In February 2022, the proportion of new car sales of new energy vehicles in the passenger car market exceeded 20% again, and even in the off-season of absolute car purchases during the Spring Festival holiday, the sales volume of 246,000 new energy vehicles was higher than in any month before the arrival of the "Golden Nine Silver Ten" last year.
However, under the high sales of new energy vehicles, on the one hand, car companies face the supply and cost pressure of lack of core and less electricity, and the production capacity cannot reach the ideal state for a long time, on the other hand, consumers order new energy models, often need to wait for months. Behind the glamorous figures, the contradiction between supply and demand mismatch has emerged.
Previously, from policy to industry, the focus was on the demand for new energy vehicles. However, when the demand for new energy vehicles is activated, the pressure of the upstream industry is gradually highlighted, and the construction speed of raw material production capacity cannot catch up with the development speed of new energy vehicles, and the supply cannot link the demand. Coupled with the fact that some core raw materials mainly rely on imports, the domestic industry lacks international pricing power, and overseas suppliers have greatly increased the market's expectations for prices. Recently, new energy vehicle companies have raised prices, and some car companies have even raised prices several times in the short term, which fully proves that in addition to the use of such extreme measures, it is impossible to solve the mismatch between supply and demand in the short term.
But in turn, the recent international turmoil has led to a rapid rise in oil prices, a complete withdrawal of new energy subsidies next year, the withdrawal of some purchase restriction cities from the plug-in hybrid policy, and the bottom order before the price of new energy vehicles has risen, which is also hedging the negative impact of new energy vehicle price increases. At the same time, after years of cultivation of financial subsidies, it is difficult for the consumer market to accept that the price of new energy vehicles is significantly higher than that of fuel vehicles of the same level, so the new energy brands that dare to increase prices sharply come from the accumulation of early orders, the expectation of consumer psychological prices and the sustainability of subsequent orders.
In order to cope with supply chain fluctuations and cost increases, in addition to price increases, domestic leading new energy manufacturers are expected to take the following measures:
1. Reduce the cost of plug-in hybrid and penetrate into the mainstream fuel family car market
Plug-in hybrid models use fewer batteries, the cost is relatively controllable, and in the mainstream fuel family car market, the demand for a multi-purpose scene of one car also makes the overall competitiveness of pure electric vehicles weak. Therefore, the launch of plug-in hybrid models at the same price in the mainstream fuel household car market can enjoy the dividends of indicators and right of way in the final stage of the new energy policy on the one hand, and on the other hand, after the withdrawal of the new energy policy, as a hybrid vehicle, play the energy-saving and fuel-saving brand at the consumer end and alleviate the pressure of the average fuel consumption of enterprises at the production end.
From January to February this year, 51.5% of BYD's new energy vehicle sales came from plug-in hybrid models, an increase of nearly 8 percentage points over 2021. At present, in the hot list of vehicle-electric hybrid models, BYD occupies half of the country. From the perspective of product planning, BYD will continue to enrich the product line of plug-in hybrid and achieve comprehensive coverage in the middle market. Among the other three head independent car companies, Changan Automobile has taken the lead in following up the plug-in hybrid model in the market of more than 100,000 yuan, and the planning of Geely Automobile and Great Wall Motor for plug-in hybrid is top-down, and in the two main sales of Geely brand and Haval brand, the ordinary hybrid is the main push. In the mainstream household market, iterating fuel vehicles with plug-in hybrid models has extremely high requirements for vertical integration and cost control of the supply chain.
2. Force high-end line products, with brand premium and high gross profit to hedge the cost of rising
It is also one of the practices of domestic new energy manufacturers to limit production and stop production of low-end line products with low profitability, increase the resource tilt of high-profit models, and increase the proportion of sales of high-profit models. The typical case is Euler, on the one hand, stop receiving orders for black cats and white cats for two cars within 100,000, on the other hand, the starting price of ballet cats, lightning cats, punk cats and other models listed next may be slightly higher than public opinion expectations, matching high prices with higher values.
And Weilai, ideal, Xiaopeng and other high-end new forces, this year's product focus is also flagship models. In terms of technology, product strength and experience, there are strong dimensional advantages, which can attract price-insensitive people, so as to digest the cost pressure of the supply chain with brand premium and high gross profit.
However, for new energy brands that only have small and micro vehicles or small and micro vehicles as the main sales force, they can only reduce costs with scale and operational efficiency, and exchange high-priced users for moderate configuration and experience improvement, and insist on returning to normal in the supply chain.
3. Smooth the profit curve with the user's full life cycle business model
From the perspective of the whole life cycle of the user, the sale of the whole vehicle is one of the links, if the transaction with the user is only in this link, then in order to make a profit for the enterprise, it is necessary to move the price of the whole vehicle. On the contrary, if you can face users and generate transactions in the whole life cycle, then in addition to the price of the vehicle, there are many things that can be changed, so as to keep the profitability of the enterprise at a stable level under the premise that the price of the whole vehicle does not increase.
Therefore, it is expected that more new energy vehicle companies will expand their layout in the whole industry chain and fundamentally stimulate the suppressed desire to consume through contact with consumers in multiple links. Of course, the investment required for this layout is huge and long-term. On the one hand, the more the first layout, the more likely to eat the biggest dividend, as the industry rules-maker to occupy the consumer mind; but on the other hand, huge investment will also become an obstacle to most car companies in this unstable environment, thus inducing speculators to be a lower-cost follower.
Overall, supply chain instability and a sharp increase in costs will exacerbate the polarization of the new energy vehicle market, but will also spawn more new business models and user experiences.
