Header image source | SAIC Motor
The auto industry pressed the pause button again.
Sealing, shortage of materials... When Shanghai became another city after Changchun, the pause button was pressed, and after more than twenty days, its pressure on the automobile industry gradually appeared.
As an important automobile town, Shanghai's status is unquestionable. In this 6,340 square kilometer land, the north is occupied by many OEMs and parts giants, the south is Tesla-driven Lingang upstart, the west has key suppliers such as TSMC, and the east is a mature industrial area centered on the above automobile GM.
These large and small car companies and parts companies promote the development of the automobile industry in Shanghai and even the whole country. The epidemic "black swan" flew by, specific to each enterprise, although they are trying to ensure that the negative impact of production is minimized, but the suspension of the city still sets up layers of difficulties for this production chain involving multiple links.
People's lives have also undergone uncontrollable deviations. As a practitioner in the automotive industry, Su Qiuyang's daily life began with participating in online grabbing vegetables at six o'clock in the morning, although he tried various methods, it was still difficult to gain. The original work can be solved online, and the biggest difficulty of the day has become how to solve the most basic problem of food and clothing.
In his view, his department does not need to visit and meet offline, "the impact is not large." However, many factories are closed-loop production, the production rhythm is disrupted, and the 4S stores are all in a closed and controlled state. Auto people in production, channel network development, suppliers, logistics positions, not so lucky.
In order to ensure production, 8,000 employees sleep in the factory
23 days ago, near the end of work, SAIC Volkswagen employee Wang Lili suddenly received a notice of overtime. To her surprise, as time progressed, the half hour that had been in the notice became directly enclosed in the factory.
Eating and living in a factory is an experience that many people, including Wang Lili, have never had before. In the sudden changes, people's perception of the environment is inseparable from three meals a day. Recalling this time, Wang Lili remembers that at the beginning, the food was not good, but soon, the food was adjusted, "I ate a noodle, and I also sent fruit a few days ago." ”
SAIC prepared camp beds, tents and yoga mats for the production line workers, and at night, "everyone slept neatly inside."
Source: SAIC Workers' Home
As the home base of SAIC Volkswagen, Shanghai is responsible for most of SAIC Volkswagen's production capacity. According to public information, SAIC Volkswagen has 6 major production bases and 9 automakers. Among them, the Shanghai base has a total of one factory, two plant, three plants and new energy vehicle factories, and the four factories are located in Anting Town, Jiading District.
The new energy vehicle plant will be completed and put into operation in 2020, with an annual production capacity of about 300,000 units, and the other three factories in Anting will have an annual production capacity of more than 820,000 units. This means that the Shanghai base is responsible for SAIC Volkswagen's production capacity of more than 1.12 million units. Based on these figures alone, it is not difficult to see that the suspension of production will have a great impact on the production and manufacturing end.
Wang Lili told Future Auto Daily that counting the Qingming holiday, the company briefly stopped production for 4 days, "Most of the time, we have not stopped production." Yu Jingmin, executive deputy general manager of sales and marketing of SAIC Volkswagen Co., Ltd., revealed that the number of employees in the closed-loop production of SAIC Volkswagen's Anting plant reached 8,000-9,000.
Even if car companies strive to maintain production and can carry out morning and evening shifts normally, "each person works about 10 hours, and can produce about 20-30 vehicles an hour." However, due to the fact that some employees are sealed, the production speed under the closed loop is still difficult to catch up with the normal production rhythm.
The Shanghai Gigafactory, which shoulders Tesla's domestic market and major export centers, has also been greatly affected. According to Bloomberg, the Shanghai plant has been in a state of shutdown since March 29 and has not yet resumed work.
One source said the Shanghai Gigafactory produces more than 6,000 Model 3s and 10,000 Model Ys a week for Tesla's Chinese and European markets, and a one-week shutdown means that "the plant has missed at least 16,000 electric cars."
Affected by this, it may have an impact on Tesla's performance in the second quarter. In 2021, the Shanghai factory will account for half of Tesla's production and deliveries. "It's been an unusually difficult quarter due to supply chain disruptions and China's pandemic policies." Tesla CEO Elon Musk sighed.
For Zhiji, its first model, the L7, has just been launched and is currently at a critical juncture in production and delivery, and the sudden epidemic has also disrupted its production rhythm. "Time is very tight for us." On March 30, Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, sighed.
In order to ensure the progress of product development, Zhiji Automobile divided the team into 4 teams, employees with computers and testing equipment into different hotel office life, the hotel's conference room was temporarily converted into an office, and the basement of the hotel also became a place for vehicles to conduct joint commissioning and testing.
The impact of the epidemic on the automotive market seems to be far more than expected. On March 30, a report released by the Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed that the overall retail sales of the narrow passenger car market reached an average of 39,000 units per day in the fourth week of March, down 29% year-on-year, and the performance was relatively abnormal.
Parts supply is difficult, car companies face "food shortage"
In contrast, car companies headquartered in Shanghai and where production bases are located elsewhere have been relatively lucky.
"Our factory is in Changsha, and the cars produced can also come to Shanghai smoothly," said Wang Zimo, an employee of a car company headquartered in Shanghai, saying that although at the sales end, people cannot go offline to see cars and test drives, and front-line sales personnel cannot convert potential customers, but in addition to Changchun and Shanghai, other cities "theoretically have no significant impact."
However, for the automobile industry, which has a long industrial chain, a high degree of relevance, and "one hair and one body", Shanghai's influence is far more than the car companies themselves. "The difficulty is the supply of parts from Shanghai." Wang Zimo sighed.
