Shentucar original
Author | Zhou Jifeng
Edit | dawn
Traditional car companies seem to have anxiety written on their faces.
Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, made a surprising statement at the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum: "I think that in the next 3-5 years, 80% of Chinese (fuel vehicle) brands will shut down and turn." ”
Traditional car companies, which have always been reluctant to engage in marketing, have recently begun to do a variety of tricks in order to break the circle.
On April 15, Cui Jian, known as the godfather of Chinese rock, put on a video called "Continue to Sprinkle Some Wild". The concert, which lasted for nearly 3 hours and attracted nearly 40 million people, was sponsored by Jihu, a new energy brand owned by BAIC.
At the same time, many traditional car companies are constantly issuing new cars - basically new energy vehicles, non-stop setting up new brands, targeting the new energy market.
Traditional car companies, they have not looked at electric vehicles for a long time, and they have not really poured out. An industry insider once pointed out: "In the past, everyone's perception was that only some car companies that did not have achievements in the oil truck business were willing to change lanes to overtake and produce new energy vehicles. ”
By 2022, times are different.
The wave of electric intelligence has swept the global automotive industry with an unstoppable attitude. In China, in the list of the top ten car companies in terms of new energy vehicle sales in 2021, the new car-making forces have supported half of the country. In the era of fuel vehicles, the land that traditional car companies have worked hard to win has begun to be eaten away by new forces such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli.
Cruelly, foreign brands such as BBA have accumulated many years of fuel vehicle era, and the pressure of transformation is not so great. However, China's traditional car companies have been blocked by fuel vehicle giants such as Toyota Volkswagen in the front, and then there are new car-making forces chasing and blocking.
Haima Automobile, Qoros Automobile... One car brand after another fell in 2021, and the arrival of the new energy revolution will only accelerate the death of uncompetitive car companies.
There is no time to wait and hesitate, under the huge existential crisis, China's fuel vehicle brands have launched a huge new energy vehicle counterattack war.
In 2020, Wang Xing of Meituan invented a "3+3+3+3" survival theory, that is, in China, only 12 car companies can survive the great changes in the future, including:
The three central enterprises are FAW, Dongfeng (Second Automobile), Changan,
The three local state-owned enterprises are SAIC, GAC and BAIC.
The 3 traditional private enterprises are Geely, Great Wall and BYD.
3 new car-making forces: Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng.
Today, we focus on the traditional fuel vehicle brands in China to see where the great counterattack has taken. Traditional car companies and new forces will usher in a head-on duel. The competition between the new and the old, who can laugh to the end?
The counter-offensive came a little late
This round of counter-offensive warfare has to start from 2020. On June 10, 2020, Tesla surpassed Toyota for the first time to become the world's most valuable car company. Monthly sales are only more than 10,000 new car-making forces, and driven by Tesla, the stock price has risen.
At this time, traditional car companies found that the times had changed. Whether in the capital market or on the sales side, the competitiveness of the field of new energy vehicles has gradually become the core indicator for evaluating an automobile company.
Since then, traditional car companies that see the situation have pressed the transformation acceleration button.
Many people are very strange, the traditional car companies are not short of money and resources, why instead in the new energy vehicle market has become a catch-up party.
In terms of time, traditional car companies do new energy vehicles, in fact, much earlier than Wei Xiaoli.
In November 2009, BAIC established Beijing New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd. (later renamed "BAIC Blue Valley New Energy Technology Co., Ltd.", referred to as BEIC Blue Valley), becoming the first independently operated new energy vehicle enterprise in China. In 2015, Geely began to launch the Blue Geely Campaign, announcing the transformation from traditional cars to new energy vehicles.
At the same time, whether it is Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal or Tesla, the domestic market is still in its infancy.
Although traditional car companies started early, most of them were slow to respond and too slow to transform in the first round of new energy market battles.
The reasons for this are very complicated, on the one hand, new energy vehicles have not been optimistic about the industry before. Many traditional car companies are living well in their oil truck business and are more willing to maintain the status quo than to transform into new business.
Source / Visual China
On the other hand, at that time, when traditional car companies made new energy vehicles, they did not think of selling them to ordinary consumers. Many OEMs will sell the new energy vehicles they produce to their own online ride-hailing platforms, and create sales with "left hand to right hand".
