival of new energy vehicles stepping on the policy.
The first reaction brought about by the subsidy decline is the price increase of the product, supplemented by the tight supply of chips, the price increase of raw materials, the lack of battery production capacity and many other problems, the cost of car purchase is bound to be passed on to the consumer, after all, the car companies also have to survive, so, from the end of 2021, the price increase in the new energy field is higher than a wave, and Tesla, from November last year to date, has completed four rounds of price increases, the last two are only 5 days apart, is the most active price increase in new energy enterprises.
In contrast, Chinese brand new energy vehicle companies were initially hard to carry, and then they really couldn't hold back, either directly increasing prices, or roundabout price increases (through price changes, configuration adjustments, disguised price increases), or stopping receiving orders. Up to now, most of the new energy vehicle companies in the domestic market have completed price increases, with price increases as low as 1,000 yuan and as high as 20,000+, and it is roughly estimated that the average price increase of this round is more than 5,000-7,000 yuan.
To tell the truth, the price increase of new energy vehicles is mostly out of helplessness, subsidy decline is only one aspect, new energy credits are not worth it can be endured, but the soaring of raw materials can not be ignored. We take the ternary lithium battery as an example, as the core raw material of the cathode, the battery-grade lithium carbonate, the price last year was 50,000 yuan / ton, and by March 7, it has soared to 502,500 yuan / ton, an increase of up to 510%!
And not only lithium carbonate, the price of other raw materials for power batteries is also spiraling out of control, statistics show that from January 2020 to January 2022, battery-grade cobalt, nickel sulfate, electrolyte rose by 119%, 55% and 190% respectively... Converted to the cost of new energy vehicles, a rough estimate, only lithium carbonate, the cost of pure electric vehicle batteries with a battery capacity of 30kWh will rise by 7000-9000 yuan, if coupled with the cost of other raw materials, the above mentioned new energy vehicle price increase of 5000-7000 yuan is within a reasonable range.
The price of new energy vehicles has risen, consumers are bitter in their hearts, and the hearts of new energy vehicle companies are not a taste, after all, in the case of various "protectors" gradually fading, the current "wings" of new energy vehicles are not hard enough to be able to PK with the fuel vehicles that have been honed for a hundred years. Nowadays, it is also encountered by the lack of core in the industry and the big oscillation of rising prices, not only the law of buying cars that has been formed in the minds of consumers, "early purchase and early enjoyment, late purchase with discounts" has been overturned, and new energy vehicle companies must also accept the more stringent "torture" of the market and the torture of the times.
Not to end, the outstanding contradictions and problems in the new energy industry today also include: the demand of consumers and the lack of production capacity of new energy vehicles caused by the difficulty of lifting cars; the unstable international situation, resulting in the obstruction of resource circulation, or will further aggravate the risk of price increases. For example, because of the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the important raw materials in the automotive industry chain such as neon, palladium, nickel, aluminum, etc. have been seriously affected, LME nickel rose by 73.93%, the highest rose to 55,000 US dollars / ton, LME aluminum broke through 4020 US dollars / ton, refreshing the historical high, this crazy momentum, for the development of the entire new energy automobile industry, will have a huge impact.
And this magnitude of growth, even if the new energy vehicle companies have previously established cooperative relations with suppliers and signed supply contracts, it is almost impossible to digest the increased costs on their own, so the pressure can only be released in the terminal market.
At present, the problem of new energy vehicle price increases and difficulties in lifting cars will continue, which is definitely a bad thing for ordinary consumers, and can only be passively accepted by buying early. However, for the entire market, this will also play a role in "big waves and sand", eliminating a number of "loophole" products, leaving behind really powerful models, in the long run, this virtuous circle is a good thing for consumers.
At the same time, for new energy vehicle companies, it is also an opportunity to "remove the wucunjing", take the opportunity to clarify the product positioning, strengthen the construction of the supply chain system, and improve the ability to deal with risks. For example, more and more new energy vehicle companies and battery suppliers have been deeply bound, and advance payments have been paid in advance in order to get core components such as batteries earlier, cheaper and more stable. What's more, some new energy vehicle companies, such as Tesla, Great Wall, BYD, etc., personally went down to "hit the goods" and laid out the development of raw material resources such as lithium and nickel to cope with terminal costs and delivery pressures. It can be said that in order to smoothly deliver the car, the new energy vehicle company can also be regarded as a painstaking effort.
Therefore, in the face of the problem of new energy vehicle price increases and difficulties in lifting cars, new energy vehicle companies, in addition to making more efforts in the upstream of the industrial chain, should also strengthen effective communication with consumers at the sales terminal level, and cannot on the one hand allow consumers to actively book cars, book cars and cannot hand over cars, and give promises that are not fulfilled, resulting in intensification of contradictions between car owners and car dealers.
After all, sometimes the difficulties of car companies are not known to consumers, and consumers' demands car companies may not be able to see, so that on the one hand, prospective car owners are waiting in a constant wave of price increases, and on the other hand, new energy vehicle companies are doing everything possible to prevent losses caused by cost increases. No one is easy, so why bother with each other?
A little more communication, a little more understanding, I believe that the difficult days in front of us will always pass, and the new energy market will eventually become normal, we will wait and see.