This is an interlude, present, past and future.
Yuan Jiazhen: "In 1997, I heard that BYD was going to import electric vehicles for battery testing, so I asked General Manager Wang Chuanfu to come to Beijing to test domestic electric cars, and after comparing the performance and price of electric vehicles at home and abroad, he decided to buy a Beijing brand electric car, which became the first publicly sold electric vehicle in China."
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Left: Wang Chuanfu, Right: Yuan Jiazhen, background is BJ6490D purchased by Wang Chuanfu
That year, Yuan Jiazhen was the chief engineer of the Beijing Second Automobile Manufacturing Plant, leading the development of the BJ6490D pure electric vehicle, and Wang Chuanfu was the founder of BYD. In Yuan Lao's self-statement, we can know an interesting cold knowledge: Wang Chuanfu is China's first electric vehicle user. BYD first established contact with new energy vehicles much earlier than we expected, 25 years ago.
The reason for telling such a story is that on April 3, 2022, BYD issued an official announcement announcing that it would stop production of fuel vehicles from March 2022. That night, there was a problem on the Zhihu platform: "BYD suddenly announced the suspension of production of fuel vehicles, will this be a big era of new energy?" Will it bring about a tide of discontinued fuel vehicles?" For this question, I know that the focus of netizens' thinking is whether BYD's operation is natural or premature.
Indeed, in an era of automobile companies striding towards electrification, BYD is the first car company to complete the "discontinuation of fuel vehicles", and most people are still in the planning stage, perhaps 2025, perhaps 2030, anyway, everyone will leave some room for themselves to adapt.
Let's look at the actual situation first
A closer look at BYD's recent developments will reveal that they are ready for the suspension of fuel vehicles, and in the official release, BYD said that it will focus on the development of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the future. The day after announcing the suspension of production, BYD released its march 2022 sales list, with a total of 104338 vehicles sold, an increase of 160.9% year-on-year, of which 53,664 were pure electric vehicles, 50,674 plug-in hybrid models, and no pure fuel vehicle sales records.
Interestingly, looking at the news content on BYD's official website in the past five years, only the sales data of February and March of this year has been published, and no sales information has been released in the official channel before. February sales showed that BYD sold 87,473 new energy vehicles, an increase of 764.1% year-on-year. Only 2,795 pure-fuel vehicles were sold.
BYD's move conveys a key message to the outside world that BYD is better off without a fuel car.
IF YOU AREID IS HOLDING THE CURRENCY TO SEE BYD POTENTIAL USERS, YOU WILL FIND THAT THE WHOLE SERIES DM-I MODEL IS IN A STATE OF HARD TO FIND, AND THE MOST EXAGGERATED INFORMATION WE GET FROM DEALERS IS: If you order the car in October last year, I am afraid that you will not be able to get the DM-i model until May this year.
Presumably, the DM-i model becoming a blockbuster is one of the key factors driving BYD to cut off the fuel vehicle product line. Although TOD today can sell 100,000 yuan a month, it is bright and beautiful, but in the same period last year they were in the darkest hour. At that time, BYD's monthly sales volume was 20,695 units, which was very poor for a car company with an extremely complete product line, of which 10,123 new energy models were sold, and more than half of the sales came from fuel vehicles. Would BYD dare to cut off the fuel car in this situation?
In fact, the matter of cutting off fuel vehicles has long been laid out by BYD, and as early as 2019, BYD has adopted the product logic of pure electricity, DM plug-in hybrid, and fuel coexistence in all models. High-end models such as BYD Han completely abandon the fuel-powered form. Starting in 2020, BYD tries to compress the market space of its own fuel products, allowing users to shift their attention to DM models, and you will find that BYD's late fuel products have only one or two configurations to choose from, but it backfires.
Remember the "542" label on the original Tang DM, and the proud BYD even attached it directly to the fenders of the car. 5 represents 100 km/h within 5 seconds (in the state of abundant power), 4 represents four-wheel drive, and 2 represents comprehensive fuel consumption of 2L. There's nothing wrong with 5 and 4, but the fuel consumption of 2L really doesn't make sense.
The early NEDC working condition test fooled all plug-in hybrid models, the specific test process here will not be with you to talk about, the result is that the vast majority of plug-in hybrid models in the test can get about 2 liters of extremely low fuel consumption performance, but the actual working conditions and normal fuel vehicle performance is comparable.
In fact, Chinese consumers are like a mirror, the early BYD DM model is slightly more expensive than the fuel version of the model, and the experience upgrade brought by the price difference mainly exists in the performance level, for the consumer group that BYD locked into, whether the transaction is cost-effective or not, it needs to be carefully considered. Therefore, DM is completely irreplaceable for fuel products.
BYD released the new DM-i plug-in hybrid technology on January 11, 2021, which will be fully launched in mid-to-late 2021. BYD DM-i technology and their original DM plug-in hybrid technology is a qualitative change, in the DM-i model, users can use the same price to buy a higher efficiency, fuel consumption comparable to the performance of Japanese strong hybrid vehicles, while more powerful products, which is also a dimensional reduction blow for their own fuel vehicles.
