Volkswagen is known to be the leader among traditional car companies, a long-established German automaker who was reborn from the ruins of World War II and still ranks third in the list of world car companies by market capitalization. But the mall has no eternal hegemony, ANDD is close behind Volkswagen ($98 billion) with a difference of about $6 billion, and Tesla's market value ($905.7 billion) is nine times that of Volkswagen.
At the same time, the severe market environment has forced traditional car companies to carry out reforms, and in the 2030NEW AUTO report released by Volkswagen, Volkswagen said that it will further accelerate its electrification transformation process and strive to achieve corporate carbon neutrality by 2050. However, in the field of new energy, where many new forces have entered, the public is facing many challenges.
The rollercoaster sales of Volkswagen trams did not meet expectations but could be expected in the future
The layout of traditional car companies in the field of new energy has long been there, from Toyota Prius to BMW i3 belong to this list, but Prius is actually just a test of water, Toyota does not need to subvert its own stable fuel vehicle market in the short term; and (2014) BMW i3 Although the design is quite sci-fi, the current new car-making forces have made it insufficient in hard indicators.
In the period when new energy vehicles have not yet become a climate, Volkswagen, like most traditional car companies, has only launched some electric versions for some fuel models, and its performance indicators are now stretched. At the time when new energy is gradually entering the mainstream, Volkswagen has also kept up with the wave of transformation, creating the ID. family based on the special MEB electric vehicle platform, hoping to open up the market that has been divided by new car-making forces through this separate new series of models.
But contrary to expectations, the sales of the ID. family reality did not fully meet the public's dreams. In 2021, Volkswagen sold a total of 70,000 ID series models in the Chinese market, which did not reach the previous expectation of 80,000-100,000 vehicles. Even so, in the joint venture camp, Volkswagen's results are already the best. In contrast, Tesla can reach more than 150,000 sales with the Model 3 model alone.
However, from the perspective of the development trend of Volkswagen's ID. series sales, in the first half of (2021), it only sold about 7,000 new cars, and more sales were completed in the second half of the year, which is related to the promotion of more models in the second half of the year. This is also the reason why Volkswagen's board of directors will include new energy vehicle companies such as Tesla, Weilai, AND CATL and related companies as competitors in the latest 2030 NEW AUTO plan.
If it is not broken, it is not established, and comparative advantage is the way to win
From a few Hollywood stars flaunting their own symbols to large-scale marketing, the wave of new energy has come extremely quickly, and it has squeezed into the mainstream in just over a decade. The reason is that unlike traditional car companies, many new car-making forces cannot lie in the blue ocean of fuel vehicles to enjoy happiness, what they have to do is to tear open an opening in the traditional market and seize the share of the entire automobile market. Good at packaging, selling concepts, although there are many criticisms that question the new energy vehicle is a pseudo-concept, we can not deny its dominant position in politics and the market.
Since they have nothing, they bravely move forward, and the new car-making forces that lack comfortable soil and have no worries about product infighting have in turn formulated the rules of the next era. The traditional giants with huge volume and sufficient technical reserves have become followers. In this regard, the car companies have different attitudes, Toyota on the one hand loves hybrid power, on the other hand, it opens up a new field of hydrogen energy; and Volkswagen is directly entering the new field with a non-destructive attitude to fight with new forces.
The new forces are strong in the new, and the traditional brands are strong in accumulation. Rich experience, profound heritage and complete system are difficult for new forces to catch up in a short period of time, especially for young brands that have emerged in the past four or five years. If the traditional brand wants to continue its glory in the new era, then it must take a non-destructive posture, take the current lucrative fuel vehicles as the basis, and gradually launch a new brand or series layout in the next operation in the new energy field. In fact, this is also the reform path chosen by many traditional car companies at home and abroad.
Different from the traditional luxury brands specializing in the high-end market, from ID.3 to ID.6, Volkswagen will focus more on the market in the range of 150,000-300,000, which is also different from other brands to a certain extent, thanks to excellent design and performance indicators, if Volkswagen continues to consolidate the basic disk of mid-range new energy vehicles, then it may not be unable to gain a foothold in the new market. At least for now, Volkswagen is more stable than many traditional car companies, especially joint venture car companies, just like the "German craftsmanship" of that year.
However, we can not ignore the basic pattern of the new energy vehicle market that has now been formed, and as far as the current data is concerned, at the same price, Volkswagen still needs to face a considerable number of opponents.
First, Xiaopeng and other new car-making forces have long chosen this track, especially P5 and G3, which highly overlap with the price range of the Volkswagen ID series, and in the future, we cannot guarantee that more new forces will not lower the price to this range.
The second is the rise of the independent automobile industry, in the sales list, in addition to Tesla also has BYD, Great Wall, Chery, Wuling figure, of which MANY BYD models are also direct competitors of Volkswagen, since the 542 plan, after a long period of operation BYD strength can not be underestimated.
Therefore, the temporary success does not mean that Volkswagen New Energy has completely laid its own foundation in the Chinese market, and the impact of new car-making forces on traditional car companies and the impact of the rise of independent brands on joint venture brands are all problems that Volkswagen New Energy must face.
Write at the end
Since the marriage of Wolfsburg and Shanghai in the 1980s, China's Volkswagen has shown a miracle to the world.
In China, this is a powerful engine for China's modern high-tech automobile industry; for Volkswagen, this is an important basis for Volkswagen's sales volume to reach new highs in the world. The early stage of dissatisfaction does not indicate the end of the Volkswagen sales myth in China, after all, its fuel models have always occupied the mainstream in the Chinese market.
On the basis of this good consumer, Volkswagen's timely entry into the new energy field shows the keen vision of an established car company in the new era. But for the nascent calves are not afraid of tigers of various emerging enterprises, industry authority is always the object of its subversion, the result is that the public continues to dominate the world, or randomly beat the teacher to death, we just leave it to time and the market to answer. Because there is a reality that we all have to admit, the era of joint ventures is over.