In the past, many classic mini cars emerged in the domestic market, such as Chery QQ, BYD F0, Double Ring Small Noble, Changan Benben, Big Dipper, Swift and so on. These affordable mini cars are the first cars for many consumers. With the upgrading of consumption, the market for traditional A00-class fuel vehicles has gradually fallen, but the pure electric models in the A00-class market have become the fragrant food in the market.
A00-class pure electric car with low price, green brand, small size, energy saving and other product advantages, has won the favor of a large number of consumers. In addition to the product advantages, the sales performance of such models can also be remarkable.
In 2021, the total sales volume of the A00 class sedan market was about 899,000 units, an increase of 199.6% year-on-year, of which the A00 class pure electric car sold about 895,000 units. At the same time, the A00-class pure electric car accounted for 36% of new energy vehicle sales in 2021, the highest point in the past three years. (Note: 27% and 33% in 2019 and 2020, respectively)
In the top 15 of the 2021 new energy passenger car sales list, 9 seats were won by the A00 class pure electric car. By the end of 2021, there are more than 40 A00-class electric models on sale.
Among them, in addition to popular models such as Hongguang MINIEV, Clavi CLEAR, Benben EV, Chery eQ (Chery Little Ant), Euler Black Cat and so on, there are many "old man le" models that have borrowed the wave of A00 pure electric sedans to transform. For example: Reading Mango, Lingbao, Lingbao BOX, Punk Duoduo, Punk Meimei, Xinte YONG Guangxiaoxin, Qilu eC1 and so on. In addition, the author also noticed that the latest issue of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's new car catalog also has a number of A00-class cars listed among them.
Why are traditional car companies rushing to enter the A00-level pure electricity market?
The author first threw out a few data: in 2021, Clavi CLEAR sold nearly 46,600 vehicles, an increase of 343% year-on-year, accounting for nearly 50% of Roewe's new energy vehicle sales; 70% of the pure electric vehicles sold by Changan New Energy in 2021 originated from Benben e-star, which shows that the contribution of A00-class electric vehicles to its sales is very high.
In addition to the advantages of the traditional fuel vehicle market, considering the control of resources and costs, the cost of trial and error in entering the A00-level market is low, and the traditional car companies also have a strong supply chain and market sales channel advantages.
More importantly, traditional car companies can use this to alleviate the pressure of double points. For traditional car companies that mainly produce fuel vehicles, they must either spend money to buy points, or sell more new energy vehicles to earn points. For example, SAIC-GM-Wuling, with its excellent sales of Hongguang MINIEV, received 440,000 points in 2021, which not only solved a certain double point gap for SAIC, but also sold excess new energy points to profit from it.
Where are the A00-class electric models sold?
In the sales of new energy vehicles in 2021, non-restricted cities contributed about 70% of the share, and 58% of users in non-restricted cities purchased A00-class cars.
Previously, many first-tier limited cities and third- and fourth-tier cities have become the main sales areas of A00-class models. However, with the suspension of the issuance of A00-level new energy licenses in Shanghai and the trend of consumption upgrading, the demand for pure electric A00-class models in many first-tier cities has gradually shrunk. Competition between high-quality A00-class electric vehicles in third- and fourth-tier cities and low-speed electric vehicles with great hidden dangers in safety (Old Man Le), coupled with the guidance of the "car to the countryside" policy, its market performance is quite impressive.
According to the data, among the 66 models of new energy vehicles going to the countryside in 2021, mainly small and micro cars with a price of less than 100,000 yuan and a range of less than 300 kilometers, a total of 1.068 million units were sold, an increase of 169.2% year-on-year.
Taking the most popular model in the market, Hongguang MINIEV, as an example, according to the regional structure share of new energy passenger vehicles in December 2021, the proportion of Hongguang MINIEV in megacities, large cities, medium-sized cities, small cities and townships has increased sequentially, of which small cities and counties occupy 64% of the market share.
Why can Wuling "dominate" the micro-electric vehicle market?
In March this year, Hongguang MINIEV won the first place in the chinese car and China new energy double list with a retail sales performance of 41,980 vehicles. Since its listing, the cumulative sales volume of Hongguang MINIEV has exceeded 680,000 vehicles, ranking first in China's new energy market for 19 consecutive months and winning the global new energy sales crown for 5 times. The recently listed Hongguang MINIEV GAMEBOY cumulative orders have exceeded 30,000 units.
Earlier, the author mentioned that in the top 15 list of new energy car sales in 2021, more than half of the A00 class sedan seats are seated. In a sense, the advantages of this model's "cost performance" are easy to be copied, but why can Wuling stand out.
The fact is that Wuling's advantage is that it has a strong cost control ability, large-scale mass production ability, and the ability to control product quality at a low price, which is difficult for other car companies to match.
Masato Yamamoto, an expert professor at Nagoya University in Japan, once studied the cost of The Goryo Hiroko MINIEV, and he estimated that the parts and installation cost of the car was about 27,000 yuan, and it was very difficult to achieve such a low cost control.
Wuling's performance in product marketing and user marketing is also well known. Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has 70% of the entire body area can be customized, and 72% of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV users have undergone certain Tidal Chuang modifications.
Wuling MINIEV has a great appetite for young consumer groups. The post-90s car owners of Hongguang MINIEV series products accounted for 72%, the post-90s users of Hongguang MINIEV macarons accounted for 75%, and the female users have exceeded 78%. Hongguang MINIEV GAMEBOY series has attracted many young male users.
