Recently, the pure electric vehicles of traditional luxury brands have been discussed as if they have been discussed, and one by one they have "teased" the wallets of domestic consumers.
For example, the BMW i7, which has just debuted in the world, whether you like its "squinting eyes" or not, it does represent BMW's current highest level in the field of pure electricity. In addition, the Lexus RZ, Mercedes-Benz EQE, Audi A6 Avant e-tron, all of which are eye-catching. Even Lincoln, who has been "obscure" in the field of pure electric power, also pulled out the Lincoln Star concept car "with hindsight".
Of course, this is not the first time that traditional foreign brands have sounded the "counter-attack horn" in the field of pure electric power, and many "pioneer" models have been killed.
As early as Nissan Xuanyi Pure Electric, Volkswagen Golf Pure Electric, Hyundai Elantra EV; then to the later Buick Micro Blue 6, Chevrolet Cruise, Jaguar I-PACE; and more recently Volkswagen ID Series, Cadillac LYRIQ, Honda e:NS1, Toyota bZ4X.
In recent years, we can indeed see the changes and efforts made by traditional foreign brands. They're trying to adapt to the trend of electrification; they're trying to cater to consumer demand; they're also trying to keep themselves strong in the era of fuel vehicles.
So now the question is: in the era of pure electric power, do traditional foreign brands still have the opportunity to remain strong?
Before talking about "traditional foreign brands desperately entering pure electric", I think it is necessary to talk about the current new energy market. According to the statistics of the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, domestic passenger car sales in 2021 will be 20.146 million units, of which new energy sales will be 2.989 million units, accounting for about 14.84%.
By 2022, the growth momentum of new energy sales has not diminished at all, and even achieved "a little red from the green". Of course, it is not "a little red" to be precise, but "very red". Especially in the special situation of March, domestic new energy sales still handed over 445,000 units, an increase of 137.6% year-on-year.
If you look at the january to March, domestic new energy sales reached 1.07 million units, an increase of 146.6% year-on-year. Domestic passenger car sales from January to March were 4.915 million units, so if you calculate it, the sales volume of new energy in January and March actually reached 21.8%.
Just when many people think that new energy vehicles are still "niche products", in fact, they have formed a trend of fire, I don't know if there are more and more green cars around you?
Among so many new energy sources, pure electric accounts for the majority, according to 2021 data, of the 2.989 million new energy sales, 2.444 million are pure electric, accounting for 81.8%. Now you finally know why traditional foreign brands have rushed to force the pure electric market in recent years.
Some people may say: even if traditional foreign brands begin to pay attention to the pure electric market, it is too late, and new energy has long been the world of Chinese brands.
The reason for this "singing and declining theory" is indeed related to the "indisputable gas" of traditional foreign brands in recent years. For example, the earlier Dongfeng Nissan Xuanyi Pure Electric, the guidance price before the subsidy was as high as 250,000 yuan, but it only had a 338km NEDC endurance. Of course, this is not the most excessive, Volkswagen Langyi pure electricity, golf pure electric NEDC endurance is not even 300km, and finally can only "break the bone" for sale.
I don't know whether it is the rise of pure electric vehicles of Chinese brands, or the pressure of new energy credits in the "Coffee Act", in the past few years, traditional foreign brands have indeed launched a lot of "oil to electricity" products in a hurry. This also gives BYD and some new car-making forces the opportunity to "overtake in curves", and also makes the pure electric vehicles of traditional foreign brands leave an "unreliable" impression in people's minds.
After that, although traditional foreign brands are also trying to create an exclusive platform for pure electricity, the effect is not as good as expected. For example, the Volkswagen ID series created based on the MEB platform, although it got rid of the criticism of oil to electricity, and the appearance was also distinguished from the Volkswagen fuel vehicle, but the sales were still flat, and perhaps even Volkswagen itself did not want to understand where the problem was.
The reason for this is that I think the car buying preferences of new energy consumers have been reshaped by Chinese brands and Tesla: they have higher requirements for power performance, technology configuration and intelligent driving. In these aspects, the ID series based on the Volkswagen MEB platform has no advantages.
Looking at the recent new pure electric vehicles of traditional foreign brands, in fact, there are some "lackluster". For example, in the press release given to the media by Lexus RZ, detailed acceleration and endurance information is not available, and the technical configuration such as smart cars and machines is rarely mentioned, and the driving assistance is still stuck at the L2 level, and the appearance and interior are talked about a lot.
Another example is the BMW i7, which has a controversial appearance, which looks almost the same as the fuel version and is from the CLAR platform. The BMW CLAR platform is not a pure electric exclusive platform, it not only produces plug-in hybrids, but also produces fuel vehicles, which also makes bmw i7 questioned as "oil to electricity". In addition, if you look at the rear floor of the BMW i7, you will find a huge bulge, which is more suspicious of "oil to electricity".
So does it mean that in the electric age, traditional foreign brands have no chance to remain strong?
