The author | Li Dapeng
| Electric Guild
Price increases have become the main theme of the recent new energy vehicle market.
Wait, wait, wait. Tesla, which has a "price butcher" in the new energy vehicle market, has never disappointed consumers, and the price has dropped again and again, so consumers have formed a mindset, as long as they can afford to wait, they will definitely wait for a more cost-effective price.
Today, the "waiting party" is waiting for a price increase.
Entering 2022, the new energy automobile industry in the face of chip, battery shortage caused by the shortage of supply at the same time, but also have to bear the impact of subsidy decline, these pressures and the outbreak of new energy vehicle consumption, directly brought about this round of price increases.
We checked, from the end of March to the present more than 20 car companies in the past month, Tesla, SAIC Passenger Cars, FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen, BYD, Chery, Nezha, WM, Geely, GAC Eian, Xiaopeng, Weilai, Great Wall, Zero Run and other more than 20 car companies have joined the ranks of price increases, and the market terminal price has increased by more than 40 models.
From the initial Tesla announced price increases, to the participation of new car-making forces, traditional independent brands, joint venture brands and foreign brands, the price increase that began in March is continuing to affect more brands.
However, there are still a few hard-hitting car companies that can withstand the pressure and did not start to adjust prices until May, and Jihu Automobile is one of them.
On the morning of April 30, Jihu Automobile issued an announcement that the price adjustment plan, which was originally scheduled to be implemented on May 1, is now postponed to May 16. The specific scheme is as follows:
01 Who is the most beautiful price increase posture?
The price increase of electric vehicles has been uneven and has risen again. The "cumulative effect" of continuous rise has also made the overall purchase threshold of electric vehicles "rise". The anxiety in the market continues to spread, and for consumers of electric vehicles, whether to hurry up or continue to wait and see has become a problem in front of them.
What are eviction consumers most concerned about? If you asked a year ago, it may be that the mileage is not long, the safety is good or not, and how long the delivery time will be, but if you ask this year, the answer must be "when will the price increase" and "how much will it rise".
From the perspective of price increase, Xiaopeng Automobile is a car company with the highest price increase, and its main models P7670E and 670E+ have increased by more than 30,000 yuan, reaching a maximum of 32,600 yuan; the same is the zero run of the new car-making forces, and its current pure electric SUVC11 has also increased by 20,000-30,000 yuan; Tesla, although the model3 and ModelY models have only increased by 10,000 yuan, this is based on the basis of a round of price increases in January.
In addition to a few brand models the price increased by more than 30,000 yuan, the price increase of most electric vehicles is still relatively conservative, and the price increase of car companies such as Jihu, BYD, Geometry, Roewe, Chery, Nezha and other car companies is within 10,000 yuan, with an increase of 2% to 10%.
Price increases are also an art, although they are all raising prices, but the strategies of different companies to raise prices are not exactly the same, and there is no doubt that after price increases, they will also go to different ends.
From the perspective of time, most car companies are immediately executed after announcing price increases. For example, Chery New Energy announced a price increase on April 6, and began to implement price increases on April 7; BYD performed more quickly, starting to implement the new price 10 minutes after the official announcement, and the speed was simply caught off guard by consumers.
In addition, Zero Run announced a price increase on March 25, which was officially implemented on March 26; Xiaopeng Automobile announced a price increase on March 18, effective from 00:00 on March 21; Ideal ONE issued an announcement on March 23 to announce a price increase on April 1... Most car companies only give consumers a week or so to consider before and after price increases.
In contrast, the polar fox seems to have become a clear stream among many officially announced price increases. As early as April 6, Jihu posted a message on its official Weibo that it would make certain price adjustments for all models of the Jihu brand from May 1, 2022.
Polar Fox is one of the few brands that announced price increases in advance but did not implement them immediately, not only giving consumers a full buffer period of 24 days, but also adjusting customer rights and interests including financial discounts and replacement subsidies.
What is even more surprising to consumers is that Jihu, which should have officially implemented the price adjustment plan on May 1, decided to bite its teeth again and insist on adjusting the price again until May 16, that is:
Consumers can still buy a car at the original price until May 16.
