Say good new energy electric vehicles to save money, how to drive more and more expensive?

Image source @ Visual China

Text | Wise driving

When it comes to new energy electric vehicles, you will definitely have the advantages of low electricity cost, low maintenance cost of three electric vehicles, smooth driving and unlimited traffic, etc. In fact, with these uniquenesses, electric vehicles have quickly entered the public vision and occupy a strong position in the passenger car market. But with the passage of time, more and more people have raised questions that the surface of electric vehicles saves fuel costs, and in fact, it seems to be more and more expensive.

In 2022, the domestic gasoline price ushered in the largest increase in nine years, and the price of No. 95 gasoline once exceeded 9 yuan / L. This oil price increase is good for new energy vehicles, but because of the continuous rise in raw material prices, batteries, batteries, components supply is tight, new energy vehicle companies have also directly announced price increases, there are tesla, BYD, ideal and other more than 20 roses as little as a thousand yuan, more than tens of thousands of yuan.

The impact of the price increase on consumers is temporary, in the long run, consumers are more concerned about whether the new energy vehicles that save fuel costs are the best solution for the next trip, so is this really the case?

01 New energy vehicles do not save money

Whether to save money by driving an electric vehicle, the core of this problem is not only to consider the cost of travel, but more importantly, the maintenance cost of the electric vehicle in the later stage and the game between the retention rate. In February this year, a car owner in Suzhou said in a group of car friends that the Tesla Model Y he was driving accidentally hit the corner of the wall when reversing, resulting in serious damage to the right tail, and the right tailgate, taillights, including the triangle window were hit to varying degrees.

Later, after the insurance company initially determined the loss, the maintenance cost was close to 200,000 yuan, and the owner's price when he bought the car was 280,000 yuan. The owner himself did not expect that this collision knocked out 71% of the car price, and some netizens joked that "it is really a father!" ”。

Why is the cost of repairing this Model Y so high? This has to mention Tesla's vehicle manufacturing process. Tesla uses one-piece die-casting technology, which can die-cast the 70 parts originally needed into one, and the model Y is composed of only 2 parts on the rear bottom. Tesla uses this technology to greatly reduce the number of vehicle parts and reduce the weight of the body, and to share the cost of car construction with the most direct advantages and improve the efficiency of car manufacturing. It is reported that Tesla's Shanghai factory has an average of two minutes to off-line a Model Y, and its large die casting machine can be completed in 80-90 seconds in a die-casting process, 40-50 castings per hour, and 1,000 castings in a day.

This technical car company is very happy to use, but it has damaged consumers in subsequent maintenance. Because the car uses the above-mentioned integrated die-casting technology model, once a collision occurs, the entire part can only be replaced, which explains why the Model Y that collided earlier would quote a sky-high maintenance fee of 200,000 yuan. Tesla is not alone, and there are other reasons why the after-sales maintenance costs of new energy vehicles are generally high. According to the service and maintenance of 19 million cars between 2016 and 2021, we Predict, a foreign data analysis company, found that the maintenance cost of electric vehicles is 2.3 times that of fuel vehicles. The reason for the higher cost of electric maintenance is its novelty, the mechanic needs to obtain certification and expertise, the hourly labor cost is also 1.3 times higher, and the maintenance time is also 1.5 times higher than that of traditional cars.

In order to dispel consumers' doubts, on December 31, 2021, the China Insurance Industry Association issued the "Exclusive Clauses for Commercial Insurance for New Energy Vehicles (Trial)", and millions of new energy vehicles officially entered the era of exclusive insurance. In terms of insurance liability, captive insurance not only provides protection for the "three electricities" (battery, motor and electronic control) system, but also comprehensively covers the use scenarios of new energy vehicles driving, parking, charging and operation. However, after the new energy exclusive insurance was launched, Xiao Daoge heard the complaints of the company's colleagues, because the new energy car insurance premiums he purchased were greatly increased, and the colleagues also said: "The little fuel cost saved is all discounted to the premium"! Judging from major media reports, since the auto insurance reform in December 2021, the premiums of different brands of models have shown different degrees of increase. Among them, the largest proportion of upswing is still Tesla, and the highest increase in vehicle renewal premiums in 2022 even reached 80%, and related news once rushed to the hot search.

