The impact of rising raw material prices is still fermenting, and the first to be affected is the small electric vehicle that pays attention to cost performance.
On April 24, Changan New Energy released the news that the recent shortage of upstream raw materials and the limitation of vehicle and parts production capacity have led to a long delivery cycle of the model. In order to better serve the subscribers who have already placed the order, it is now scheduled to suspend the collection of orders for the E-Star National Edition model from April 25. The company will go all out to coordinate production resources to meet the scheduling plan of existing orders, and ensure that the users who have booked cars pick up the car as soon as possible.
The Ben Ben is a hot selling small electric car. According to the data of the Association, the sales volume of Benben EV in January-March 2022 was 26,119 units, an increase of 147% year-on-year, ranking seventh in the sales list of new energy cars. According to the official website, the national version of Ben Ben E-Star is priced at 29,800 yuan to 53,800 yuan, and the comprehensive mileage is about 300km.
A similar encounter is the Euler brand of Great Wall Motors. Not long ago, Euler Black Cat and White Cat stopped receiving orders due to chip shortages and the supply of spare parts that could not guarantee production. The company also revealed that the loss of a single black cat model exceeded 10,000 yuan, and the average sales price of this car was only 100,000 yuan.
Such A00-class electric vehicles priced at no more than 100,000 yuan were originally hot products in the market, and they contributed to the process of driving the initial penetration rate of domestic new energy vehicles.
For example, the popular Wuling Hongguang MINI EV surpassed Tesla, BYD and other models to top the sales list of new energy vehicles in 2021. Among the top 15 models in the list from January to March this year, 4 are small electric vehicles, namely Wuling Hongguang MINI, QQ Ice Cream, Benben EV, and Euler Black Cat.
Li Jinyong, president of the New Energy Vehicle Branch of the Automobile Chamber of Commerce of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, once said in a public speech that under the blessing of the smart cockpit, A00-class electric vehicles are essentially different from traditional micro-fuel passenger cars, and in the eyes of consumers, they are representatives of new categories and new fashions, rather than the concept of low-end cars. Coupled with the low cost of use, the A00 car under the intelligent cockpit will take the lead in replacing the same level of fuel vehicles.
Therefore, Li Jinyong expects that among the 5 million electric vehicle sales in 2022, high-end intelligent electric vehicles and A00-class intelligent electric vehicles will take the largest share, and annual sales are expected to reach 1.5 million to 2 million.
However, rising raw material prices have challenged the A00 market. The price of lithium carbonate, the core raw material, has risen from a low of 50,000 yuan / ton to 500,000 yuan, which means that the cost of a 50-kWh electric vehicle will increase by at least 13,500 yuan. The increase in high-end models with higher pricing can still be digested by the market, but it has become an unbearable weight on small electric vehicles.
The plunging price of new energy credits has also become a contributing factor. Industry insiders believe that small electric vehicles can be exchanged for a large number of positive points for new energy vehicles by relying on the volume, which can help fill the negative points brought by fuel vehicles in the early stage of the transformation of car companies, and can also sell at a good price when market points are relatively scarce. However, the price of points has dropped sharply this year, which has also indirectly diluted the economic benefits brought by small electric vehicles.
The recent disruption of the supply chain by the epidemic cannot be ignored. SAIC Motor, Tesla, and NIO announced the suspension of production from the end of March to the beginning of April, and parts suppliers were also affected, and logistics in some areas were blocked. At present, the resumption of work and production of the automobile industry chain is still in progress.
Overall, the production and sales of new energy vehicles are still maintaining rapid growth. According to the China Automobile Association, in March, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 465,000 units and 484,000 units, up 1.1 times year-on-year, and in the first quarter, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 1.293 million units and 1.275 million units, respectively, up 1.4 times year-on-year.
With the gradual increase in supply, the recent rise in raw materials has slowed down. Shanghai nonferrous network data show that the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has loosened after high shocks, and the latest quotation is 467,000 yuan / ton; the prices of lithium hydroxide, lithium hexafluorophosphate, lithium iron phosphate, electrolyte and other materials have also fallen to varying degrees.
(Editor-in-charge: Zhang Qianye)
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