On April 1, at Weichai Power (000338. SZ) 2021 annual results conference, Weichai Group Chairman Tan Xuguang said that new energy vehicles will have a catastrophic overcapacity.
He pointed out that "in recent years, the new energy industry has been more lively, rushing to the top, disorderly competition", there are many companies doping private work, through the capital market to inflate wealth, resulting in capital market disorderly capital expansion of new energy. "I have carefully considered this, not a random remark." Tan Xuguang stressed, "This is a phenomenon that can be seen clearly in the industry. ”
In fact, at the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum held on March 26, Lin Nianxiu, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, also highlighted the issue of new energy vehicle production capacity. It said that the NDRC will strictly implement the regulations on the management of investment in the automobile industry, strengthen the cleaning up and rectification of illegal projects of new energy vehicles, investigate and deal with violations such as unapproved construction, batch zero construction, and construction while approving in accordance with laws and regulations; standardize the merger and reorganization of vehicle enterprises, and vigorously promote the withdrawal of backward enterprises and ineffective production capacity.
However, some new energy vehicle industry insiders told Red Star Capital Bureau that the overcapacity statement is inaccurate, it should be uneven distribution of production capacity, and the head effect appears.
A lesson in overcapacity
New energy vehicle "graveyard" appears in many places
In recent years, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Chongqing and other places have been exposed to the emergence of new energy vehicle "graveyards", which is considered to be evidence of overcapacity of new energy vehicles.
Xiangjiagang in Caijia Town, Beibei, Chongqing, piled up hundreds of shared cars last year. "Panda Car" is a new energy vehicle travel platform invested by Lifan Holdings, which will be suspended from February 1, 2021. Chongqing Lifan Group has now filed for bankruptcy reorganization, and its automobile production base has a huge parking lot with thousands of "Panda cars".
Also last year, in the suburbs of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, thousands of new energy vehicles were parked here in disorder, some cars did not even remove the protective film, some were used as "parts library", and the body was incomplete. According to the Qianjiang Evening News, the staff of the surrounding maintenance factories said that the cars here used to be used to run online car-hailing, and now they are put here when they are not used.
Fu Rongcheng, founder of Fujian Changyue New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out to Red Star Capital Bureau that "operating vehicles are mandatorily scrapped for 6-8 years, and cars after 2018 are still in service." The new energy vehicle 'graveyard' is full of old cars with a range of less than 250 kilometers and before 2018. This is the result of the previous crazy subsidies and has nothing to do with the current overcapacity. The imperfect recycling and scrapping mechanism of new energy vehicles has led to the obstruction of the withdrawal of new energy models, which is a major factor in the formation of a graveyard. ”
The search of Red Star Capital Bureau found that the vehicle sources of the "graveyard" of new energy vehicles are mainly divided into two categories, one is shared cars, and the other is online car-hailing.
Liu Hao, an analyst in the automotive industry, told Red Star Capital Bureau that behind the shared cars that focus on new energy vehicles, many of them have the figure of the main engine factory. Geely holds 97.18% of the shares of left-center-right micro bus, Shouqi's GoFun Travel, BAIC's Light Travel, SAIC's EVCARD, Chongqing Lifan's Panda Car Rental, and Dailem's car2go.
The situation is similar to that of online ride-hailing, such as Geely's Caocao Travel, BAIC Huaxia Travel, GAC Ruqi Travel, FAW Qimiao Travel and SAIC Xiangdao Travel.
Since 2017, car-sharing companies have stopped operating or closed down, and the few that survived are continuing to shrink the number of outlets.
In terms of ride-hailing, as of December 31, 2021, a total of 258 e-hailing platform companies across the country have obtained business licenses for e-hailing platforms, and a total of 3.948 million e-hailing driver's licenses and 1.558 million vehicle transport certificates have been issued in various places. However, in December 2021, there were only 17 platforms with more than 300,000 orders for ride-hailing.