Other domestic brands such as "Wei Xiaoli" and so on also appeared in different ranges of premium increases, taking Xiaopeng Automobile as an example, it issued the "Explanation on the Premium Changes of New Energy Vehicle Insurance Products for Xiaopeng Brand Models commercial car insurance", according to the national premium situation of the insurance divisions on December 28, 2021, the average increase of Xiaopeng models across the line ranged from 2.9% to 18.2%, and the specific amount was subject to the quotation of the local insurance division.

For the problem of high premiums for new energy vehicles, Yu Ze, president of PICC Group, has publicly stated that the reason why the loss rate and insurance rate of new energy vehicles are higher than those of traditional fuel vehicles can be summarized into two points:

There is a difference between the driving mode of new energy and fuel vehicles, resulting in the driving maturity of some car owners is not high, and the frequency of accidents is relatively high;

New energy is still in the early stage of development, product performance is unstable, in the absence of time precipitation, many technologies to be certified.

At the same time, the parts of the new car-making forces lack certain replaceability, the maintenance cost of surface coverage is high, and the current market price of new energy vehicle parts is not transparent, if an accident occurs, it can only be determined or quoted by the 4S shop, and the insurance company can only obediently pay compensation, and cannot grasp the leading right to determine the loss compensation.

In addition, the current degree of new energy intelligence is generally higher than that of traditional cars, often double lidar, millimeter wave radar, perception camera, etc., no matter which is "untouchable, can not be repaired" of the main child, even if casually bumped, tens of thousands of large will go out, in order to better cope with the risk of insurance companies can only increase premiums, to protect their own profit margins. Or you will say, then I will drive well, no accidents, not on the line? In fact, you still can't escape the battery of this disaster, as the core component of the power battery car, the battery capacity decay needs to replace the battery, which is a problem that every electric vehicle owner must face if he wants to use it for a long time.

As far as ordinary families are concerned, AutoNavi map statistics "the average working distance of office workers in the country is 9.18 kilometers", the two-way is 18.36 kilometers, the monthly mileage is 550 kilometers, according to the current national No. 92 gasoline oil price average price of 8.4 yuan to calculate, the monthly cost of fuel vehicles is about 400--800, if the cost of electric vehicles is half of the fuel vehicles, then the cost of five years is 12,000-24,000 yuan. But the cost of replacing an electric vehicle battery is more than 50,000 yuan, which means that the money saved is not enough to replace a battery.

It is worth noting that the aging rate of electric vehicle batteries is much higher than that of fuel vehicle engines, but at present, most of the owners' rights and interests launched by new energy vehicle companies are only for the first car owners, which directly leads to the serious depreciation of the price of pure electric second-hand cars. According to the "January 2022 China Automobile Retention Rate Report" jointly released by the China Automobile Dealers Association and the Jingjing Estimation Used Car Big Data Platform, the retention rate of used cars in China's electric vehicle market in 3 years is 42.9%, compared with the average retention rate of fuel vehicles in 3 years to more than 70%.

In 2021, China's new energy passenger car sales will be 2.9398 million, with a penetration rate of 14.8%. In 2022, it will be possible to reach a penetration rate of 20%, even if the data is rising year by year, new energy has not formed a stable supply and demand relationship in the second-hand market, so the overall retention rate is still at a low level.

Low retention rate, high maintenance costs, rising premiums, battery losses and other factors together, so that the good money-saving electric vehicles are "more and more expensive", many car owners just sigh when charging than the fuel car, really open a few years later, this account is really not necessarily cheaper than the fuel car.

