After entering March, the new energy vehicle market can be described as "rising" thunderous, first Tesla, BYD, Nezha Automobile officially announced the price increase of its models, and then There are Xiaopeng Automobile, WM Automobile, Zero-run Cars, Geometric Cars, Euler Automobile, etc. Not to be left behind, they have announced price increases.
On March 23, Ideal Auto also announced on the official Weibo that its model Ideal ONE will increase in price on April 1, and the national unified retail price will be raised from the current 338,000 yuan to 349,800 yuan. Not only that, the most people-friendly SAIC-GM-Wuling Mini EV has also increased its price by thousands of yuan, which is no longer so grounded.
Before The end of March, nearly 20 new energy vehicle companies have issued price increase statements, involving nearly 40 models. People can't help but shout: "The second wave of new energy vehicle price increases is coming!" "And it's rising so violently, it's rising so hard.
1) Mineral prices soared, pushing up costs
The price increase of new energy vehicle terminals in March is mainly because the price of raw materials for power batteries has risen "too scary".
The raw materials for power batteries include metals such as nickel, cobalt, aluminum, and lithium, and the prices of these mineral raw materials are rising sharply because of increased demand and speculation factors. Domestic and international miners and speculators also want to take this opportunity to make a big profit and earn a dividend from the development of new energy vehicles.
Analysts at Wells Fargo pointed out that since the beginning of the year, the price of nickel in new energy vehicle power batteries has soared by 130%, while the prices of cobalt, lithium and aluminum have risen by 16% to 88% this year alone. It is no wonder that the rumors of "new energy vehicle companies selling one and losing one" are endless. 500,000 yuan a ton of lithium, 100,000 US dollars a ton of nickel, 568,000 yuan a ton of cobalt... Under various factors, the minerals of these elements have never felt so worth a hundred times.
In fact, with the soaring price of battery raw materials, power battery manufacturers like the Ningde era in order to ensure that the financial performance is good, maintain a high profit growth rate, then the pressure of rising power battery costs, naturally transmitted to new energy automobile enterprises, enterprises can not always lose money to earn, and finally by the consumer side to pay, it is also sooner or later.
Nowadays, whether it is a new car-making force or a traditional car company, they have announced the price increase of their new energy vehicles, which is a round of cost increase transmitted to the terminal, and the boots have landed.
What kind of impact will such a wide range of price increases have on the entire new energy automobile industry?
2) High-end Poly, low-end less loss
For high-end models such as Tesla Model 3, Model Y and Ideal ONE, due to their own technical and product advantages, the impact of price increases on sales is relatively small.
For example, Tesla China's Model Y began to raise prices in January this year, rising from 280,700 yuan to 301,800 yuan, an increase of 21,000 yuan, up 7.5%. Although the price increase is very large, according to the data released by the Passenger Car Market Information Association (PASSENGER CAR Market Information Joint Committee; CPCA), the sales volume of Tesla Model Y in February still reached 32,403 units, an increase of 599.85% year-on-year, down only 2.68% month-on-month, and also won the sales champion of the domestic SUV segment in February.
In the process of price increases, models with higher prices are mainly to ensure profit margins. Otherwise, the financial reports of companies such as Ideal Automobile may make investors unhappy. However, the problems faced by low-end new energy models are more complicated. In the two rounds of price increases in 2022, the proportion of low-end electric vehicle models involved in price increases is not small.
For example, in the first wave of price increases, wuling nano, which was originally priced less than 50,000 yuan, rose by 3,000 yuan, up 6%; Redding mango, which was originally priced less than 40,000 yuan, rose by 3,000 yuan, up 7.5%; and Wuling Rongguang EV, which was originally priced at 89,800 yuan, increased by 10,000 yuan, up 11.14%.
Geely Automobile's Geometry EX3 Kung Fu Cattle series also collectively increased its price by 7,000 yuan on March 1, up 11.9%.
However, the most powerful is BYD's Yuan Pro, which first raised its price from 79,800 yuan to 86,800 yuan in February this year; and then said in the "Explanation on Model Price Adjustment" released by the official in March that the price of YuanPro will rise by another 6,000 yuan.
Most of the low-end electric vehicle consumers are more sensitive to price changes, and rushing to increase prices may lead to a sharp decline in sales. So we see that low-end models that dare to increase prices generally sell better, while other low-end models often choose to limit production or even stop production.
More typically, Great Wall Motors Euler stopped selling black and white cats, two "cars" priced at less than 100,000 yuan. From the 2022 black and white cats listed on August 14, 2021, to the Announcement of the Suspension of Sale by Euler on February 14, 2022, this is only half a year in between. Such a short "life cycle" of "two cats" proves the dilemma of the current survival of low-end pure electric vehicle models.
Therefore, although these two rounds of price increases in 2022 will have little impact on the overall sales of new energy vehicles, the market share of low-end electric vehicles may be reduced to a certain extent. Many car companies that produce low-end new energy vehicles will most like Euler limit production or stop production, and may also start the journey of brand expansion like the launch of ballet cats, lightning cats, and punk cats, and strive to use high brand premiums to cope with increasing cost pressures.
