With the global "release of water" caused by the new crown epidemic, prices began to rise. At the same time, the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war has also caused the price of energy to rise, for us the most intuitive feeling is the continuous rise in domestic oil prices, which makes many car owners issue a "no oil to worry about" sigh, new energy vehicles naturally received more attention. However, with the continuous increase in sales of new energy vehicles, prices have also begun to rise, and some models have appeared to be difficult to find.
In addition to the reasons on the demand side, there are many reasons for the price increase of new energy vehicles, such as the soaring price of bulk commodities transmitted to the consumer side, the shock brought by the economic cycle, the chip crisis problem is still not lifted, etc., and the main reason is still caused by the "rise in raw material prices". Since last year, the price of raw materials for lithium, cobalt, nickel and other power batteries has risen sharply. Taking battery-grade lithium carbonate as an example, the current quotation per ton has exceeded 500,000 yuan, an increase of nearly 10 times year-on-year. If a pure electric vehicle with a battery capacity of 70 kWh is calculated, the cost of battery raw materials alone has risen by about 10,000 yuan.
Previously, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Association of Passenger Vehicles, said, "Before many car companies and battery suppliers locked in the annual supply agreement price is low, the pressure of car companies is not prominent, but some battery companies have changed the price negotiation rules this year, the price is negotiated quarterly, and there are price openings, so the pressure on car companies that sign new orders after the price increase of power batteries is very large, and the cost pressure can only be alleviated by price increases." ”
In about a week, Tesla, BYD, Xiaopeng Automobile, Nezha Automobile, Weima and other car companies have announced price increases. According to incomplete statistics, since entering March, more than 40 electric vehicles from nearly 20 new energy vehicle companies have announced price increases. Among them, Tesla's last two price increases are only 5 days apart, and the highest price increase of some models is about 30,000 yuan; BYD, WM, Xiaopeng Automobile, etc. are also the second price increase this year, and Xiaopeng Automobile in addition to announcing the price increase of some models, but also cut the rights and interests of owners such as 1,000 degrees of free charging.
On the one hand, the pressure brought about by the rising cost of raw materials, on the other hand, the continuous release of consumer demand, which was originally a good time for new energy vehicle companies to increase sales, now let them fall into an embarrassing situation. On March 17, Tesla's official website in China showed that the price of the rear-wheel drive Model Y was raised to 316,900 yuan, an increase of 15,000 yuan. It is worth noting that this is the third round of price increases made by Tesla China to its products in just seven days. Tesla can be so confident to open the "chase", lies in its brand premium ability, coupled with the strong demand of the market, so it has the confidence to stand up for product price increases first. In 2021, Tesla sales have reached 936,000 units, far ahead with nearly one million vehicles.
Compared with Tesla, which sells nearly one million vehicles a year in the world, the current sales volume of new energy automobile companies in mainland China is not large. Including the head enterprise "Wei Xiaoli", a new car-making force with good development momentum, although it has advanced into the monthly sales club of 10,000 vehicles, it still does not make money. From the perspective of product structure, the models that can "run" in China's new energy vehicle market are often A00-class and A0-class small electric vehicles, which provoke half of the new energy vehicle market. From the relevant data, in recent years, the average market share of small pure electric passenger cars has exceeded 40%. A generation of "net red god car" Wuling Hongguang MINI EV even surpassed Tesla at one time to become the sales king of new energy vehicles, and then like Chery Ant, Chery QQ Ice Cream, Baojun KiWi EV, Euler Good Cat and so on have achieved good market performance.
However, these small electric vehicles are relying on "volume with profit", because the pricing is not high, so the interest rate is also very limited, this wave of cost increases is bound to make their profits more thin, or even a loss of the situation, if the situation does not change, the next few days will become more difficult.
Therefore, we saw that Euler took the lead in holding back, and its black and white cats stopped receiving new orders last month. Dong Yudong, CEO of Euler Automobile, said that the two models of Euler Automobile have brought huge losses to the company. And more brands can only cope with the impact through price increases, such as Chery New Energy Small Ants and QQ Ice Cream, which were raised a week ago, with an amplitude ranging from 0.3-0.41 million yuan. On March 24, Wuling officially announced that it will raise the official guidance price of its hongguang MINIEV, Wuling NanoEV and Wuling Rongguang EV models, ranging from 4,000-8,000 yuan.
In the long run, in order to cope with the rise in costs, car companies must improve product technical indicators, which is obviously unbearable for small cars and mini cars. However, as far as the economic cycle rises and falls, in fact, there is no need to over-panic, according to the law of the market, the raw material price of power batteries will not always be at a high level "sideways", is bound to return to the rational side. For small and micro electric vehicle companies, now is indeed the most difficult time, we must do a good job of balancing in the case of huge changes in cost and price, and adhere to their own strategy and determination.
From the government level, in order to solve the current problem of rising raw material prices, in addition to moderately accelerating the development progress of domestic lithium, nickel and other energy metal resources, helping domestic enterprises to steadily open up foreign raw material supply channels, it is also necessary to strengthen the supply and demand docking of the upstream and downstream of the new energy vehicle industry chain. The upstream and downstream of the industrial chain should work together to share the impact of rising raw material prices. Only through this two-way effort can it be possible to usher in better development of new energy vehicles that are constantly emerging.