This scheme, which gives consumers a buffer for up to 40 days before and after, fully reflects the rationality of the price increase strategy of Jihu and the user-oriented brand concept.
As a car brand with deep roots, the more in the market chaos, the more clear thinking.
The rising price tide seems to be a market phenomenon of new energy vehicles, but in fact, every link in the industrial chain is sending out a signal to change, especially for the comprehensive strength of vehicle companies, which puts forward higher requirements.
The independent electric vehicle brands incubated by traditional car companies have long recognized the importance of supply chain stability for enterprises and even the industry, taking Jihu as an example, so that car companies with strong funds have long been deeply involved in all aspects of the industrial chain, most of the cost pressure can be transferred out, or digested through internal synergy effects, and the remaining small part of the pressure can be resolved through a slight increase in car prices.
But there are more car companies do not have such a strong energy, compared to the traditional car companies production for many years to accumulate cost resolution capacity, the current new car-making forces are more likely to be subject to cost constraints, the price system is still immature, participation and impact on the industrial chain is also very limited, small direct price increases can not completely resolve the cost pressure, can only take more and more complex operations to alleviate the cost pressure.
In fact, the wave of price increases has made some new car-making brands unable to bear it.
Insiders of a new car manufacturer told us that the price increase of its products is not determined entirely based on cost changes, but is determined by comprehensively weighing various factors. The pressure is not too much at all, but I don't dare to rise too much. Therefore, the price increase can only resolve part of the pressure, and the remaining pressure can only be resisted. Even if the price of upstream materials remains stable in the future, neither rising nor falling, enterprises will continue to face greater pressure.
In the current fiercely competitive market environment, manufacturers who do not have the ability to resist price changes in the supply chain should also be abandoned by consumers and sit back and watch competitors get sales and occupy the market.
02 Play hard, but also look at the polar fox
Behind the difference in price increase and strategy is the difference between the manufacturing strength and brand confidence of car companies.
To create a star brand that is worthy of consumer trust, it is inseparable from excellent technical strength. The hardness of the polar fox is not accidental. From the Polar Fox car, we can see the painstaking efforts invested by Beiqi Blue Valley in polishing and promoting it.
In order to build higher quality cars, in December 2019, BAIC and Magna established a joint venture in Zhenjiang, BAIC Blue Valley Magna Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Blue Valley Magna). The Blue Valley Magna Manufacturing Base has fully introduced the Magna MAFACT manufacturing system to empower the quality of Polar Fox products at the hardware level.
In the world automotive industry, Magna is an unavoidable topic. As the world's premier automotive supplier, Magna's four product lines cover body exteriors and structures, power and intelligent technologies, seating systems and complete vehicle solutions.
It is understood that Magna's Graz plant in Austria has produced more than 3.7 million cars so far, including many top luxury cars such as Mercedes-Benz G-Class and Aston Martin Rapide, and supports more than 70% of the world's new models from 2017 to 2020.
Magna's empowerment has, to a large extent, provided high-end experience and technology for the research and development and manufacturing production of Jihu Automobile, making the birth of high-end brand products more secure.
Blue Valley Magna is different from the FOUNDG model of Weilai and JAC, and also different from the new energy joint venture of JAC Volkswagen, which is called the "fourth model" in new energy automobile enterprises. In this model, BAIC invests in technology, brand, and is responsible for the high-end links of the value chain such as marketing, while Magna exerts its advantages in research and development, verification and manufacturing to create the Jihu brand.
The car-making model of Polar Fox has changed the inherent logic of automobile OEMs, which cannot be said to be decentralized, but at least it is a circle of car manufacturing. The birth of Alpha S and Alpha T is the result of the cooperation between BAIC Group and Magna. From the initial design, to the production and manufacture of each part, to the final off-line inspection, magna quality control processes are strictly followed.