In this way, the dumbbell structure of the new energy vehicle market (the sales volume of new energy high-end vehicles and low-end vehicles is relatively large, while the market share of mid-range models is not high) is expected to be improved. In the near future, there may be many excellent mid-range models.
Those cheap consumers may have to turn their eyes back to the old man's music.
3) The opportunity to insert and mix oil is coming?
Similar to the soaring price of power batteries, fuel vehicles have encountered easy to buy cars and expensive to refuel. The so-called "95 full, ruined.". At present, the price of No. 95 gasoline in all provinces across the country has exceeded 9 yuan / liter, and the price of No. 92 gasoline is also located at about 8.5 yuan / liter.
For pure trams, charging is cheap and buying a car is expensive. The price of popular models has risen a lot, not to mention, the cycle of waiting for the car is still long. Recently, many consumers have reported that after placing an order to buy a car, they have not been able to mention the car for a long time. A Shenzhen consumer reportedly booked a Song Plus DM-i in September last year and has not mentioned it yet. The Xiaopeng Automobile P5 also suffered a collective complaint because of the delay in delivery time.
Does this mean that the opportunity for "transitional models" has come? Or should the development of China's auto industry follow the normal order? The so-called cornering overtaking is not so easy, and it will rush out of the track if it is not good. Now, the price of various power battery raw materials has soared, to some extent, it is domestic and foreign suppliers, speculators, see china's electric vehicle market demand is strong, short supply in the short term, sitting on the ground from the beginning.
Therefore, the vast majority of Chinese auto companies have begun to set their sights on hybrid vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV) that belong to new energy sources. Judging from the sales data in recent months, IT seems that PHEV is about to usher in its own spring.
Since the first wave of price increases this year, the proportion of PHEV in new energy vehicles has been increasing. In January this year, the proportion of plug-and-mix in new energy vehicles was only 18.9%; by February, it had exceeded 20%, reaching 22.7%. The year-on-year increase in February also reached a staggering 350%.
In the context of soaring raw material prices for new energy vehicles and breakthrough of 9 yuan / liter of No. 95 gasoline, PHEV and pure trams are relatively less affected by the price increase of battery raw materials than pure trams; compared with fuel vehicles, the cost of fuel is lower. PhEV, which was originally sandwiched between electric and fuel, has now become "left and right".
Many car companies are paying attention to this model, such as BYD, Geely Automobile, Great Wall Motors and so on. Among them, 51.5% of BYD's new energy vehicle sales in January and February this year came from PHEV models, an increase of nearly 8 percentage points compared with the same period in 2021.
More importantly, the new generation of hybrid technology is now maturing.
In addition to BYD DM-i, the Great Wall Lemon Hybrid DHT, Geely Thor Hi · X and Chery Kunpeng DHT are also speeding up their time to market. Take the Gili Thor Hi For the X hybrid DHT Pro version, the combined fuel consumption of the Hoshikoshi L equipped with this hybrid technology is only 4.3L/100km.
However, the author believes that although the suitable PHEV user group has a tendency to expand, its growth space may be relatively limited.
First of all, from the perspective of the two new energy vehicle price increases in 2022, the price increase includes PHEV models. For example, the Roewe RX5 eMAX plug-in hybrid SUV of SAIC Automotive Group rose by 2,000 yuan in March; the price of the entire series of byBYD Automobile's Tang DM-i, Song Pro DM-i, Song PLUSDM-i, and Qin PLUS DM-i models was raised by 3,000 yuan in March; in terms of range increase, Ideal ONE also announced a price increase of more than 10,000 yuan on March 23.
In short, the pressure of rising costs of plug-in hybrid batteries, although not as good as pure trams, but also exists.
The second is the use of oil, usually, the "use strategy" of THE PHEV model is short-distance electricity and long-distance oil. Usually in the urban area rely on electricity drive, it is indeed fuel-efficient. However, long-distance driving, after the power is exhausted, in addition to the engine, but also to carry the motor, the heavy body makes the fuel consumption in the long distance is higher than the fuel vehicle.
Therefore, the author's point of view is that considering the restrictions of the car environment, coupled with the cancellation of the plug-in hybrid policy in some purchase-restricted cities, plug-in hybrid can indeed attract some pure electric and fuel vehicle consumers, but how much room for sales growth still needs to be observed.
Unlike PHEV, gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles (HEVs) are not on the list of these two price increases.
This is also easy to understand.
For the two price increases of new energy vehicles in 2022, the industry has always had the statement that "the first price increase is because of the subsidy decline, and the second price increase is because of the price increase of power batteries". On the one hand, the oil-mixed car is not much "cared for" by the policy, and the subsidy decline has basically no impact on it; on the other hand, the HEV battery is much smaller than the PHEV, and it is not affected by the rise in battery prices.
The original HEV has been trapped in the dilemma of "saving fuel without saving money". Now that oil prices have risen sharply, the advantages of fuel saving will be further magnified. In the context of the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations have not made actual progress, oil price correction still needs time, if the relevant car companies can seize the opportunity to launch several high-quality and inexpensive HEV models, this "transitional model" that has not been optimistic may be able to eat a considerable amount of fuel vehicle market share.