Whether it is a shared car or an online car, it is largely to help OEMs digest the inventory of new energy vehicles.
Mr. Zheng, who used to work in gofun shared cars, told Red Star Capital Bureau that due to the immature technology and inaccurate market positioning in the early stage of the industry, the mileage of new energy vehicles in the early days was even below 200 kilometers, which was essentially not suitable for time-sharing leasing and online car-hailing, and it was difficult to use it for the second time.
"In order to obtain points and subsidies, domestic car companies have mass-produced such new energy vehicles with short cruising range." Mr. Zheng pointed out: "The 'cemetery' is a historical legacy of the overcapacity of new energy vehicles in that year. ”
The industry as a whole is overcapacity
It may be further exacerbated in the future
The Association pointed out that there are still 10.46 million vehicles under construction and production capacity of enterprises with production qualifications, most of which are new energy vehicle projects. According to incomplete statistics, by 2025, the planned production capacity of new energy vehicles that have been built or will be built in China will reach 20 million.
Judging from the data, Tan Xuguang's judgment is not alarmist.
The Association of Automobile Manufacturers has publicly warned that while solving the problem of overcapacity of traditional automobiles, the automotive industry must also prevent overcapacity of new energy vehicles. According to the "Analysis of the Production Capacity of Passenger Cars in Mainland China in 2021", by the end of 2021, the national passenger car production capacity will be about 40.89 million units, and the capacity utilization rate will be 52.47%. In 2021, 3.326 million new energy passenger cars will be sold, while the dedicated production capacity of new energy passenger vehicles has reached 5.695 million units, with a capacity utilization rate of 58.4%.
For capacity utilization, the international mainstream evaluation standard is 79%-83% of the normal range, more than 90% is insufficient capacity, and less than 79% is overcapacity. In general, the capacity utilization rate of automobiles is higher than 60%.
It can be seen that both passenger cars as a whole and new energy vehicles have serious overcapacity.
The industry understands this very well. As early as the 2019 Davos conference, Lin Boqiang, president of the China Energy Policy Research Institute, pointed out that there are two major problems in China's electric vehicle market: too fragmented and large overcapacity.
The industry generally believes that the crisis of overcapacity of new energy vehicles has arrived. CCID Research Institute expects that by 2025, the total production capacity of new energy vehicles in the mainland is expected to reach 36.61 million, the market size is about 5.3 million, and the capacity utilization rate is less than 15%.
At this year's two sessions of the National People's Congress, npc deputies, Great Wall Motor (601633. SH) president Wang Fengying said that by the end of 2020, the total production capacity of new energy vehicles in mainland China has reached 26.69 million units, and the market sales volume is only 1.367 million units. If the planning projects for new energy vehicles in various places during the 14th Five-Year Plan period are implemented, the problem of overcapacity will be further aggravated.
Red Star Capital Bureau noted that around 2015, a large number of new car-making forces emerged, each of which started an industrial base, but most of them were only PPT car manufacturing, burning tens of billions of financing after no news. There are also some cars that have been built but the quality is worrying, the price is inflated, and the subsidy loses its competitiveness after the slope is declining.
Zhidou Automobile has a production capacity of 40,000 vehicles, and has been bankrupt and reorganized in 2019. Qiantu Automobile has a production capacity of 50,000 units, and the first model, the Qiantu K50, was officially launched in 2018, and has sold less than 200 units so far. In November 2020, Production of Future Automobile ceased production and did not return until two years later, when it returned in December 2021.
Byton Auto's Nanjing plant is planned to have a production capacity of 300,000 units, and the first phase of the project completed in 2019 has a production capacity of 150,000 units. However, the capital chain was broken, and Byton Automobile was not mass-produced. In January this year, Byton Automobile signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Foxconn, saying that it strives to achieve mass production of the first model in the first quarter of this year, and there has been no follow-up so far.