He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, once pointed out that in the first nine months of 2019, only about 100,000 new energy vehicles in China were sold to C-end consumers. The general manager of SAIC-GM also said: "There are only more than 100,000 individual buyers, and the rest are sold to the B-end travel market." ”
More than that, many car companies have not figured out what kind of business new energy vehicles are. The idea of many independent brands is to first create traditional fuel vehicles, and then transition the brand and product advantages of traditional fuel vehicles to new energy vehicles.
The most typical example is Auspicious. In 2015, Geely launched the pure electric car Emgrand EV. With this car, Geely New Energy's sales reached 27,000 units in 2015 and 49,000 units in 2016, respectively. But after that, Geely did not take advantage of the chase, but focused on the fuel vehicle market, missing the opportunity to seize the new energy market.
"Left and right mutual bo" is also a common problem for traditional car companies to enter the new energy market. Or take Geely as an example,
Geely has many new energy brands, but the positioning between these brands is not clear, and there are often two brands "fighting each other". For example, Geometry is Geely's main high-end new energy brand, but the design and appearance of many of its models are similar to Geely's other brand Emgrand, and the price is similar, such as some people complaining, the overall shape of Geometry C is very similar to Emgrand GSe, which to a certain extent causes internal friction between brands.
On the contrary, the new forces of car-making, taking advantage of the traditional fuel vehicles to watch, quickly attacked the city. After several years of development, they have formed a certain scale and have a relatively skilled set of playing styles.
Want to build a car? Make a friend
In the new round of counter-offensive warfare, everyone has learned the lessons of the past. Many domestic independent car companies have begun to realize the constraints of the traditional system. They basically all give a unified solution - the launch of independent new energy brands.
According to the assumptions of these OEMs, independent new energy brands can prevent internal friction and avoid "left and right mutual bo", which can not only integrate the resources of the traditional fuel vehicle field, but also introduce the thinking of the Internet.
For example, in November 2020, GAC Aean began to operate independently, and then launched mixed reform, and Dongfeng also established an independent new energy brand Lantu in the same year.
In 2021, Changan Automobile, CATL and Huawei jointly launched Avita, a high-end electric vehicle brand, and in the same year, Geely's high-end intelligent pure electric brand Extreme Krypton was officially unveiled. Even in 2022, it has not stopped. On April 13, Changan Automobile released a new pure electric brand, named "Changan Deep Blue".
These newly launched brands, equivalent to a light cavalry, are more flexible in their playing style, have more room for growth, and also give the main engine factory a larger room for trial and error. Even if these independent brands fail to test the waters, they can ensure that they do not drag down the main brand in terms of performance.
And these "light cavalry", whether in technology, product design, business model, marketing methods, and personnel architecture, are learning and even imitating the new forces of car-making that were once scorned.
Source / pexels
For example, in order to be deeply bound to talents, traditional car companies such as Geely, Great Wall, GAC and Changan have begun to launch equity incentive plans, and even give employees the status of "partners".
In order to attract attention, many brand leaders have also learned from Wei Xiaoli to "speak amazingly". Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, has also recently created a topic of controversy like Li Bin and Musk, saying, "I think spending more than 400,000 plus taxes on BBA users close to 500,000 can be said to be more tragic and helpless." ”
Compared with the new car-making forces, traditional car companies have funds, talents, and car-making experience, but the biggest shortcoming is the lack of Internet thinking and software research and development capabilities. However, the future of smart cars is mainly to compete in software capabilities, spelling algorithms, computing power, models, and data volumes. Independent brands also recognize this.
As a result, some brands have "made friends". For example, Geely Kr has introduced strategic investors such as Intel and CATL, and Changan Avita has chosen to work with Huawei and CATL to create smart car products. SAIC's Zhiji Automobile is jointly built by SAIC, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Alibaba.
On April 15, Landu Automobile also announced that it has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Baidu, and the two sides will cooperate around automobile intelligence. Behind these independent brands basically stands an Internet giant or supply chain giant.
The most radical is Auspicious. "We must be open and inclusive, unite the vertical and the horizontal, unite all the forces that can be united, and expand the new friends of the ecosystem." This is the tone set by Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holdings, for Geely's future development. Therefore, starting from 2021, Geely has cooperated with Baidu, Foxconn, Tencent, FF, Lifan, Renault and other companies.
Some people are spinning in place, some are one step ahead
In this big counter-offensive, each family's playing style and progress are not very consistent. The way of playing and the progress depend to some extent on the achievements of these OEMs in the new energy vehicle market.
