Located in the northwestern part of the Eastern Hemisphere, Europe is a paradise for pure electric vehicles. Due to the influence of geographical environment and other influences, European consumers are more likely to accept pure electric vehicles. In 2021, the penetration rate of pure electric vehicles in Europe exceeded that of the Chinese market by 6 percentage points and was close to 20%. Among them, Norway has the highest penetration rate, reaching a staggering 89.32%. Landing in the European market has become an important development strategy for the new forces of China's car manufacturing. The European electric vehicle market is good, but who says money is so easy to make?
Starting from 2020, the new car-making forces have successively sounded the horn of going out to sea, formed a team, and released strategies, trying to let every European consumer see the power of Chinese cars. But two years have passed, and almost all the real money and silver that have been smashed down have sunk into the sea. Weilai and Xiaopeng, which took the lead in going to sea, will deliver 474 and 200 vehicles in Europe in 2021. It is reported that some of the new car-making forces have seen the situation is not good, and have begun to drastically lay off employees, or adjust the European market plan. Of course, there are also new car-making forces that have announced in a high-profile way to go to Europe to pan for gold.
So the question is, how did the new car-making forces that are selling hot in China get to Europe to eat the closed door soup?
One reason is that channel construction is not yet mature. Xiaopeng and Weilai are all referring to Tesla's "online + offline" retail model, which means that the charging network system, service network and IT system must be carried out in the early stage, which requires a lot of manpower and material resources, and it is impossible to complete in a short period of time. When Tesla enters the overseas market, it almost has to prepare 4 years in advance. Obviously, Xiaopeng and Weilai have not been able to carry a mature sales model at present.
Another reason is that the market authorization is insufficient. Traditional Chinese car companies enter the European market, mostly in cooperation with local dealers, fully authorizing them to operate. If they have money to earn, they are naturally willing to give it a go, which is why BYD Tang EV sells well in Europe. Of course, selling only more than a thousand vehicles a year does not seem to be worth mentioning. Looking back at Xiaopeng and Weilai, the former is partially authorized to cooperate, and the latter insists on self-operated development. When you first arrive, you will not climb the ground, and the sales downturn is inevitable.
But the more important reason is that the automotive products are not hard enough.
Europe is the birthplace of the automobile industry, and European consumers have a deeper understanding of automobiles and relatively higher requirements for product strength. The biggest selling point of pure electric vehicles is the intelligent assisted driving system, which just happens to be a situation where the new car-making forces are in a state of disobedience. Europe is very strict about the management of user data, and the General Data Protection Regulation issued by the European Union has very strict regulations on this aspect. New car-making forces have landed in Europe, and they must build data centers in Europe, which requires considerable investment of money and manpower.
However, the most crucial thing is that the intelligent auxiliary driving system created by the new car-making forces cannot adapt to the European road environment in the short term. Entering Norway, the Xiaopeng G3i, although optimized for English speech recognition, only retains the automatic parking assistance function for assisted driving. To put it bluntly, it is equivalent to a castrated version of the intelligent driver assistance system. Obviously, urban NGP can be realized in China, how to get to Europe to "lack of arms and legs"? This brings us to the mode of operation of the system.
Xiaopeng and most of the new chinese car-making forces use the intelligent driver assistance system of "high-end equipment + high-precision map + AI algorithm". For example, the Xiaopeng P5 equipped with peripherals such as lidar can realize the urban NGP function in a high-speed closed scene through a precise and detailed map. Tesla is taking the route of image vision algorithm, relying on camera perception + AI learning, and "absorbing" a large amount of road condition data to achieve high-level intelligent assisted driving. Tesla and Xiaopeng are like Superman and Iron Man, the former relying on wisdom and talent, the latter relying on the power of science and technology.
The European road environment is very different from China,000 road data and high-precision maps can no longer be used, and without xiaopeng with scientific and technological power bonuses, the only way to re-collect data is to train the assisted driving system. Tesla also faces a start over, but the Autopilot assisted driving system, which itself focuses on data algorithm capabilities, has a stronger and faster understanding of the European road environment. Relying on the reference book to solve the problem master, and the knowledge reserve of the bully together in the examination room, who can laugh to the end, it is self-evident.
At present, The new forces of Chinese car manufacturing have not yet rolled out the European market, and only rely on test cars and outsourcing channels to collect European road condition data, which obviously cannot fully make the intelligent auxiliary driving system play a big role. Only when autonomous driving is successfully landed, can the new forces of car manufacturing gain a foothold in the European market. And this is not an overnight thing, China's new car-making forces have to work hard.