At the beginning of 2022, Xiaopeng, a new domestic car-making force, announced its official entry into the European market, landing in Sweden for the first time and opening the first brand retail store in Europe in Stockholm.
Xiaopeng is not the first Chinese car company to announce its entry into the European market, with NIO's first service and delivery center in Norway opening in Oslo in September 2021.
Not only the new forces of car manufacturing, SAIC, Dongfeng, FAW, Great Wall, Geely and other Chinese car companies have entered the European market.
Behind the Chinese car companies' plans to seek gold overseas is eye-catching data.
According to data from the China Automobile Association, China's total automobile exports reached 2.015 million units in 2021, breaking through the 2 million mark for the first time, doubling year-on-year.
In 2022, China's automobile export momentum is even stronger, from January to March, auto companies exported 582,000 units, an increase of 58.3% year-on-year. By model, passenger car exports were 452,000 units, up 61.9% year-on-year, and commercial vehicles were exported 130,000 units, up 47.2% year-on-year.
SAIC, Great Wall, Geely and Changan all achieved their best overseas sales in history in 2021.
The Germans began to worry that Chinese car companies were coming to grab jobs
Among the world's three major automotive markets with annual sales of tens of millions of vehicles, the European market is considered to be the most closed and solidified. According to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), more than 80% of the 11.74 million vehicles sold in Europe in 2021 will be occupied by Local European car companies. Honda, one of the top three Japanese, has only 0.6% share in Europe.
If it is in the era of fuel vehicles, Chinese car companies can be said to have no chance of winning in the European Union, but with new energy vehicles, Now Chinese car companies have successfully pried open the door to the European market.
According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, the top ten countries for export in 2021 are Belgium, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, India, Thailand, Germany, France, Slovenia, Australia and the Philippines.
In 2021, China exported 424,000 new energy vehicles to the above ten countries, accounting for 77.8% of China's total exports of new energy vehicles.
Among them, the European market has become the main incremental market for China's new energy vehicle exports.
Chinese cars, which have always been looked down upon, have begun to attract the attention of european car companies and the media.
At the Volkswagen Employee Conference in Wolfsburg in October 2021, Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess said: "Today, Tesla is the benchmark, and other powerful startups from China are also entering our market. In the past few weeks, Ralph Brandstadter and I (CEO of the Volkswagen brand) have tested several cars from China. We have to admit that they are really great. ”
Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess
On December 27, 2021, the German news TV channel website published a commentary titled "Chinese automakers are getting bigger and stronger in Europe", in which author Mario Homen wrote that Chinese car companies in Europe offer cars and sales concepts that people have never seen before. The number of Chinese manufacturers selling their cars in Europe has grown for several years.
Not long ago, German TELEVISION 2 ZDF said in a program that China has achieved a leading position in the field of electric vehicles, leaving little time for the transformation of the German automotive industry, and if it does not seize the opportunity, Germany's most prestigious automotive industry may lose its international leading position.
In the eyes of industry insiders, the reason why Chinese car companies have recently issued signals to enter the European market is because it is the best "window period". According to ACEA data, the market penetration rate of BEV+PHEV in the EU market in 2021 is 18%, far exceeding China's 13.77%; European car companies are in the process of electrification transformation, and the price, energy efficiency and even configuration of new energy vehicles are not as good as China's new energy vehicles.
Global consulting firm McKinsey pointed out that the "endurance price ratio" of Chinese car companies is far better than that of international car companies (21 km / 10,000 yuan for Chinese car companies and 11 km / 10,000 yuan for international car companies).
In addition to endurance, China's electric vehicles usually have a very futuristic interior design, as well as a wealth of car networking features, which are the unique advantages of Chinese electric vehicles.
Of course, from the perspective of absolute sales scale, Chinese car companies entering the European market is only a starting point, but this marks the beginning of Chinese car companies to march into developed regions, and its significance is far beyond the sales figures in the short term.
After all, fifteen years ago, Chinese cars were still the object of ridicule by the German media, and several Chinese brand cars that rushed to the Frankfurt Motor Show were ridiculed by the German media as "broken copper and rotten iron from China".
China's first global car or new energy
In recent years, Chinese car companies have gained momentum and launched models such as H6, CS75, Boyue and other models, which not only have high sales and strong product strength, but also have been highly recognized by the Chinese people. Unfortunately, they are not sold in the European and American markets, so they are not global cars.
There is no official interpretation of the definition of the global car so far, and the automotive industry has conventionally defined the global car as a model sold in two of the three markets of China, the United States and the European Union, and it needs to be supported by sales in a certain market.
At present, SAIC and Geely are most likely to launch the first global car.
When other Chinese car companies intend to test the waters in some parts of Europe first, the SAIC MG brand has attacked the market in European countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
According to the data, SAIC's overseas market sales in 2021 will be 697,000 vehicles, an increase of 78.9% year-on-year, of which Chinese brands account for more than 60%, and form six 50,000-level markets in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the Americas, the Middle East, ASEAN and South Asia.
In Europe, last year SAIC MG and MAXUS sold 73,000 units in developed countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Sweden (including more than 40,000 new energy vehicles).
The increase in the European market mainly comes from the SAIC MG ZS EV. According to eu-evs data, ZS EV sales in 2021 were 11,821 units.
SAIC motor announced that this year's blockbuster pure electric vehicle MG EH32 will land in Europe, SAIC's annual sales in Europe are expected to reach 120,000 vehicles, and Europe will take the lead in promoting TOC's first "100,000-car class" overseas regional market.
Compared with other Chinese car companies, SAIC Motor's biggest advantage is that the MG brand acquired back that year has a certain brand base in the European market and has a high market acceptance. To the outside world, this seems to be a choice to return to home on the basis of British identity.
Polestar Polestar, which has Chinese ancestry, also performed well in the European market, with 14,720 sales of Polestar 2 in 2021, which is higher than the MG ZS EV.
Polestar Polestar polestar is a global high-performance electric vehicle brand jointly owned by Volvo Car Group and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
However, some people said that although MG and Polar star cars are produced in China, research and development is done in China, and management is also dominated by Chinese, but the brand is hard to say that it is Chinese, which is a bit unjustified. The real Chinese global car may have to wait a while. But no matter how you look at it, it's a good start.
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Strong exports are a sign of China's transition from an automobile power to an automobile power, which will be a new starting point!
Throughout the world, all automotive powers have a very high overseas market share.
Germany produces and exports 86 percent of its total global production, Japan at 85 percent, South Korea at 83 percent, and the United States at 64 percent, the data shows.
In 2012, China's automobile export volume exceeded the million-vehicle mark for the first time, but in the following years, the export scale has declined, and it was not until 2017 that it re-stood on the million-vehicle step, and in this decade, China's automobile export volume has always hovered around the level of one million vehicles.
In 2021, automobile exports will exceed the 2 million mark, so that the share of China's automobile exports will rise from 4% to 8%, and China's automobile export space is huge.
Text | Li Jianbo
(This article is the author's personal opinion only and does not represent the position of DearAuto.) )
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Mr. Li Guoyong of Guangdong Green Law Firm