The full introduction of mafact production system in Blue Valley Magna has laid a solid quality foundation for Jihu Automobile. Under this system, through standardized processes and target management, the core processes and management technologies of European century-old manufacturing have been 100% reproduced, making the Beiqi Blue Valley Magna high-end intelligent manufacturing base the most advanced intelligent factory in Asia.
In fact, Magna is only one of the trump cards of Jihu Automobile, on this basis, Jihu also has a huge circle of friends from the world's first-class, Huawei's intelligent network system, Siemens' motor, Bosch chassis, Harman's big screen... Of the world's top 100 parts suppliers, 70 have chosen to cooperate with Jihu.
The Jihu brand not only inherits 10 years of experience in the development of the new energy automobile industry, but also introduces high-end manufacturer Magna to create world-class quality. At the same time, the blessing of top domestic suppliers such as Huawei has given the development of this brand a great imagination space.
03 The second half of the showdown between new and old forces
When describing their future development paths and visions, it is difficult for high-end electric vehicle brands bred by traditional car companies to bypass the frame of reference for new car-making forces.
Compared with traditional car companies, the biggest advantage of the new car-making forces is that they are "new", which is reflected in the automotive products manufactured by the new forces, and the most prominent is the all-round breakthrough of the car machine system, which has a powerful intelligent network system. Tesla has disrupted the automotive industry because it did not initially think of itself as a car, but a technology product that focused on technology experience and software iteration.
However, for this "software volume", the traditional independent electric vehicle brand has not shown weakness.
Taking Polar Fox as an example, if Magna solves the quality and quality problems of Extreme Fox Automobile, then the strength of Pole Fox to compete with high-end brands such as Tesla and Weilai also comes from its breakthrough in software.
In January 2019, BAIC and Huawei signed a comprehensive business cooperation agreement, and the two sides jointly established the "1873 Davidson Innovation Lab", with BAIC in charge of hardware and Huawei in charge of software to jointly develop intelligent and connected electric vehicle technology for the next generation.
The cooperation with Huawei is not only 5G, but also involves vehicle communication, automatic driving, chips, software, cloud, artificial intelligence, intelligent cockpit, human-machine interaction and other cooperation, Huawei's empowerment to the Fox to bring the possibility of comprehensive digital definition of the car, but also to pursue the world's leading level of autonomous driving capabilities.
Then again, the core of the new forces to build cars is indeed in manufacturing, the process that should be done, the process that should be done, the factory that should be built... Not one less. From the beginning of the emergence of new car-making forces, it has been accompanied by many voices of doubt, and to sum up, it is ultimately around a "manufacturing" word. The biggest concern of the doubters is that the automobile industry is a century-old foundation, and it cannot be achieved without the accumulation of technology in the manufacturing industry.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Rice mentioned two ways to start a business in "Lean Startup": rocket entrepreneurship and driving entrepreneurship - as the name suggests, the former is to bury your head in research and development, wait until the time is ripe to bring the product to the market; the latter is to first put the product to the market, small steps, fast iteration, and immediately modify it when it is found to be wrong.
The independent electric vehicle brand created by traditional car companies takes the "rocket" route, polishing technology and products and then pushing them to the market. But the new force of head car manufacturing is a "drive-type" route, building cars according to the logic of the Internet era. However, this "small step and fast running" car building method will gradually expose a problem in the automotive industry - it is easy to top the hardware ceiling.
After all, car manufacturing is a high technical threshold and a huge cost of industry, even after crossing the mass production threshold, "quality" will become the next more difficult battle. Nowadays, the new forces of the head have all "landed" and broken through the first half of the car-making industry. Entering the second half, what awaits them will be the competition of "real knives and real guns", and the production and manufacturing process and management ability of the "new four modernizations" of the decisive victory car will become the top priority.
It is said that the automobile is the "jewel in the crown" of modern industry, and the level of car manufacturing is a symbol of a country's industrial manufacturing foundation. In the first half of the new era of car manufacturing, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal successfully broke through and walked in the forefront of the industry. Entering the second half, it is likely that the independent high-end brands of traditional car companies represented by Jihu will play the leading role.
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