The names of grounded colors such as "slag ash", "northeast silver", "black lacquer", "snail powder" and "healthy code green" are enjoyable. In view of consumers' groove for mileage, the maximum mileage of the recently listed Hongguang MINIEV GAMEBOY series has been increased to 300 kilometers.
However, users in the A00-level market are extremely sensitive to price, and it becomes extremely difficult for manufacturers to break through upwards. Throughout The launch of Wuling KiwiEV, NanoEV and other models, the price increased by tens of thousands, but the sales volume and Hongguang MINIEV have become not an order of magnitude.
Major brands in the A00-level electric vehicle market are taking the route of "small profits, high sales", Wuling has achieved market scale with a single model, but "how to copy the explosive model" & "how to achieve brand upwards" has become a new topic for Wuling.
The crisis behind the prosperity of the A00-class pure electric vehicle market
In 2021, SAIC-GM-Wuling's total revenue reached 72.927 billion yuan, but the net profit attributable to the parent company was only 142 million yuan, which was apportioned to a single model, which was equivalent to about 89 yuan for every one sold. According to the relevant research report of Caitong Securities, the gross profit margin of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV may only be 2% to 3%. Extremely low profit margins force brands to sell more cars, and the cycle is not positive.
Earlier, the author mentioned that the advantages of the double integration policy have prompted many car companies to participate in the A00-level market, but now more and more car companies can achieve the offset of internal positive and negative points, coupled with the decline in the price of new energy points, the enthusiasm of car companies in the production and sales of A00-class models has been greatly weakened. We take BYD, which has an annual sales volume of 593,700 new energy vehicles in 2021, as an example, and its annual sales of the mini car e2 are more than 30,000 units, which is only equivalent to the monthly sales of Qin PLUS.
"Accumulating double points" is an important reason for car companies to vigorously promote low-cost A00-class passenger cars, but now there is a situation where new energy credits are higher than market demand. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2021, the positive integral of fuel consumption and positive integral of new energy created nearly 22 million points, while the total of negative integral of fuel consumption and negative integral of new energy is less than 7 million, a gap of nearly 3 times. Among them, the supply of overall fuel consumption integration in the market is 2.5 times the demand, and the supply of new energy integration is 8 times the demand.
Previously, the value of new energy credits was about 2500 yuan per cent, and the lowest was about 2350 yuan. However, due to the rapid growth of total sales of new energy vehicles and the increasing number of points in circulation in the market, the transaction price of new energy points this year has been reduced to 500-800 yuan in early 2022.
It is understood that this year's subsidies for pure electric vehicle models will also decline by 30% on the basis of 2021. In other words, a pure electric vehicle with a driving range of 300-400 kilometers will be reduced by more than 300 yuan. It can be seen that the reduction of subsidies has increased the manufacturing cost of many A00-class electric vehicles, and A00-class models with a driving range of less than 300 kilometers have long been unable to receive subsidies.
What is even worse is that as the main raw material of power batteries, lithium, cobalt, and nickel have all seen a sharp increase in prices.
In the middle of March this year, the comprehensive quotation of the battery-grade lithium carbonate market was 480,000 yuan -520,000 yuan / ton, while the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in early 2021 was only 50,000 yuan / ton. Cobalt prices have also risen from less than 300,000 yuan per ton at the beginning of last year to nearly 600,000 yuan per ton in March this year, nearly doubling. IHS Markit predicts that the surge in raw material prices will allow further growth in eviction battery prices to continue through 2024.
We take the 30-degree electricity, 300-400km A00 class model as an example, the price increase of the battery pack is between 3100-3500 yuan, plus the new energy subsidy in 2022 will decline by 30%, and the subsidy amount of each vehicle will be reduced by about 3400 yuan. This led to an additional loss of 7,000 yuan per black cat and white cat. Euler brand has revealed that the production cost of the black cat and white cat's three-electric system has reached about 55% to 60% of the cost of the whole vehicle, and such a large increase in raw material prices has brought a lot of cost pressure to black cats and white cats.
In addition, the "chip shortage" is still fermenting, for which many car companies choose to prioritize chip resources on high-profit models, and the A00-class models on the market will be in a more difficult situation.
Manufacturers can't lose money and make money. As a result, we saw that on February 14, the Euler brand issued a notice to the terminal that black cats and white cats would stop taking orders; on April 24, Changan New Energy issued an announcement that the recent shortage of upstream raw materials and the limitation of vehicle and parts production capacity, resulting in a long delivery cycle of the E-Star national version of the Ben, will be suspended from 00:00 on April 25, 2022; similar to Changan, Chery, Wuling and other brands, forced to choose to increase the price by a large margin to seek self-preservation.
For A00-level consumers who attach great importance to cost performance, don't say that it will rise by three or five thousand, even if it is three or five hundred, they may be difficult to accept. In the end, it is nothing more than these four results: car companies lose enthusiasm for A00-class models and turn to other segments; consumers do "wait for the party", so that the sales of A00-class electric vehicles decline; raw material prices fall, manufacturers re-adjust prices; manufacturers enhance the competitiveness of A00-class models, create more boutique models and gradually reverse consumer perception of the market.
At the beginning of the year, the Association predicted that the cumulative sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China will exceed 5.5 million in 2022, and the market penetration rate will reach about 25%. In view of the price increase and suspension of sales in the A00-class electric vehicle market, can the expected target of new energy vehicles in 2022 be achieved?
Why not groan and Xu Xing Where will the micro-electric vehicle go?