We speak with data, in 2021, the champion and runner-up of China's new energy vehicle sales are not Tesla or new car-making forces, but traditional car companies BYD and SAIC-GM-Wuling.
Here it is necessary to say that BYD, it is the earliest traditional car company to firmly transform new energy vehicles, to some extent, BYD's chairman Wang Chuanfu, in fact, from the beginning of the construction of electric vehicles, but due to the immature environment and technology at that time, had to cut from the fuel vehicle first.
Due to the resolute transformation, BYD has now occupied a place in the market and taken the lead in eating dividends from the new energy vehicle market. Also in 2020, BYD even surpassed SAIC for the first time in terms of market value, becoming the "first brother" of the market value of Chinese car companies at that time. By 2021, BYD's new energy vehicles have sold nearly 600,000 vehicles throughout the year, far exceeding Wei Xiaoli.
Compared with other independent brands that are still struggling to transform, BYD has taken a big step in the new energy market. In April, BYD publicly announced the end of the brand's nearly 20-year fuel era, becoming the first car company in the world to announce the suspension of fuel vehicles.
BYD has thrown off the burden of fuel vehicles, and its counterattack is more rapid and deadly.
Image source / The official WeChat of the Association
The next echelon, the great wall, SAIC, GAC, these three car companies, although the oil car is their basic disk, the transformation is slow, but in the sales of new energy vehicles without exception into the 100,000 car club. The clubs that can enter the sales volume of 100,000 are mainly because they have some new energy products. For example, the Great Wall has Euler, GAC has E'an, SAIC has Hongguang MINI, and Changan has Benben EV. However, it is worth noting that the prices of these fist products are relatively low.
So for these OEMs, the next step is to rush higher. On the one hand, they actively iterate the pure electric products of their affordable brands, and on the other hand, they have begun to establish a new independent electric brand to position themselves at the high end.
These car companies did not expect to put their eggs in one basket, and each car company held at least two brands in their hands. For example, SAIC Motor, in addition to the Hongguang MINI EV, there are Feifan R brand and Zhiji, Feifan positioned in technology and fashion, the price is between 200,000 and 300,000; Zhiji is positioned as high-end luxury, the price is more than 300,000. Chang'an is also, deep blue is responsible for the volume, and Avita is responsible for rushing high. Euler, under the Great Wall, mainly sells cheap cars, and Sharon is responsible for soaring.
Baiqi, Geely and Dongfeng, these three brands currently have no fist products in the field of new energy vehicles. They are either because they entered the market too late, such as Dongfeng, which was not established until 2020 to cut into the new energy vehicle market; or they sold too many products to the B-end and have not figured out how to sell cars to ordinary consumers, such as BAIC; or there are too many product lines, and they have not yet figured out how to cut into the new energy vehicle market, such as Geely.
They have a lot of lessons to make up, and they are still confused about the transition period. They need to re-sort out their brand lines and rethink the new energy vehicle business.
Taking Geely as an example, in the era of fuel vehicles, Geely's way of playing is to acquire mature brands + incubate new brands, thereby cultivating a huge brand matrix. Such a radical style of play has made JiLi sit on the throne of "independent brother".
However, in the new energy vehicle market, Geely still follows the traditional fuel vehicle era, and now Geely has a number of new energy vehicle brands, and the product system is cumbersome and complex. So many brands have failed to create explosive new energy products, and these bloated brand matrices limit the pace of Geely's transformation.
A new energy vehicle brand under traditional car companies
Is it feasible to encircle and suppress Wei Xiaoli?
These traditional car companies have a commonality in the big counterattack - ready to sell the car more expensive. Many OEMs are mainly selling cheap cars in the new energy market, but they all have ambitions and plans to seize the high-end market. Most of the newly established brands of these traditional car companies are positioned in the high-end market, and the price of models is concentrated in the range of 200,000-500,000.
In the past, in the field of fuel vehicles, most of the models of domestic independent brands hovered in the middle and low end.
When China's independent brands are still thinking about how to carry out high-end operation step by step, Wei Xiaoli has already sold cars with a price of more than 200,000 yuan and sold more than 10,000 yuan a month. Xiaopeng, Ideal and NIO have each established a market of 200,000, 300,000 and 400,000 yuan.