In 2021, a wave of cross-border car manufacturing has been set off, with the influx of capital from all walks of life, and the new brand has overwhelmed people, which will also bring about a substantial increase in the production capacity of new energy vehicles.
The production capacity of new energy vehicles is unevenly distributed
The head production capacity is insufficient, and the tail enterprises will be eliminated
However, since last year, some new energy vehicle brands have been unable to deliver on time due to insufficient production capacity. Tesla's pick-up time takes 3-5 months, and the scalper earns a net profit of 10,000 yuan; Xiaopeng Automobile's popular model P5 has been delayed many times, and hundreds of prospective owners have written a joint letter to He Xiaopeng...
In 2021, the top 10 new energy vehicle companies with sales totaled 2.085 million units, accounting for 62.7% of total sales. The top 10 models in terms of sales account for more than 40% of the market share, and the head effect is obvious.
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, among the 98 automobile manufacturers in 2021, more than 50 companies produce less than 1,000 vehicles per month, of which nearly 20 are in a state of suspension and produce 0 vehicles per month. The sales volume of the top ten enterprise groups in automobile sales accounts for about 90% of the total automobile sales, and the production capacity utilization efficiency is much higher than the industry average, and even reach 100%.
For example, Tesla and other 4 new energy vehicle companies, the capacity utilization rate of more than 100%.
In contrast, BAIC BJEV Jiangsu Changzhou base has a planned annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles, Qingdao Laixi base design annual output of 200,000 vehicles, Hebei Huanghua production base has a production capacity of 150,000 new energy vehicles after the expansion of production capacity, Beijing Yizhuang new energy vehicle high-end intelligent factory phase I project annual production capacity of 50,000 units, Chongqing Fuling new energy base planned annual production capacity of 300,000 units. However, according to BAIC BJEV's parent company, Baiqi Blue Valley (600733. SH) released data, in 2021 BAIC BJEV's total sales of only 26,100 vehicles, the market share is only 0.74%.
Therefore, some insiders believe that for new energy vehicles, the overcapacity statement is inaccurate.
Fu Rongcheng told Red Star Capital Bureau that new energy vehicles are electronic products, fuel vehicles are mechanical products, and their own structure and industrial logic are completely different, "Electronic products are easy to form a head effect, and new energy vehicles can only be said to be unevenly distributed in production capacity." ”
"New energy vehicles and mobile phones, the battery is someone else's, the chip is someone else's, and the body production can also be handed over to the foundry." New energy vehicle companies are more like solution providers, with positive development of electronic product logic, mainly mastering core technologies such as automatic driving and human-computer interaction. "In his view, the main engine factory of fuel vehicles produces new energy vehicles, which is more like a crossover than Xiaomi." Why did BYD do a good job? One of the reasons is that it has been OEM for Huawei for more than a decade. ”
Fu Rongcheng pointed out that this also leads to the "oil to electricity" program is not advisable, many fuel vehicle OEMs blindly killed in, resulting in a lot of waste of resources, is a major source of idle production capacity.
Fu Rongcheng also believes that the entry threshold of new energy vehicles has been raised from less than 10 billion in 2015 to 20 billion in 2019 to more than 100 billion now. The industry expects that the industry opportunities are getting narrower and narrower, and the future pattern of the new energy automobile industry will be highly similar to the mobile phone industry, and the top TOP5 companies will occupy more than 80% of the market share.
Therefore, it is not appropriate to judge overcapacity by the ratio of production capacity to annual sales volume. He suggested lengthening the time, "the penetration rate of new energy vehicles this year is only 20%, if completely replace the fuel vehicle, the annual sales will exceed 20 million, while the existing production capacity is less than 6 million." These market surpluses will be occupied by head car companies, and the current production capacity of head car companies is insufficient. Tail car companies must be eliminated, their production capacity is invalid capacity, but also the current excess capacity. ”
Can mergers and acquisitions solve the uneven production capacity?
