"Wei Xiaoli", who will win?

Original title: New car manufacturers put their goals on scale effects

Text | Yang Zi, an intern reporter of this newspaper

On March 28, with the release of the 2021 financial report of Xiaopeng Automobile, the top three new car manufacturers Weilai Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile all announced their 2021 report cards. Overall, the overall financial situation of the 3 car companies is good, of which Weilai Automobile's revenue is at the top, Xiaopeng Automobile's sales are exceeded, and the ideal car has the least loss.

In 2021, revenue and sales have increased significantly

From the perspective of revenue scale in 2021, Weilai Automobile is still in a leading position. According to financial data, in 2021, the total revenue of WEIO reached 36.1364 billion yuan, an increase of 122.3% year-on-year; the revenue of ideal automobile reached 27.01 billion yuan, an increase of 185.6%; and the revenue of Xiaopeng Automobile was 20.988 billion yuan, an increase of 259.1% year-on-year.

In terms of sales, the three car companies are only one foot away from the annual sales of 100,000 vehicles. Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile, with its relatively low price and more customers, ranked first with the annual delivery of 98,155 vehicles, an increase of 263% year-on-year, leaving weilai automobile and ideal cars thousands. Among them, the P7 has become the main force in the sales of Xiaopeng Automobile, delivering 60,569 units in 2021, an increase of 302% year-on-year. Weilai Automobile, which has previously maintained the sales champion, has been surpassed by Xiaopeng Motors for several consecutive months, delivering 91,429 units in 2021, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year. Ideal Auto delivered 90,491 units with the Ideal ONE, an increase of 177.4% year-on-year.

Although Xiaopeng Automobile's revenue and sales have increased significantly, gross profit and loss have ranked at the bottom. Due to the low average price of Xiaopeng Automobile, the gross profit margin in 2021 is only 12.5%, while the gross profit margin of WEILAI Automobile and Ideal Automobile is 20.1% and 20.6% respectively. At the same time, Xiaopeng Automobile did not solve the problem of "selling more and losing more", with a loss of 4.863 billion yuan, while WEILAI Automobile and Ideal Automobile lost 4.0169 billion yuan and 321.5 million yuan respectively.

For the profitability of new car manufacturers that are quite concerned about the outside world, Li Bin, CEO of Weilai Automobile, expects that the company will achieve breakeven by the fourth quarter of 2023 and achieve overall profitability in 2024. Although the three car companies did not achieve stable profitability in 2021, they still increased investment in research and development. Among them, WEILAI Automobile's R&D investment was 4.59 billion yuan, an increase of 85% year-on-year; the R&D investment of ideal automobile was 3.29 billion yuan, an increase of 199% year-on-year; and Tesla's R&D investment in The R&D investment of Xiaopeng Automobile, which chose full-stack self-development, was as high as 4.11 billion yuan, an increase of 138.4% year-on-year. Xiaopeng Motors said that this year's research and development investment will exceed the sum of 2020 and 2021. NIO also said that R&D investment will increase significantly this year.

Collective price increases should be raised in response to higher raw material prices

Affected by the sharp rise in raw material costs, on March 18, Xiaopeng Motors announced an adjustment to the price of models on sale, and the price increase before subsidies was 10,100 yuan to 20,000 yuan, effective from 00:00 on March 21. "At present, Xiaopeng Automobile has maintained cooperation with major battery suppliers, and believes that after 1 to 3 quarters, it will have the ability to control the battery cost problem caused by the rise in raw material prices." He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, said that the current price increase has not affected its sales.

Ideal Auto CEO Li Xiang previously said: "And battery manufacturers have determined the price increase in the second quarter of the model, basically announced the price increase. Most of the prices that have not yet increased are because the price increase has not been negotiated, and the price will be increased immediately after the negotiation is completed. Battery costs are expected to rise by a very outrageous amount in the second quarter. On March 23, Ideal Auto announced that from April 1, the price of Ideal ONE will be raised by 11,800 yuan.

In contrast, WEILAI Automobile, which has the highest average selling price among the three car companies, said that there is no plan to increase the price of existing products. However, Li Bin also gave a solution to the increase in battery costs: "There will be a product improvement plan this year, and the product price policy will be formulated according to the market and raw material prices." It is reported that NIO will release the 2022 ES8, ES6 and EC6 in late May this year. This means that all three car companies have developed strategies to deal with rising raw material prices. In addition, Li Bin also pointed out: "The increase in sales volume is conducive to cost sharing, and then achieve gross profit improvement." However, the price of raw materials is not only batteries, but also commodities, aluminum, copper, and the price increase has a negative effect on the growth of gross profit. ”

In the first quarter of this year, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 34,561 vehicles, an increase of 159% year-on-year. In the same period, Ideal Automobile delivered 31,716 units, an increase of 152% year-on-year; NIO delivered 25,768 vehicles, an increase of 28% year-on-year.

New products are poised

As of December 31, 2021, NIO's cash reserves were 55.4 billion yuan, Ideal Automobile was 50.16 billion yuan, and Xiaopeng Automobile was 43.54 billion yuan. This year, the three car companies will launch new products, and sufficient cash reserves will provide strong support for their market competition.

Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile will launch the G9 in the third quarter of this year, and the pricing will enter a higher range. Therefore, Xiaopeng Automobile also regards G9 as an important helper for its gross profit margin. "Xiaopeng Automobile's medium- and long-term goal is to increase the gross profit margin to more than 25%, and the company will better control costs through highly integrated design and large-scale integrated die casting technologies." He Xiaopeng said. It is worth mentioning that the Xiaopeng Automobile Urban NGP Plan (the core function of the automatic driving system XPILOT3.5) will be opened at the end of the second quarter of this year; XPILOT4.0 will be launched by 2023 to achieve high-speed and all-scenario intelligent assisted driving in the city.

This year, NIO will deliver ET7, ET5 and ES7. Li Bin is full of confidence in the market performance of ET7 and ES7, and directly benchmarks the ET7 with the BMW 5 Series and other models in the same price range that sell more than 10,000 units per month. Considering the rising cost of raw materials, NIO has set its gross vehicle gross margin target for this year at 18%-20%. Qu Yu, vice president of finance of NIO, said that with the increase in cumulative delivery volume and the further improvement of service efficiency, the negative gross profit margin related to services such as energy and maintenance will gradually decrease. At the same time, the revenue and gross profit brought by innovative business models will continue to increase.

At present, in the segment of extended-range electric vehicles, the ideal car is "the only one". It is reported that in the second quarter of this year, Ideal Auto will launch the second extended range electric vehicle L9, and start delivery in the third quarter. By 2023, the company will launch 2 pure electric BEV models that support ultra-fast charging. Shen Yanan, co-founder of Ideal Auto, said: "We consider the increase in costs, especially the increase in battery prices, but we still expect sales to grow a lot and produce more scale effects. Even with many challenges, the company's goal for 2022 is to have higher gross margins than in 2021. ”

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Produced by | China Energy News (ID:cnenergy)

Trainee Editor | Li Zemin

Responsible editor 丨 Yan Zhiqiang