Just when everyone thinks that traditional foreign brands have fallen behind in the electric era, Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX has given everyone a good "lesson". Recently, the car ran from Sindelfingen in Germany to Cassis in France with full electricity, a total distance of 1008km. And what is even more surprising is that after running the full distance, this Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX has about 15% of the power left, which is equivalent to about 140km of battery life.
Although Chinese brand pure electric vehicles also have models that claim to be able to run 1000km, the endurance performance on the real road is unknown (Weilai ET7 is still a futures). In addition, from the perspective of battery pack capacity, Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX is only equipped with a 100kWh battery, while the 2 Chinese brand models rely on "stacking" to achieve ultra-long endurance.
First of all, it is undeniable that traditional foreign brands have a fairly deep accumulation in car manufacturing. The reason why the Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX can achieve a real road endurance of 1000+km is not unrelated to its wind resistance coefficient as low as 0.17Cd. For reference, NIO ET7 is 0.208Cd and Xiaopeng P7 is 0.236Cd.
Not only the wind resistance coefficient, but also the lightweight of the body, chassis adjustment, kinetic energy recovery, solar charging, and even the processing precision of mechanical components will affect the endurance performance of pure electric vehicles. In terms of car-making technology, "the skinny camel is bigger than the horse", and Chinese brands have a lot of experience to learn compared to traditional foreign brands.
In addition to car-making technology, the design skills of traditional foreign brands cannot be ignored. Previously, BYD's models have been complained that "it doesn't look advanced", and then BYD directly poached the former Audi design director - Wolfgang Joseph Egger, which has an increasingly beautiful "dragon face" design.
Nowadays, many Chinese brands deliberately design a quite personalized appearance for new cars in order to be innovative, and some appearances do not conform to mainstream aesthetics, and finally do not inherit any family design language, which is really regrettable.
Li Bin once said: There is no 20 billion do not build cars. It can be seen that car manufacturing is an extremely expensive investment, and traditional foreign brands are often not bad money. For example, although Volkswagen's ID series sells modestly, the total investment in SAIC Volkswagen's MEB plant exceeds 17 billion yuan, which is a planned annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles. In contrast, Weilai, which has been sold for several years, now has an annual production capacity of only 120,000 vehicles.
In terms of investment in electric factories, traditional foreign brands are quite willing to invest. For example, Audi invested 35.8 billion yuan in Changchun to build the first base in China dedicated to the production of pure electric vehicles. Even Toyota, which has been detaining and searching, plans to invest 8.5 billion yuan to build a new electric vehicle factory in Tianjin.
Finally, the brand influence, although the current Chinese brand pure electric vehicles represented by BYD have done quite well, but in the eyes of many people, these cars are still "not up-to-class" existence. For example, the same budget of 300,000, many people may still "look down" on the BYD Han EV, preferring to add tens of thousands more to buy a BMW i3.
In fact, this kind of "superstition" for traditional foreign brands is also forgivable, after all, the Chinese brand fuel vehicles decades ago did leave a bad impression. This change of concept requires a long process, but the good news is that brands such as Weilai, Hongqi, Gaohe and Lantu are already trying to reverse this situation, and even BYD's high-end models have begun to appear frequently on important occasions at home and abroad.
Regardless of whether traditional foreign brands can continue to maintain their strength in the electric age, the pattern of the automobile industry has already undergone earth-shaking changes.
In the era of fuel vehicles, major car companies basically master the core research and development and manufacturing capabilities of the three major parts, and profits are firmly locked. In the era of electric vehicles, many car companies are more like an assembly plant, somewhat similar to most mobile phone manufacturers.
When the battery occupies more than 30% of the cost of a car, the right to speak on pricing has gradually fallen into the hands of suppliers, which is the main reason why most pure electric vehicles have recently increased prices.
In 2021, the loading volume of the CATL era reached 80.51GWh, occupying a market share of 52.1% in China. In addition to Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Geely and other car companies, the customers of the Ningde era also have traditional foreign brands such as North and South Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, hyundai and so on.
And many traditional foreign brands have no plans to develop batteries in the near future, that is to say, as long as the Ningde era can continue to maintain the leading position in the field of power batteries, these traditional foreign brands still have to continue to "work" for them, which is very cool to think.
In addition to the power battery, the intelligent entertainment system in the car is also increasingly becoming one of the selling points of pure electric vehicles. For example, the 31-inch 8K screen in the back of bmw i7 is equipped with Huawei's application market, which can't help but make people have a little more reverie about Huawei's automotive ecosystem. In the future, Chinese companies may be able to make a lot of money by relying on smart cockpit solutions.
Therefore, in the industrial pattern of electric vehicles, car companies are not necessarily the biggest "cake" winners, and China's supporting suppliers have great potential.
So the final question is, do you think that in the era of pure electric power, there is still a chance for traditional foreign brands to continue to maintain their strength? Compared with traditional foreign brands and Chinese brands, who are you more optimistic about?