On March 18, zero-run cars officially announced that the price of its pure electric SUV C11 increased, an increase of 20,000-30,000 yuan.
On March 19, Euler Automobile officially announced that it will adjust the price of the 2022 Euler Good Cat, with an increase of 6,000-7,000 yuan.
On March 21, Xiaopeng Automobile began to increase the price of the whole series, and the general increase was about 10,100-20,000 yuan...
In the week from March 14 to 20, nine new energy vehicle companies, including Tesla, BYD, WM Motors, Xiaopeng Motors, Nezha Automobile, and Zero-run Automobile, announced price increases one after another.
For this wave of price increases at the end of March, some netizens joked: "After 315 speaking is hard! ”
After the laughter, Xiaobian found that compared with traditional car companies, the price increase of new forces on the same level of products is always higher.
The compact SUV Geometry C, which also has a 400 km endurance model, and the WM EX5: the Geometric C rose by 6,000 yuan, while the WM EX5 rose by 7,000 yuan.
The A-class sedan WITH 500 km endurance model BYD Qin PLUS EV and Xiaopeng P5: Qin PLUS EV rose by 6,000 yuan, and Xiaopeng P5 rose by more than 10,000 yuan.
This can't help but make people wonder: why are the new forces more confident in the matter of price increases?
Smaller volumes – greater supply pressure
Compared with the traditional car companies that have been precipitated in the industry for many years, the current number of new forces is relatively small.
The difference in volume has also led to greater supply pressure faced by new forces.
On the supply chain issue, for traditional car companies with large sales and sufficient funds, there are naturally stronger bargaining power and higher supply priorities for suppliers, and there are also car companies like BYD that have built their own supply chains.
In the second half of last year, in the case of the automotive industry collectively facing a "chip shortage", many established car companies can still guarantee the chip supply of their hot-selling models. For the new forces, in the same period, they are facing the "collective dud" of production and delivery.
The recent short-term surge in the prices of raw materials such as cobalt, nickel and lithium and bullish bullishness have changed the bargaining mechanism of many battery suppliers from the original long-term lock price to quarterly bargaining, which has further aggravated the supply pressure faced by new forces.
In this way, for the new forces that are already in a weak position in the supply chain, a higher price increase is indeed a "helpless move".
Higher positioning – more cost variation
Compared with traditional brands, the new forces have the advantage of being intelligent, high-quality and high-end in brand positioning.
As an example, in the intelligent configuration, in addition to the entry-level model, all series are equipped with 12 wave radar, 5 millimeter wave radar, 13 cameras, and the high-end version can also use lidar to successively achieve high-level intelligent auxiliary driving that opens up urban scenes, such as the first mass-produced and cross-floor parking function that has just been launched, and the upcoming urban NGP in the future.
For BYD Qin PLUS EV, intelligence has never been BYD's strength, the official publicity does not deliberately mention the number of radars, and in the top version of Qin PLUS EV, it is only equipped with L2 level auxiliary driving.
The rich intelligent configuration has also raised the price of Xiaopeng P5 by a notch, and the overall price has reached 177,900-242,900, while the price of Qin PLUS EV is 132,800-16.98 million.
However, in the current tight supply environment, the richer intelligent configuration on the new power models has also correspondingly amplified the cost increase, which is also the price borne by the high-end brand of the new force.
The market is good - unstoppable new energy hot sales
According to the supply and demand theory of economics, rising prices often mean multidimensional declines in demand. In the current new energy market, this theory has not worked.
According to gazing aviation Aeon's public information, at the February investor meeting, Aeon's company executives were also worried about the negative impact of rising prices on sales. However, according to the actual market reaction in March, 3-5 working days after the price increase, the order volume of Aean returned to the level before the price adjustment.
Coincidentally, after WM Motors announced the price adjustment last week, its 4S store also ushered in a hot sales scene.
According to Xiaobian's contact with the local WM 4S store, the sales staff said: "Since the price increase of WM only took effect at the end of the month (March 28), customers who paid the deposit before this can still place orders at the price before the price increase. So this week there are a lot more customers coming to our store to see the car than before, and last week we completed good sales. ”
From this point of view, the reason why the overall increase in the price of new energy vehicles in this round has not caused a large-scale decline in sales is because consumers have a strong ability to bear prices, and the price increase has not broken through consumers' expectations.
This wave of price increases, which began in January, has not been able to break the overall good trend of the new energy market this year.
According to data from the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, the sales volume of new energy passenger vehicles in January and February this year reached 624,000 units, an increase of 153.2% year-on-year.
According to the forecast of the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, the cumulative sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China will exceed 5.5 million units in 2022, and the penetration rate will reach about 25%.
It seems that in the tide of the transformation of the domestic automobile market to electrification, it is difficult for new energy manufacturers, including new forces, to resist the market's enthusiasm for new energy even if they have repeatedly announced price increases.
summary
From January to February this year, in order to cope with the decline of new energy subsidies of about 5,000 yuan, in addition to Tesla's increase of more than 10,000 yuan, many independent brands such as BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Xiaopeng Automobile, Haima Automobile and so on have worked hard to control the increase in the range of 2,000 to 5,000 yuan, and the price increase has not yet been fully rolled out.
The hot sales of new energy in January and February prove that this wave of small-scale price testing is successful, combined with the current soaring price of raw materials, it is logical that many new energy vehicle companies, including new forces, will increase prices on a large scale in March.
In the first half of this year, the increase in costs brought about by the rising prices of commodities and key raw materials is difficult to usher in an inflection point in the short term, and the epidemic and "lack of core" problems faced by the automotive industry last year have not been solved this year. In 2022, as the last year of the implementation of the new energy state subsidy and purchase tax exemption policy, the closure of the policy window will further stimulate the consumer market.
In the context of such a mismatch between supply and demand, Xiaobian predicts that this year's new energy vehicle market will also carry out multiple rounds of rise.