"We will continue to focus on the implementation of the NEW AUTO strategy towards a future of zero emissions and autonomous driving." Previously, volkswagen group CEO group said so at the 2021 annual financial report conference.
The next two years may be a key cycle to determine the "status of car companies", especially for Volkswagen. Once upon a time, the Volkswagen Group, which owns Audi and Porsche, wore the crown of "the world's largest car manufacturer" for four consecutive years. Until 2020, Volkswagen not only set the worst sales data in a decade, but also was overtaken by its old rival Toyota and fell off the throne.
In that year, Volkswagen also began a more drastic strategic layout, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new energy vehicles. Veteran car manufacturers are aggressively entering the electric vehicle market, can they overtake in curves and return to the top?
Huge bets on electrification
In the face of the impact of the epidemic on the normal operation of car companies, Volkswagen is still increasing investment in digitalization, electrification, product layout and business transformation. In order to support the implementation of the electrification strategy, Volkswagen plans to invest 70 billion euros, of which 20 billion euros will invest in electric vehicles and 50 billion euros in power batteries.
In this global auto market gamble, having a power battery brand that is competitive enough is a short board that Volkswagen urgently needs to solve. In September 2018, Volkswagen's pure electric MEB platform was officially launched. This is a modular system that Volkswagen is developing for the manufacture of electric vehicles.
In 2019, Volkswagen replaced the new logo with a flatter, which is seen as a sign of accelerating the electrification of the layout. In the same year, Audi launched the e-tron series of pure electric high-performance SUV models. SAIC and Volkswagen will spend 17 billion yuan to build the world's first MEB pure electric vehicle plant in Anting, Shanghai, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 units.
In 2020, Volkswagen's pure electric vehicle ID series was the first to be launched in Europe, and a year later it was put into production in China. Because of the huge investment in the early stage, Yu Jingmin, general manager of SAIC Volkswagen Sales Co., Ltd., said frankly: "Saic-Volkswagen ID. series has no time for sales to climb, and it must achieve the goal of monthly sales exceeding 1,000 within a few months." ”
With continuous investment, Volkswagen finally tasted the dividends of new energy vehicles for the first time in this big gamble. In October 2020, as Volkswagen's first model released on the global MEB pure electric platform, the ID3 became the top pure electric vehicle sales in the European market since its launch in Europe.
While The Volkswagen Group's global car sales fell by 4.5% in 2021, Volkswagen's total electric vehicle sales achieved a counter-trend growth of 61.9% in 2021, exceeding the 300,000-unit mark.
At the march 2022 earnings presentation, Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess emphasized, "We will continue to focus on the implementation of the NEW AUTO strategy towards a future of zero emissions and autonomous driving." "Although Volkswagen's sales fell again by 6% in the previous year, the Volkswagen Group's sales revenue increased by 12% year-on-year. The profitability of electrification seems to be bearing fruit.
There is no alternative to transformation
The dilemma of Volkswagen Group (hereinafter referred to as Volkswagen) begins with the epidemic in the year of Gengzi. At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic pressed the pause button on economic activities, and people who originally had car purchase plans could only temporarily discourage cars.
A large number of car dealers suspended business, and activities such as auto shows and promotions were postponed, making car sales worse in the first quarter, which was originally the off-season.
The industrial shutdown has led to a shortage of auto parts supply, disruption of the global automotive supply chain, and a sharp decline in finished vehicle production capacity. Until now, the shortage of chips caused by insufficient production capacity has continued to ferment around the world, choking the throat of car companies.
That year, global car sales shrank sharply, with passenger car sales shrinking by 10.13 million units, down nearly 20%. As the long-standing "king of passenger cars", Volkswagen has naturally suffered a heavy blow.
As the advantages of turbocharging and dual-clutch technology fade, the dieselgate incident continues to affect, and Volkswagen's transformation into electrification has become an inevitable choice. At the national level, Germany officially announced that it would stop producing fuel vehicles in 2035, so electrification became the only option for the German company.
In the new energy track has been a master of the forest, such as Tesla in the new energy vehicle market soaring, the market value has far exceeded the public several times. The new energy track is crowded with opponents. This fuel vehicle giant has become a game-breaker in the initial pattern of the electric vehicle market.
At present, Volkswagen has launched an ID series in the Volkswagen brand, and the Audi brand has launched the Etron series, but consumers' labels for Volkswagen still mark the traditional car forces, compared with the new car forces Tesla and Weilai and other intelligent aspects, the ID series and the Etron series are even less satisfactory.
The Chinese market will make a breakthrough in the future
China is the second largest market for Volkswagen Group electric vehicles outside of Europe. Even in 2020, when the epidemic was severe, Volkswagen still invested nearly 4 billion euros in China.
According to the mainland's latest new energy vehicle development plan, it is expected that the sales volume of new energy vehicles will account for about 20% of the total sales of new vehicles by 2025. The China Automobile Association estimates that it can reach an annual demand of about 7.18 million vehicles. This is a piece of fat that must be fought for by any car company that hopes to achieve greater success in the electric vehicle market.
Volkswagen, on the other hand, has ambitions to deliver 1.5 million vehicles a year to Chinese consumers in a few years. In the future, the Chinese market will become an important driving force and breakthrough point for Volkswagen's new energy vehicle sales.
In October 2021, SAIC Volkswagen's pure electric crossover ID.3 was officially listed in China. Prior to this, Volkswagen had already launched ID.4 in January, followed by ID.6 in June. Within a few months, three series of pure electric vehicles were launched in China, which is a history that Volkswagen has never had in the heyday of fuel vehicles.
Volkswagen's ID. series has been designed to cover the car user in all directions. ID.4 is mainly aimed at young consumer groups aged 30-35, while ID.3 is more youthful. ID.6 will pay more attention to household needs from the product level.
This ID series, which targets all kinds of car users, has swept the European market. However, after the start of the trip to China, the ID series was not immediately favored and fell into a sluggish sales volume. Volkswagen CEO Diess even faced "impeachment" within the group at one point.
Many people began to doubt that "the era of Volkswagen has passed" and "Volkswagen is the next Nokia". In a period of singing and declining, the ID series relied on the aura of "Star II" and the accumulation of its own reputation to complete the counterattack and began to soar in sales.
The energy released by this traditional giant after the strategic transformation should definitely not be underestimated by everyone. By 2023, Volkswagen will also have 10 pure electric ID models on the market. The former king will use everything to prove that Volkswagen will always be the leader of this industry.
Written by Wenyi Zhuang
Editor-in-Chief Sun Chen
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