Whether you are in a first- or second-tier big city, or a third- or fourth-tier small city, there will be micro-electric vehicles on the street.
With low cost, small body shape, and more formal than the old man Le, this electric car has become a segment of the new energy vehicle market with rapid growth. From 2019 to 2021, the market share of micro-electric vehicles has increased from 17% to nearly 30% in three years. While the market recognition and audience are growing, due to the size of the car, the cost of the car and other reasons, micro-electric vehicles in terms of safety and battery performance have become a factor of consumer concern.
In order to dispel this concern, this year, the China Automobile Center officially issued the "Special Evaluation Procedures for Micro Electric Vehicles", what impact will this have on micro electric vehicles?
Is it too late to evaluate the procedures?
In fact, the sales of micro-electric vehicles in 2021 increased by 205.2% year-on-year, exceeding the industry average, with total sales of nearly 900,000 vehicles, accounting for about 30% of sales in the new energy passenger car market. In the top 15 of the new energy sales list last year, 9 were micro-electric vehicles.
At the end of last year, the number of micro-electric vehicles on sale has reached about 40. But most of the products except Wuling Hongguang MINIEV and Chery QQ Ice Cream appear to be unknown. Of course, the hot sales of these products have nothing to do with what hard technology and real power, and the micro-electric vehicle fully illustrates one thing, as long as the product can cater to the market and hit the user's pain points, it must sell well.
Take Wuling Hongguang MINIEV as an example, the price is controlled at about 40,000 yuan, no purchase tax, no restrictions, good parking, and home 220V can also be charged, the price is cheap, and it also solves many pain points of users. But when it first went on the market, there was no ESP, EBA or even airbags.
At that time, there were not many people buying, and it had just caused a boom in micro-electric vehicles, so safety was not placed in the first place. Relying on the sale of micro-electric vehicles SAIC-GM-Wuling won a large wave of "points", and in the following two years, consumers bought micro-electric vehicles in the top ten of the list. For the whole of last year, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV sales were 395,400 units.
According to the law of development, after the sales climbed, some car companies began to follow suit and follow the trend, so that the number of micro-electric vehicles on the market at the end of last year exceeded 40 units, which has come to the stage of barbaric growth for this market segment, so it is necessary to enter the stage of survival of the fittest.
Let's put it this way, if the market segment has not developed to a certain scale, there is really no need to formulate a specific evaluation procedure. If you play with micro-computer cars are big brands, but now like BYD and Great Wall Motors, it has passed that development period, and the brand development direction has begun to transform, but instead of piling up in this market segment are some fledgling new brands, such as punk Duoduo, Punk Meimei, Lingbao BOX, etc.
In the face of this situation, if the evaluation procedures are not formulated at this time, it is really too late.
The "passing line" has been divided, and the car company has two ways to go?
The evaluation procedure is expected to be implemented in July, so the target model in this regulation is suitable for pure electric passenger cars with a body length of less than 4 meters. Judging from the body length of the conventional A-class compact car of 4.3-4.79 meters, the models applicable in the regulations are A0 and A00 class micro electric vehicles. The evaluation content of the regulations has also been moderately simplified on the basis of the original C-NCAP evaluation project, and the evaluation mainly includes three directions: collision safety, use safety and battery life charging.
Among them, crash safety is mainly to evaluate whether the body structure and restraint system, including seats, seat belts, airbags and air curtains, will protect the occupants inside the crew compartment during the collision accident. The content of the review mainly includes three items: frontal collision, side collision and whipping test.
This is a mandatory requirement for the design of the body structure and the materials used, as well as the number of airbags in the car, which indirectly increases the cost of micro-electric vehicles. For materials, production technology, for the general car companies are not a small challenge and investment.
This is followed by the use of the safety section, which mainly involves the safety of the user's daily use of the car, such as charging safety, braking, electromagnetic immunity, wading battery safety and human body electromagnetic protection and other projects. Regarding the issue of battery life charging, it includes several items such as normal temperature endurance, low temperature endurance, low temperature charging and charging compatibility.
The evaluation of this project is easier to "brush" off a wave of electric vehicles than the previous one, for charging safety, battery wading and other aspects to consider how to do a good job of battery safety system, on the one hand, to do a good job of thermal management matching, but also to use a battery in line with the IP67 standard, invisibly once again to increase the cost of core components.
After that, the projects covered in this regulation are basically the same as the conventional model evaluation, and the early stage is to guide manufacturers to improve the stability and safety of the body structure, increase the necessary safety configurations such as airbags (by extension, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV will only start to be equipped in 2021), and the most fundamental purpose is to solve the user's concerns about vehicle safety when using the car. Successively, the performance of micro-electric vehicles will be guided to reach the same level as that of conventional models.
summary
For the segment of the micro-electric vehicle, which is experiencing barbaric growth, under the gradually huge products, there is a huge difference in product quality, so this regulation comes at the right time. However, the growth rate of micro-electric vehicles slowed down in January and February this year, which was also lower than the same period last year and the annual growth rate.
In the first quarter of this year, the electric vehicle industry experienced a wave of price adjustment, and the micro-electric vehicle led by Wuling Hongguang MINI EV also adjusted the price, after all, the butterfly effect brought by battery raw materials will affect the terminal price of the vehicle. That is to say, the price increase will slow down its sales growth to a certain extent; but then again, the formal implementation of the regulations in July, if the manufacturer adjusts, it will inevitably increase the cost. So in the end, car companies have two choices, increase costs to create safer products, and keep low prices to gamble?