Wang Chuanfu and Musk, these two are the most dazzling "stars" in the field of new energy vehicles in the world, or will soon usher in a real face-to-face "PK".
Recently, after announcing that the sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 100,000 in March, BYD also threw out a more important news - "stop the production of fuel vehicles from March 2022." ”
This is 18 years earlier than BYD's previous plan to stop production of fuel vehicles until 2040.
What exactly is Wang Chuanfu "anxious"?
Fuel vehicles have become BYD's "chicken ribs"; BYD needs to enhance its brand image as soon as possible; the new energy vehicle business can bring more profits to BYD... These are undoubtedly the triggers for Wang Chuanfu's early "oil cut-off", but in the eyes of Kung Fu Automobile, seeing Tesla's delivery volume this year has a high probability of stepping into the "million club", or the key to promoting BYD's determination.
In 2021, BYD sold a total of 730,000 vehicles, including 594,000 new energy passenger cars. Tesla delivered 936,000 units for the full year last year.
By the first quarter of this year, the gap between the two has become smaller and smaller.
In the first quarter of this year, BYD's sales of new energy vehicles were 286,300, a sharp increase of 420% year-on-year; while Tesla delivered 310,000 units in the first quarter, an increase of more than 60% year-on-year.
For this reason, it is not difficult to imagine that Wang Chuanfu and Musk will have an extremely fierce competition in sales and market share this year.
On April 8, Musk, wearing a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat, appeared at the "opening party" of Tesla's gigafactory in Austin, Texas.
Musk excitedly said at the event site that the goal of this gigafactory is to produce 500,000 Model Y electric vehicles a year. With its plants in Texas and Berlin, Germany, going live, Tesla expects its electric vehicle capacity to double to 2 million units a year.
And this also happens to be the sales target that Wang Chuanfu intends to hit this year.
At BYD's most recent investor meeting, the company said that BYD's cumulative undelivered orders have reached 400,000 units and are still increasing month by month.
According to BYD's conservative forecast, sales are likely to reach 1.5 million units in 2022, and if the supply chain is good, it is likely to impact the sales target of 2 million vehicles.
In BYD's 2021 financial report, we can see that BYD's current production capacity of new energy vehicles is only 600,000 units, and it has basically reached full production in 2021.
Therefore, in order to win the title of the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturer from Musk as soon as possible, Wang Chuanfu must resolutely cut off the production of fuel vehicles and increase horsepower to produce new energy vehicles, so that there is a possibility of catching up.
However, after surpassing Tesla in terms of "volume", BYD still has many challenges to become the real hegemony of the field of new energy vehicles.
First of all, at the manufacturing level, although BYD and Tesla both believe in "vertical integration", tesla now seems to have a lot of leading advantages in terms of advancedness.
For example, at Tesla's Texas Gigafactory, Musk not only drastically reduced hundreds of robots in the Model Y production line, but also put together the three major components of the body, Structural Battery structural battery, and rear body, making the vehicle production more compact and efficient.
At present, in this factory, "45 seconds a car" is a new production record set by Tesla.
It can be said that Musk's "vertical integration" in manufacturing today has become a new milestone in the auto manufacturing industry.
In fact, the "vertical integration" that BYD has insisted on for many years is also the basis for its ability to fully transform the production of new energy vehicles.
In addition to the core three-electric system, BYD's semiconductor business is also accelerating. Nowadays, in addition to the MCU, BYD also has its own layout in the two business sectors of IGBT and SiC, which also greatly ensures that BYD will not be subject to others in the supply chain.
Secondly, in terms of software capabilities and autonomous driving business, BYD must also improve its self-research capabilities as soon as possible, because in the next "technology race" of new energy vehicles, this will be the key to victory.
On April 1, at the online briefing of BYD's 2021 annual report, a number of investors asked BYD: "When will BYD's autopilot catch up with or surpass Tesla?" ”
Although Wang Chuanfu stressed that BYD's years of accumulation of new energy vehicle technology have the natural advantage of intelligence, from the establishment of a joint venture with Momenta at the end of last year to the cooperation with Baidu and NVIDIA this year, we can glimpse that Wang Chuanfu has become more and more forced to build this ability of BYD.
Even media reports have been revealed that in February this year, BYD has officially begun to prepare for the construction of an autonomous driving research and development center, and intends to settle in Shanghai, while concentrating on the recruitment of various positions in automatic driving.
One of the more obvious trends in the automotive industry is that the premium of future automotive products will be in software rather than hardware. For example, Tesla's current profits and high market value are largely due to the software business capabilities brought about by its intelligent technology.
In the 2021 earnings report meeting, Musk said that tesla's FSD open beta fleet size has approached 60,000 vehicles, and the FSD fully autonomous driving function will be widely pushed. Now, Tesla has begun to enjoy the dividends of its self-driving technology.
Kung Fu shoots
The competition between BYD and Tesla in sales this year will undoubtedly be one of the biggest highlights of the global new energy vehicle market this year.
In the stage of rapid expansion of the enterprise, Wang Chuanfu resolutely "cut off the oil", and Musk once again expanded and improved in production and manufacturing, behind which is actually the deepening interpretation of the concept of "vertical integration" by the two companies in the period of automotive industry change.
In fact, as the automotive industry looks more and more intelligent, more and more companies are beginning to "vertically integrate", such as Volkswagen, Ford and so on. There is no doubt that behind this is also a new technology race.