Car companies are reluctant to be "takeovers" in expanding production
On March 26, at the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, Lin Nianxiu, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that it is necessary to guide the new energy automobile industry to gather in areas and entities with a good development foundation and sufficient capacity utilization, focusing on building an internationally competitive industrial cluster in the Yangtze River Delta, pearl river delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengdu-Chongqing and other regions. Encourage and guide key areas to formulate industrial development plans, vehicle enterprises should highlight the key layout, rely on the existing production base to gather development, and no longer add new production capacity distribution points before the existing base reaches a reasonable scale. "Encourage key enterprises to reach a certain scale in one place and then build a second point, and the whole country should make overall plans and not blossom everywhere."
The NDRC will also strictly implement the regulations on the management of investment in the automobile industry, strengthen the cleaning up and rectification of illegal projects of new energy vehicles, investigate and deal with violations such as unapproved construction, batch zero construction and consolidation, and construction while approving in accordance with laws and regulations; standardize the merger and reorganization of vehicle enterprises, and vigorously promote the withdrawal of backward enterprises and ineffective production capacity.
Wang Fengying, president of Great Wall Motor, proposed that the regulatory authorities conduct a thorough investigation of new automobile projects across the country during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, increase the supervision of enterprises with excess capacity, strictly control the new vehicle production capacity, curb blind investment, avoid inefficient duplicate construction, and establish an exit mechanism.
On the surface, the most effective way to solve the uneven distribution of production capacity is to transfer idle production capacity to car companies in need; in fact, not all car companies are willing to expand production through taking over.
A new energy vehicle company explained to the Red Star Capital Bureau in an interview that its own industrial chain is concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region, and it is impossible to buy factories in Beijing and Chongqing; the reorganization party packages and sells assets, it is better to build itself; and many of the target production lines are old and backward in technology, which were used to produce fuel vehicles and need to be torn down and rebuilt... "Many backward and ineffective production capacity are endangered and bankrupt car companies, and new players value their new energy vehicle production qualifications, but this is of no value to us (car companies expanding production capacity)." The acceptable price is the value of the factory land, and it is not close to the disposal unit. ”
Sales of new energy vehicles are healthier
The C-end market gradually opened
Once, the new energy vehicles produced by the main engine factory were sold to their own online car platforms, creating sales through "left hand to right hand", which was a semi-open secret in the car circle.
He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors, has publicly expressed doubts about the real sales of electric vehicles in China. "The electric vehicle data of China's new energy vehicles will be taken out, and then the data of major customers sold to taxis, travel, etc. will be taken out, and finally the actual sales price of less than 120,000 will be mainly for the (data) of travel financial solutions, and the remaining sales data to real consumers are only about 100,000 vehicles, which is almost the same as Tesla's sales in the first three quarters of the United States."
Fu Rongcheng said that the current To C market for new energy vehicles has not been fully activated, individual consumers mainly buy high-end or low-end new energy vehicles, and most of the new energy vehicles at the 100,000 yuan level are still operating vehicles. "At present, the same level of new energy vehicles are about 50,000 yuan more expensive than fuel vehicles, And Chinese consumers change cars in an average of 5-8 years, even if the current high oil prices, fuel vehicles are still more economical, more convenient to use, and more valuable." From the perspective of cost and ease of management, new energy vehicles are naturally suitable for operating vehicles. ”
However, this situation is gradually reversing, in 2019, China's new energy passenger car private insurance volume accounted for 53%; 70.41% in 2020; 87.86% in 2021, of which pure electric accounted for 70%.
It is worth mentioning that at present, there is still a shortage of new energy vehicles for online ride-hailing. The person in charge of a car rental company told Red Star Capital Bureau that the common model is that the online car driver rents a car from them, or rents on behalf of them, and the car rental company is the main body of the car. Since a large number of cars need to be purchased at once, the model is not the guide, and the financial solution is the deciding factor.
Red Star News reporter Wu Danruo
Edited by Tao Yueyang
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