After announcing its unprecedented March sales figures, BYD suddenly threw another bombshell. Since March, BYD has stopped selling fuel vehicles, and will only produce and sell pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the future.
Although the market has expectations for BYD's comprehensive "electric shock", this news is still flashing the screen in an instant. In a trance, almost ten years ago, BYD boss Wang Chuanfu's phrase "build Tesla in minutes" is now going to become a reality. So far, BYD has become the second car company in the world besides Tesla to produce only new energy vehicles, and its sales are staggering (sales exceeded 100,000 units in March and reached 290,000 units in the first quarter).
For BYD, the choice has been made, that is, to bid farewell to fuel vehicles, exclusively for DM-i and pure electric vehicles, but for other car companies in addition to Tesla, for this big move released by BYD, is it with or without? This requires first figuring out one thing - why BYD can give up fuel vehicles.
Is the fuel car really a chicken rib?
At least from the perspective of sales figures, fuel vehicles are basically a kind of chicken ribs for BYD. For example, in march sales, the sales volume of pure electric vehicle models was 53664 units, while the sales of DM (BYD's "dual-mode" cars) models were 50674 units, a total of 104338 units, all of which were already plug-in hybrid or pure electric vehicles.
In other words, BYD has quietly completed the process of fuel vehicles - fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles in parallel - new energy vehicles - all new energy vehicles, completely turned into a new energy vehicle enterprise, and also holds a rare big killer similar to "blade battery" and "DM-i" in the industry.
There is also news that byselling more than 400,000 units for BYD's DM-i models, some owners have waited for months. This situation is already somewhat comparable to the grandeur of Tesla when it launched the Model 3 and the first pickup truck model.
The sales structure of existing models has completed the new energy, and there are still hundreds of thousands of undelivered orders in hand, and they are all pure electric or plug-in hybrids, and there are core technologies such as blade batteries in hand, which is the combined effect of these factors that makes BYD make the decision to stop producing fuel vehicles.
Perhaps there is another factor worth mentioning, that is, the soaring oil price - now the price of No. 92 gasoline has reached a height of 9 yuan / liter, the new crown epidemic is still raging around the world, the Russian-Ukrainian border conflict has not stopped, and the price of bulk commodities has not stopped, it is difficult to reduce oil prices in the short term, which means that consumers will continue to choose new energy vehicles including plug-in and mixing to reduce the cost of vehicle use, and will also make new energy vehicle companies such as BYD become worry-free for users.
In other words, BYD has taken almost all of its advantages in the field of new energy, and it has become logical to stop selling fuel vehicles - but can this really be done once and for all?
Can fuel vehicles be quickly replaced?
There's no one-size-fits-all thing in the world, and all factors are dynamically adjusting — including all the elements that make BYD's new energy vehicles suddenly hot.
The biggest reason why BYD's sales have soared is the unexpected increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles. According to the previous national plan, it was originally planned to achieve a penetration rate of about 20% around 2025, but judging from the annual sales performance of 3.52 million units in 2021, this process may be greatly accelerated.
The main reason for the acceleration of new energy is, first, in the context of "double carbon", more and more stringent environmental protection standards, promoting China, Europe and the United States to vigorously popularize new energy vehicle technology, and the other is the competition for industrial discourse. In the era of fuel vehicles, Europe and Japan and South Korea almost control the core technology of fuel vehicles, but in the era of new energy, China and the United States have become the commanding heights of global innovation, the third is global inflation expectations, resulting in a surge in consumer car costs, and new energy vehicles can reduce user costs; fourth, after more than ten years of cultivation, new energy has completed market education, consumer recognition has been greatly improved, and infrastructure including charging piles has also been greatly developed.
The difference between BYD and BYD is that its unique DM-i plug-in hybrid technology can not only solve short-distance travel in pure electric mode, but also solve the endurance problem of long-distance travel with a certain amount of fuel, so it has been highly recognized by the market, and consumers are also highly sought after.
But this does not cover all scenarios like fuel vehicles, and the most important point is that the pure electric mode of plug-in hybrid is also like the nominal endurance of pure electric vehicles, with great uncertainty. In northern China, where winters are generally cold, the pure electric model is actually a chicken rib.
The most important thing is the reliability issue. In the more than 100 years of its development, fuel vehicles have basically solved all the safety problems of the core system, and even in this case, large-scale recalls related to engines or transmissions are not uncommon, and plug-in hybrids actually have two systems, which will lead to a significant increase in failure rates. Once the vehicle cannot solve the safety problem, it will be a fatal hidden danger for long-term development.
And, of course, the blade battery, which is considered the safest and most proven power battery in the world. However, the popularity of blade batteries has not yet reached the same level as the use of dual-clutch transmissions in fuel vehicles, in other words, the current sample size of blade batteries is not enough to determine their absolute safety.
It is also worth mentioning that the current soaring oil prices are indeed good for the promotion of new energy vehicles, but oil prices will not always soar, and when oil prices are reduced, some people will re-choose fuel vehicles - as of now, fuel vehicles are still the most complete infrastructure, and there is no obstacle to use the model.
In other words, the gradual replacement of fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles is a certain trend, but this trend needs a process to achieve, BYD from a traditional fuel vehicle company to a new energy vehicle company itself is not wrong, but the time is too fast - it robs other car companies that have not yet fully developed new energy shares, and those shares will not always belong to BYD.
Want to be the second Tesla?
BYD's move to stop selling fuel vehicles will definitely cause a lot of commotion, and the biggest possibility is that although other car companies will not make the same specific move, they will also launch a more active new energy strategy in the shortest possible time. These include new car-making forces such as "Wei Xiaoli", as well as new players such as GAC Aean, Zhiji Automobile, and Jidu Automobile.
One of the most interesting questions is whether BYD can become the second Tesla - after all, the car company has also achieved comprehensive new energy and has decided not to produce fuel vehicles anymore - but from the chip in BYD's hands now, it is difficult to do like Tesla, hanging a number of new energy vehicle companies.
First of all, Tesla's brand status is still higher than BYD. Tesla cuts from the high-end market, and the price of its Roadster, Model S and other models is not comparable to BYD, and Tesla has also achieved high-end positioning of the brand with the help of these models. And BYD, although it has achieved the improvement of product positioning and price center, BYD is still a household brand that is biased towards the low-end market.
Second, Tesla's systematic competitive advantage is not comparable to BYD. Tesla has established a systematic competitiveness from the underlying chip to the top-level application, BYD's technical advantages are concentrated in the power battery, as well as IGBT and other links, considering that the core of this round of technological change in the automotive industry is intelligent driving, and BYD also needs to achieve this ability through NVIDIA, so it is obviously inferior to Tesla in this core technology.
Third, Tesla is a global company with giant factories in the United States, China and Europe, but BYD is only a Chinese company, and its passenger car business has not yet achieved tesla's global resource allocation capabilities.
The people evaluate the car
Although BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said more than a decade ago that "Tesla is built in minutes", in fact, UNTIL NOW BYD has not been able to build a Tesla.
By immediately stopping the sale of fuel vehicles, BYD can be said to have achieved its original intention - starting from the battery, but starting with the car, but in the end through the "core" of the power battery, coupled with other peripheral auxiliary businesses similar to IGBT, chip research and development, etc., it has turned itself into a pure new energy automobile enterprise, looking at the country and even the world, in addition to Tesla, it is difficult to find a company like BYD. This is a good thing, because there are world-class car companies such as BYD in the field of new energy, and they are still in the ascending period, which also provides a realistic development model for the transformation and upgrading of other companies in electrification.