On the morning of March 23, ideal auto officials announced today that it will adjust the price of its new car ideal ONE currently on sale, and the national unified retail price will be adjusted to 349,800 yuan, an increase of 11,800 yuan compared with the current 338,000 yuan.
Ideally, the price adjustment will take effect at 0:00 on April 1, 2022, and users who pay deposits before that will not be affected, and the reason for the price increase is due to the impact of the continuous sharp rise in upstream raw materials.
At present, the ideal ONE model on sale is still the 2021 model launched in May last year, and the new car is equipped with a full-stack self-developed ideal AD advanced driver assistance system, equipped with a three-in-one drive motor, and the comprehensive cruising range can reach 1080km.
It is worth mentioning that a few days ago, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Auto, posted some views on the current price increase of new energy vehicles on his personal social platform. He said that the increase in battery costs in the second quarter is very outrageous, and at present, the battery manufacturers have contracted to determine the brand of the price increase of the second battery, and basically announced the price increase immediately. And the price has not yet increased, most of the price increase has not been negotiated, waiting for the negotiation will generally increase the price immediately.
Following the official price increases announced by some new energy vehicle companies in January and February 2022, since March this year, the domestic new energy vehicle market has ushered in the second wave of price increases. The head of the new force car companies Tesla, Xiaopeng, Nezha, etc. have carried out multiple rounds of price increases; among traditional car companies, BYD, Great Wall, Chery, etc. have also adjusted the prices of their new energy vehicle products.
The price increase of this round of new energy vehicles is mainly due to the sharp rise in the prices of the three most critical metals in the power battery - lithium, nickel and cobalt. Since December 21 last year, the market price of nickel has risen from less than 150,000 yuan / ton to a maximum of more than 300,000 yuan / ton; while the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has exceeded 500,000 yuan / ton, which is several times that of 100,000 yuan / ton in a year and a half.
The price of upstream raw materials has risen sharply, and the pressure on lithium batteries is obvious. At this time, oil prices are rising, and the continuous optimization of new energy policies and products has promoted the rapid development of downstream new energy vehicles, which has aggravated the contradiction between supply and demand, and the cost increase and the price increase of new cars have become logical.
According to the well-known car critic YYP Yan Yupeng, the current 30kWh capacity of lithium batteries, car companies procurement costs have increased from 20,000 yuan to nearly 40,000 yuan, the increase in battery costs has exceeded expectations.
At present, the new energy brands that have not yet been adjusted are only new energy models with relatively high prices and higher gross profits of bicycles, such as Gaohe and Weilai, as well as traditional car companies such as Hongqi and "BBA".