Independent brands also see opportunities, and many brands are eager to try, hoping to break the price ceiling of the era of fuel vehicles through the transformation of intelligence and electrification.
For example, Sharon, a new energy brand under Great Wall Motors, released its first car, the Dragon, with a price of 400,000-800,000 in the high-end market. Geely hopes that the Extreme Krypton brand released in 2021 will enter the mid-to-high-end new energy market, and Li Shufu even served as the chairman of the Extreme Kr brand. Jihu, as a new brand under BAIC, is known as a "trump card" product of BEIQI Blue Valley transformation, positioning itself in the high-end market, and the price has sold for more than 300,000 yuan.
On April 17, Zhiji Automobile announced the price and configuration of the Zhiji L7 Dynamic model, and the guidance price of the new car was 368,800 yuan.
Even BYD is also the king in the new energy market of 100,000-200,000 yuan, but it is still considering launching a high-end brand. Du Guozhong, deputy general manager of BYD's passenger car brand and public relations business department, also said: At present, BYD still needs more brands and more models to go up, and more brands, especially high-end brands, can better distinguish BYD's existing car series.
That is to say, the key to the great counter-offensive is to seize the high-end market.
Source / pexels
Regrettably, however, at this stage, the situation of this counter-offensive war is not satisfactory. Among the high-end pure electric independent brands under traditional car companies, in addition to the relatively bright performance of GAC Ean, Geely Extreme Kr, Dongfeng Lantu, BAIC Jihu and other brands have sold flat sales. For example, Extreme Krypton Automobile delivered only 1,795 Extreme Kr 001 units in March, down 38.5% month-on-month; since October 23, 2021, the cumulative delivery volume of Extreme Kr has reached 14,248 units, with an average monthly delivery of about 2,800 vehicles.
The first car of Lantu's Lantu FREE was officially delivered in August 2021. Since delivery, the highest monthly sales result of the Lando FREE is 3330 units. Beiqi Blue Valley's Polar Fox sold only 4,993 vehicles last year, completing 41% of the set sales target.
Even if GAC's electric vehicle brand GAC Aian has a good performance, behind the gratifying sales, it is actually more supported by the "B-end" market of operating vehicles such as online ride-hailing cars and taxis.
In how to grab the high-end market, traditional car companies are still a little weak.
Wang Xiaoqiu, president of SAIC Motor, once reflected at the shareholders' meeting of the group: "SAIC New Energy and intelligent networked vehicles started very early, spent a lot of energy, and spent a lot of money to do research. In contrast, the research on the changes in the demand of the market and users is still relatively lacking, from the original technology research to product innovation, to user experience innovation, there is a decoupling in the middle. ”
That is to say, traditional car companies have advantages in technology and car manufacturing experience, and they are not good at directly facing consumers.
In the research report of Huachuang Securities, it was pointed out that traditional car companies are more inclined to ToB manufacturing, and ToC services rely on dealers to land, which is very different from new forces and Internet companies in user operation thinking. When Tesla and new forces build barriers through the direct operation model, traditional car companies need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of direct operation and distribution system.
What exactly is a so-called high-end electric vehicle? How to build a high-end brand? How to reach customers directly? These are all questions that traditional car companies need to think about.
For the simplest example, Beiqi Blue Valley's financial report wrote that the company spent nearly 1.7 billion yuan on advertising and operations, of which the focus of advertising was on the Jihu brand, but this money could not be spent on the blade. Even with the blessing of "Huawei + Magna", the sales volume and brand recognition of Jihu are still not high.
More critically, most of the traditional car companies in the face of the new energy revolution to give the solution idea is to rely on the traditional big factory and use the thinking of new forces to build cars. But whether these two distinct models can be well integrated in the new brand still needs to be questioned.
Fortunately, this great counteroffensive has not yet come to an end.
On March 26, Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, said in the high-level forum of the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, "Smart cars are subverting functional cars, and it has a greater impact than smartphones to disrupt functional phones." In this automobile revolution, the mainland automobile industry has changed lanes first, achieved some first-mover effects, and provided opportunities for the mainland to change from a big automobile country to an automobile power. ”
Chen Qingtai also pointed out that the window of opportunity this time will not be too long.
In the industry, the general understanding is that the final time node of the transformation is in 2025. On the eve of the great change, there is still a lot that traditional car companies need to catch up with.
*The caption is from "Ambush on Ten Sides".