In the first quarter of this year, the new energy vehicle market became a clear stream, despite the overall decline in vehicle sales, new energy passenger cars can still deliver a year-on-year increase of 146.6% to 1.07 million units, and the penetration rate in March hit a new high, reaching 25.1%, compared with 11.1% in the same period last year to achieve explosive growth.
Judging from the superficial data, the new energy vehicle market is still a hot market, and the prospect is very clear. But in fact, the fiery new energy vehicle market is only a virtual fire, and the mainland new energy vehicle market urgently needs some bitter medicine to reduce the fire.
What is a fire accelerant?
In recent years, the trend of the new energy vehicle market is very strong, the first quarter of this year's new energy vehicle wholesale volume and retail sales are soaring, the data of the Association of Passenger Vehicles show that from January to March, the wholesale of new energy passenger vehicles was 1.190 million units, an increase of 145.4% year-on-year, and the retail volume was 1.07 million units, an increase of 146.6% year-on-year. In addition, the retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles has also been rising from January to March this year, 16.6%, 21.8% and 28.2% respectively. This means that the proportion of retail sales of new energy vehicles in the passenger car market in the first quarter gradually increased.
Specific to each car company, in the top fifteen statistics of the Federation of Automobile Manufacturers, except for SAIC Passenger Cars, which saw a decline in sales due to the headquarters in the hard-hit areas of the epidemic, the performance of all car companies increased year-on-year.
However, when the sales of new energy vehicles are rising, we must see the reasons behind it. As we all know, this year's subsidies for new energy vehicles have declined by 30%, which has stimulated consumers to buy new energy vehicles before 2022, resulting in the release of orders in the early stage of this year. In addition, fuel prices continued to soar in March this year, which also helped to increase sales of new energy vehicles, after all, the price of electricity is lower than the price of oil.
However, now consumers' attitudes towards new energy vehicles will change to a greater or lesser extent. It should be known that consumers choose new energy vehicles in addition to being forced by the policy, but also take into account the lower cost of using vehicles, but after entering 2022, the cost of new energy vehicles is not necessarily lower than that of traditional fuel vehicles.
Now the price of raw materials for new energy vehicles is rising, making the market price and insurance cost of new energy vehicles have increased. It is reported that the current rise in raw material prices directly leads to a rise in the comprehensive cost of battery materials by more than 40%, and car companies are forced to raise the sales price of new energy models, including GAC Aean, Roewe, Ideal, Geometry and other car companies, and the price increase of models ranges from 1,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan.
In addition to the higher cost of car purchase, the insurance cost of new energy vehicles is also quite a lot, and it is reported that the premiums of new energy models such as Xiaopeng, Weilai and Ideal have risen by more than 30%, and many models even exceed 50%.
However, due to the repeated epidemics and the impact on consumer incomes, consumers' confidence in car purchase will decline significantly in the case of rising car purchase and car costs. This situation should be reflected in the second quarter of this year.
How long can new energy vehicles still be fired?
Perhaps you will say that the new energy vehicle market price and insurance costs are only temporary, the future automobile market will be the world of new energy vehicles, and the China Automobile Association also expects that in 2022, the sales of new energy vehicles will reach 5 million, an increase of 42% year-on-year, the market share is expected to exceed 18%, coupled with the carbon peak and carbon neutrality of the two major goals have not been achieved, as well as BYD, BAIC and other car companies said that the suspension of fuel vehicles, people are more convinced that the new energy vehicle this hot fire will continue to burn.
In fact, from the perspective of convenience, it is doomed that new energy vehicles cannot replace traditional fuel vehicles, and it is accurate to say that pure electric vehicles cannot replace traditional fuel vehicles. On the one hand, new energy vehicles are not really environmentally friendly, and now pure electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, extended range electric vehicles, etc. all need to generate electricity through coal and oil, that is, they are inseparable from fossil energy as traditional fuel vehicles. It is only that new energy vehicles can improve the utilization rate of fossil energy and achieve the purpose of emission reduction.
On the other hand, new energy vehicles cannot make our car life more convenient. For example, running long distances, we drive traditional fuel vehicles can do walking, but new energy vehicles are different, especially pure electric vehicles, before going out, we need to understand how much vehicle mileage there is, and whether there are enough charging piles on the road or destination, and even every time we go out, we need to specially charge the vehicle battery, which is undoubtedly adding trouble to our car life.
The main reason for this situation is that there are too few charging stations for new energy vehicles, far less than the number of gas stations. According to statistics, by the end of 2021, the mainland has built a total of 75,000 charging stations, 2.617 million charging piles, and 1,298 substations. Of course, the number of charging stations can continue to increase, but the charging time of more than one hour is always difficult to compare with the refueling time of several minutes of fuel vehicles.
The premise of a new species replacing the old species must be to enhance the convenience of our lives, smart phones to replace button mobile phones, and cars to replace the carriage are the same reason, which is doomed to new energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, can not become the mainstream. In this regard, we can also understand from the sales of new energy vehicles, although the market sales continue to rise rapidly, but the market share is extremely small.
Taking the first quarter as an example, the total sales volume of the mainland passenger car market is 4.915 million units, and the new energy vehicles are only 1.07 million, and nearly 80% of the market share is still occupied by traditional fuel vehicles. This means that most car buyers are still inclined to traditional fuel models, and new energy vehicles are only a supplement to the automotive market.
According to the statistics of the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the number of new energy vehicles, mainly micro pure electric vehicles, sells well, and the wholesale volume of A00-class models is 119,000 units, which is higher than other types of models. In terms of sales, the A00 class sedan exceeded 260,000 units, and the market share reached 24.7%, which also far exceeded other new energy vehicle models. It can be seen that in the sales volume of the new energy vehicle market, micro pure electric vehicles are the core main force.
I believe that everyone knows that micro pure electric vehicles have problems such as short mileage, driving texture and poor safety, and the applicable scenarios are mainly short-distance transportation in the city, which also shows to a certain extent that the current new energy vehicles are only a supplement to family cars and cannot become the main force of family transportation.
The new energy vehicle market is hot, micro pure electric vehicles are the main force, such models with the advantages of people-friendly prices, free green cards and other advantages to solve the problem of young people in the metropolis to buy cars. However, micro pure electric vehicles are difficult to meet the consumption upgrade problems of consumers, and other new energy vehicles cannot bring more convenient car life in all directions than traditional fuel vehicles, which also limits the development of new energy vehicles, that is to say, new energy vehicles that seem to be very hot are actually a virtual fire, and how long they can burn is an unknown number.
However, relevant policies are still encouraging the development of new energy vehicles, and it is believed that in the short term, the fire of new energy vehicles will continue to burn. It's just that now the market price and insurance costs of new energy vehicles are rising, and the cost of using cars is basically the same as that of traditional fuel vehicles, which will inhibit consumers' desire to buy cars.