In Shanghai, in addition to the international auto supplier giants such as Bosch, ZF and Aptiv, Lingang has introduced many industrial chain supporting enterprises around the Tesla factory. In just two years, it has gathered more than 100 enterprises such as CATL, Joyson Electronics, Horizon, and Yiqing Intelligence, covering engines, power batteries, chips, body interior and exterior decorations and other fields.
On March 29, Aptiv notified workers at its Shanghai plant to start working from home. Aptiv is the largest supplier of automotive wiring harnesses in China, with multiple production bases in Jiading District, Shanghai, and is a supplier of Tesla, Volkswagen, GM, Ford, Geely, Toyota and other vehicle manufacturers. According to a recent research report by CICC, Aptiv accounts for 17% of the automotive wiring harness market, ranking third in the world.
Bosch, another auto parts supplier from Germany, said its two factories in Shanghai were cutting back workers' working hours. "We are doing everything we can to maintain the supply chain and meet the needs of our customers as much as possible."
Source: Bosch China official
However, the sealing and control of the city makes the circulation of the industrial chain first stuck in logistics.
Tong Xin, who works for an auto safety parts company, told Future Auto Daily that the most difficult problem at hand is finding a driver. "The city is strictly controlled in and out, and drivers must be isolated when they go out", coupled with the superposition of factors such as high-speed traffic jams, even if double wages are paid, logistics drivers are still difficult to find.
In addition to Shanghai, as a gathering place for parts companies, the sealing and control of Changchun, an important automobile town, has also made the supply of parts worse.
Liu Liang, a logistics engineer at FAW Group, told Future Auto Daily that according to the usual, in the FAW Group's joint venture brand, there are more than 100 logistics vehicles every day, loaded with repair spare parts, sent to dealer stores across the country, and recently, "only ten cars per day."
Due to the implementation of the sealing control, the conditions for entering and leaving the city began to become strict, Liu Liang said, "Now Changchun's logistics vehicles out of the city, have to apply for a pass", the whole vehicle and parts are the focus of production and living materials, so its logistics can be slightly opened.
Spare parts can not be delivered, after-sales can only barely support, "20% of FAW-Volkswagen dealer stores have been affected by the closure." What's harder is that "we haven't seen a trend toward recovery yet."
In order to avoid the "food shortage" crisis, stalking the supply of parts and logistics has become the top priority of car companies.
In order to ensure that every part can arrive at the factory on time, SAIC Volkswagen said that the procurement department contacted more than 500 core suppliers, established a 14-day parts inventory + 14-day finished product inventory, and also established a "logistics supply commando team", 24 hours to track logistics information, through hundreds of WeChat groups, hundreds of telephones, thousands of messages every day, to build an online supply bridge. Feifan Automobile also sent special technical personnel in advance to the supplier factory to promote the delivery status of parts.
Wei Xiaoli postponed the new one, and Qi Qi avoided April
In Wang Zimo's view, although the short-term will affect the output, "but in the long run, the loss should be recovered, after all, it is now the traditional off-season, it is estimated that the impact on the whole year will not be too large." "However, compared with the direct impact of the production end and the sales end, as the impact time is extended, it will also slow down the research and development work of car companies."
"Affected by the epidemic, crash tests and R&D tests have been challenged, and it is expected that 1-2 months will not be able to smoothly promote R&D work." Zhang Liang, deputy general manager of SAIC's data business department and chief digital officer (CDO) of SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicles, said in an interview with the media. And a product is launched two months late, which will create a big gap.
In order to catch up with the research and development progress, a new car developer told the Future Automotive Daily that the current software research and development can still work from home, but the R & D personnel related to automobile manufacturing, in such an emergency, "either rent a house near the factory, or live in a hotel, and the equipment also needs to be transferred."
April was originally a new important node for car companies. The postponement of the Beijing Auto Show, which was scheduled to be held in April, means that the important annual communication plans of car companies have also been disrupted, and many blockbuster new products have also been postponed.
On the evening of April 6, ideal car officially released news that due to the impact of force majeure in the environment, the ideal L9 conference originally scheduled for April 16, 2022 will be postponed, and the specific time is to be determined. On the same day, Xiaopeng Automobile released a promotional poster saying, "Looking forward to 9, we will see you in June." In addition, the NIO ES7 was scheduled to be launched in mid-April, but the release time was postponed to the end of May.
Source: Xiaopeng official
"Affected by the big environment, many car companies' offline activities have been affected, and it is not the best time to release new models at this time." There are industry insider comments.
A head of supply chain of the main engine factory said that according to the original schedule, many car companies plan to list new models during the auto show at the end of April, and before that, considering inventory disposal will reduce the stock of parts for old products. "The auto show cannot be held as scheduled, and the date of the launch of the new product can only be postponed." If old products continue to be sold, the supply of parts will face some challenges. ”
In the face of new challenges, many car companies have taken out Plan B and begun to move new car listing activities online. On March 31, SAIC Volkswagen's new Lingdu L new car held a press conference online. SAIC MG has also carried out the listing of MG ONE β and the pre-sale of MG5 Scorpio online.
"Products can't afford to wait, sales can't afford to wait, and it is estimated that more and more new cars will be released in the form of online live broadcasting." Wang Zimo sighed, "It is optimistic that it will be good to recover at the end of April." ”
(Note: Wennei Su Qiuyang, Wang Lili, Wang Zimo as pseudonyms)
The author | Wu Xiaoyu Ding is the only one
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