In a sense, BYD has classified fuel vehicle users into the DM-i camp. In the middle and late period of 2021, BYD's fuel vehicle sales plummeted, and of the 740,000 units sold throughout the year, fuel vehicle sales accounted for only 100,000 units, and pure electric models and plug-in hybrid models truly achieved "two legs, walking together". Therefore, transferring production capacity to plug-in hybrid models and solving the backlog of orders in hand as soon as possible will help achieve a breakthrough in annual sales again this year.
New energy vehicles with China
BYD that grew up together
Going back to the story we told at the beginning, why did Wang Chuanfu buy an electric car in 1997 to do battery research? ATD, then a supplier of batteries for consumer electronics, had no reason to look at electric vehicles, which were still a non-existent market at the time.
"The Wind Is Blowing"
In China, national policy is a strong potential energy to promote the rapid development of an industry, and Wang Chuanfu was one of the first people to see the wind rise. Here I will give you an explanation of the background of the times.
In March 1986, the state proposed the "863 Plan" as the "National High-tech Research and Development Program". Its main purpose is to meet the severe challenges of the world's vigorous development of high and new technologies and the increasingly fierce international competition. New energy vehicles are also key projects in the 863 Plan.
We all know that every five years the country proposes an important development policy. In 1995, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China set the development of electric vehicles as a landing project in the Ninth Five-Year Plan, and the following year held an electric vehicle exhibition in Beijing, which was visited by li Peng, then premier of the country. The Beijing Motor BJ6490D purchased by Wang Chuanfu is the product of the "863 Plan", and the early leaders who took the lead in participating in the new energy development plan were all national car companies.
At the beginning of the 21st century, after more than ten years of preparation, China's new energy automobile industry began to bear fruit. In 2000, a Red Flag Mingshi was transformed into a hybrid model in the Guangdong New Energy Pilot Zone and appeared at the Beijing New Energy Auto Show the following year. In the same period, Dongfeng and Tongji University also pushed the product landing to the public vision, and private enterprises included Chery and Tianjin Qingyuan.
Many people are curious, what about our protagonist Wang Chuanfu? Obviously, BYD, which started with the battery business, should be the forerunner in the automotive energy revolution, and the battery companies will build cars in the current intelligent car era.
But the truth is always cruel, electric vehicles at that time was a yellow sorghum dream that all private car companies could not afford. Here is a paragraph of Teacher Yi ran's answer on the Zhihu platform.
As early as 2007, BYD had already imagined a beautiful electric vehicle use scenario like SolarCity in Musk's mind, why did it just take shape today? In fact, BYD is a car company with the dream of new energy vehicles. BYD was founded on February 2, 2003. In 2004, with the wave of new energy vehicle development, it launched a pure electric MPV model- BYD ET, which was unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show that year.
At the same time, BYD also launched a pure electric sedan EF3 that is infinitely close to mass production. These lesser-known models predate the BYD e6 and F3DM models that became known later.
In the face of the dream of 25 years ago, today's "discontinued fuel vehicle" is the first step taken by BYD, so "love" cannot generate electricity, and "money" is needed to generate electricity. When the BYD F3 runs through the streets of China, we always ridicule BYD with the "one corolla copy for ten years" stem. In fact, BYD is very difficult, electric vehicles at that time is a non-existent market, no matter how much investment can not splash, they have to start from scratch in the field of fuel vehicles, and learning is an indispensable process on the road to development.
Set sail again
Around 2010, BYD's self-developed DM hybrid technology was completed, and BYD's pure electric sedan e6 landed in the Chinese market in 2009. BYD has never given up research and development due to energy technology while maintaining the normal operation of the company through fuel vehicle products, and today, 12 years later, it has finally realized that the "two legs, walking together" of DM and EV.
In the new energy industry, BYD has achieved a high degree of integration of upstream, middle and downstream industries, and the entire industrial chain has formed a closed loop. In terms of battery materials, it covers lithium ore resources, batteries, motors, electronic controls, engines, and gearboxes, and carries out vehicle production.
In response to the chip problem, as early as 2009, BYD launched a plan for self-developed chips, after many iterations, at the end of 2021, it has achieved mass production of IGBT 5.0 technology, and BYD is the only car company in China with a complete industrial chain of IGBT. At the same time, BYD's self-developed MCU car specification-level intelligent control chip will also exceed 10 million fashion cars in 2021.
On March 9, 2020, BYD launched the "blade battery". From this moment on, BYD began to give full play to its advantages as a battery supplier. "Blade batteries" are known for their safety, and they combine long life and long battery life. According to market feedback, the sales growth of BYD's new energy models also reflects the recognition of this technology by users and consumers.
In terms of power batteries, BYD's layout is at the forefront of the world, according to data, BYD's 2022 power battery production capacity is expected to exceed 70GWh. In terms of power batteries, BYD has served dozens of car companies around the world by playing the role of a supplier, including Toyota Motor, which has been accumulating power for a long time.
Fully prepared for the second half of the game
Wang Chuanfu once said in an interview that in the future car race, electrification is the first half, and intelligence is the second half. After the suspension of fuel vehicles, BYD still has a good sales performance, and it is not an exaggeration to call it the leader of the first half of the race.
However, this is only the first half, the second half of the competition has just begun, in the face of automatic driving, intelligent cockpit and a series of problems at the level of on-board artificial intelligence, BYD will come up with what kind of performance? The next 25 years are really exciting.