Source: Bayview Investment Research
In the rapidly developing new energy automobile industry, Tesla, founded by Musk, is undoubtedly the existence of the king. However, unlike the era of fuel vehicles, Chinese brands can only play soy sauce, and The Chinese F4 represented by BYD + Wei Xiaoli is rising at an unprecedented speed, and even leaving traditional forces such as BBA far behind. With the release of 2021 performance data by five companies, we can also compare whether China's F4 can compete with Tesla from multiple dimensions.
From the perspective of the latest market value, Tesla, with a market value of more than one trillion US dollars, is still the world's most valuable new energy vehicle company, and BYD, which has just achieved 100% new energy transformation, ranks second with a market value of 693.3 billion yuan. WEILAI, IDEAL AND XIAOPENG ranked fifth to seventh respectively, with market capitalizations of 225.7 billion yuan, 166.1 billion yuan and 145.2 billion yuan, respectively.
Only from the market capitalization comparison, 1 special = 9 ratio = 28 Wei = 39 rational = 44 Peng. Even if F4 adds up, the market capitalization is less than 1/5 of Tesla's.
Is the gap really that huge?
From the comparison between the sales volume and sales of the automobile business, Tesla still occupies an absolute leading position, but the lead is significantly lower than the market value gap.
Tesla sold a total of 936,000 new energy vehicles in 2021, ranking first in the world, and the revenue of the automobile business reached 281.3 billion yuan. BYD's sales volume was 730,000 units (of which 590,000 were new energy vehicles), and the revenue of the automobile business was 112.5 billion yuan, ranking second in the world in sales of new energy vehicles.
There is a significant gap in the scale between Wei Xiaoli and the two strong ones. In 2021, NIO, Ideal and Xiaopeng delivered 91,000, 90,000 and 98,000 vehicles, respectively, and the revenue of the automotive business was 33.2 billion yuan, 26.1 billion yuan and 21 billion yuan, respectively.
From the sales point of view, 1 special = 1.3 ratio = 10.2 Wei = 9.2 Peng = 10.3 theory, although the gap is still obvious, but much smaller than the market value gap.
If the gap between market value and sales is still quite obvious, the domestic F4 is outstanding in positioning and pricing power, and it is not afraid to be tough with Tesla, but also has a differentiated positioning and playing style.
From the average price point of view, Weilai Automobile, which aims to "turn BBA into NBA", ranks first with its high-end product line portfolio, with an ASP of 363,000 yuan, surpassing Tesla; the average bicycle price of Tesla, which gradually penetrates from high to low, is 301,000 yuan; and the ideal car bicycle ASP of 289,000 yuan ranks third.
The product portfolio of Xiaopeng and BYD is more inclined to the people-friendly route. Xiaopeng's product portfolio ASP is 214,000 yuan; compared with BYD's three major explosive models, except for bydir Han EV, which belongs to the mid-to-high-end model, the other two Qin Plus and Song Plus are A-class hybrid models, so the car ASP is only 154,000 yuan.
From the ASP point of view, 1 special = 0.82 Wei = 1.04 rational = 1.41 Peng = 1.95 ratio. The overwhelming brand premium ability of overseas first-line brands relative to domestic brands has been significantly reversed in the era of new energy vehicles.
Different from the era of fuel vehicles, China's own brands are forced to focus on low-end models, today's domestic forces can not only compete head-on with Tesla in the high-end price band, but also occupy the market through differentiation strategies in the low-end market.
The high-end market can better ensure profit margins, so most of the models of the five car companies are priced at more than 200,000 or even 300,000. The gross profit margin of Weilai and Ideal Automobile, which is priced at more than 300,000 yuan in the whole series, has reached more than 20%, and Tesla is close to 30%.
The pricing range of NIO's main model EC6/ES6/ES8 is even as high as 358,000-624,000 yuan, which greatly exceeds the price range of 290,900-417,900 yuan for Tesla's main model 3/Y; BYDHan EV won the annual sales championship of domestic new energy high-end cars with sales of 117,000 units.
In the long run, A-class cars, which account for half of the sales volume in the Chinese market, will also become a must for new energy brands. Although the profit margin is not as good as the high-end market, occupying this market can bring scale advantages and gain a stronger voice in the entire industry chain.
BYD has released dolphin (priced at 10.28-13.08 million) and yuan plus (priced at 13.78-16.58 million) based on the e-platform 3.0; Xiaopeng has also begun to sell new A-class models P5 (priced at 17.79-24.29 million) and achieved good growth momentum. Tesla recently denied that the rumored A-class model Model 2 will be launched in the near future, giving domestic forces more time to lay out the A-class car market.
Since there are already many articles that directly analyze the comparison of financial data, I compare it more in terms of bicycle price, cost, expense and profit.
Tesla sells an average of 301,000 yuan from a car, and after deducting manufacturing costs, marketing and research and development expenses, it can still get a high profit of 49,000 yuan. In contrast, BYD can only earn 13,000 yuan, and Wei Xiaoli is all in a state of loss, of which Xiaopeng and Weilai lose 75,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan for each car sold.
From here, we can see Tesla's strategic subtlety and scale advantage. On the one hand, Tesla occupies a price band of about 300,000 yuan, which can both start and ensure profits, on the other hand, it aims at 3/Y two major single products to reduce costs and compress the production cost of bicycles to only 212,000 yuan.
Million-level sales scale also allows Tesla to amortize high marketing and research and development expenses, self-developed chips or FSDs whether applied in a car or a million vehicles, the initial research and development costs are similar, Tesla's scale advantage can already amortize huge R & D expenses.
Domestic forces have their own shortcomings. BYD can also amortize expenses through sales scale close to one million, but due to the lack of intelligence and automation experience, the ASP is low, so the profit margin of bicycles is limited.
The ideal is to rely on the pricing power brought by the hybrid technology platform with low R&D cost + high-level intelligent driving experience, and the restrained expense is close to breakeven, which is a very practical and clever set of play.
Weilai and Xiaopeng sales scale are less than 100,000 vehicles, electric + intelligent + automatic three experiences "I want" significantly pushed up the cost of research and development, coupled with the money-burning marketing strategy, so the loss margin is the highest among the five major car companies is not surprising.
In terms of efficiency, Tesla still occupies an absolute lead.
According to company announcements and media reports, BYD has 1729 stores, the number of stores ranks first among all brands, and the advantage of channel quantity is also one of the embodiments of BYD's scale advantage. The number of Wei Xiaoli stores is 387/357/206 respectively, while Tesla has only 438 stores worldwide, of which only 181 stores are in China.
Tesla's average monthly sales per store are as high as 178 vehicles, which is more than 6 times the average of the four major Brands in China, reflecting extremely high sales efficiency. The average monthly sales of NIO and Xiaopeng are only 20 units and 23 units per store, respectively, and both brands emphasize setting up points in prime location shopping malls, resulting in the highest marketing expense rate among the five major brands. Ideal and BYD's store sales efficiency is 37 and 35 vehicles respectively, which is more efficient in domestic sales.
Tesla is undoubtedly still the strongest presence in the field of new energy vehicles, whether it is scale effect, cost advantage, operational efficiency, or technical reserves in the field of electric/intelligent/automatic technology. Although the gap between domestic forces is still obvious, the rise has become a foregone conclusion, occupying the initiative of brand recognition and pricing power in the Chinese market, and in the era of new energy, it can compete with Tesla without fear of German and Japanese competition.