02 Intelligence is no longer exclusive to new energy vehicles

As mentioned earlier, on the one hand, the price of gasoline has risen, on the other hand, the high maintenance costs and low retention rate of new energy vehicles have made many consumers who want to buy cars fall into the entanglement of buying oil cars or trams. For traditional fuel vehicles, there have long been new energy bigwigs raised questions, in last year's Weilai NIO Day conference after the communication link, Weilai Automobile founder Li Bin said: "I don't understand why everyone still buys oil trucks now, oil trucks in addition to smelling gasoline What is good?" ”。 As soon as this statement came out, the oil truck iron fans were not happy.

After the fermentation of the incident, Li Bin also responded: the charging and replacing equipment in previous years was indeed limited, and the choice of good electric vehicles was also small, but after several years of development, the products selected at various stages of the selection were constantly being added, and the energy replenishment method was relatively perfect, and it was time to choose new energy vehicles. Li Bin's words are reasonable, but now the progress is not only electric vehicles, fuel vehicles are also in the upgrading, intelligent is no longer the exclusive of electric vehicles, which has to first look at the general direction of the current automobile industry, mainly reflected in two aspects: one is electrification, the other is intelligent. The two are basically bundled together in the publicity of car companies, so that many people confuse the two. But in fact, intelligence does not equal electrification.

From the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show held last year, a number of car companies have launched fuel vehicle products with "intelligence" as the core selling point, including Changan Ford EVOS, which is known as "putting on an intelligent hat for fuel vehicles", Beijing Motor Cube, which is "driving quality of fuel vehicles + new energy intelligent cockpit", and Weipai Mocha NOH Smart Pilot Edition, which is the only intelligent fuel vehicle in the same level to realize the intelligent pilot auxiliary driving system.

In addition, it also includes MG ONE, which declares "new fuel force", Changan UNI-T, a "future technology mass production car", and Geely Emgrand L, which "makes intelligence enter the 100,000-level family car market". In the industry's view, these products all hope to use the concept of "intelligent fuel vehicles" to compete with intelligent electric vehicles at the same price.

In the view of these car companies, in the face of the increasingly strong intelligent demand of automobile consumers, fuel vehicles, which currently account for more than 80% of sales, are also necessary to be equipped with advanced technology configurations. For car companies, by equipping fuel vehicles with the most advanced intelligent configuration, the benefits are very obvious, which can enhance the premium ability of products and promote brand promotion.

After shortening a certain distance between the two sides in intelligence, the competition between fuel vehicles and electric vehicles will focus more on the application of the scene of travel mode, which is why electric vehicle companies have recently mentioned less and less intelligence, but one of the reasons why they have concentrated on the way of travel, because intelligence is not the moat of electric vehicles, and it will only become standard.

In the long run, in addition to the cost of electric vehicles is not lower than that of fuel vehicles, the intelligent aspect is also unable to pull the driving distance with fuel vehicles, and greater industry challenges have come.

03 New energy vehicles are no longer blooming

The advantages are not obvious, the competition is hidden in the undercurrent, and the new energy looks lively at first glance, but in essence it is still like walking on thin ice. On April 1, Tan Xuguang, chairman of Weichai Group, said: "New energy vehicles, especially passenger cars, will have a catastrophic overcapacity! ”

This statement is not alarmist. By the end of 2021, the national passenger car production capacity totaled 40.89 million units, and the capacity utilization rate was only 52.47%, of which 36 car companies had a capacity utilization rate of less than 20%. Despite the overall overcapacity, there are still 10.46 million units under construction on the mainland, and most of the capacity under construction is new energy vehicles.

In recent years, local governments have been scrambling to lay out new energy vehicle planning projects, whether it is existing production capacity or planned production capacity, they are competing in scale. For example, Guangzhou plans to produce more than 2 million new energy vehicles in the city by 2025, and Shanghai plans to produce more than 1.2 million new energy vehicles in 2025.

Geely Automobile, Great Wall Motor and Changan Automobile plan to sell 3.65 million, 6 million and 4 million vehicles in 2025, respectively, of which 1.55 million, 3.2 million and 1.05 million new energy vehicles are planned to be sold in 2025.

Huge sales targets, naturally need production capacity to support, from the perspective of car companies, to seize the market, you need sufficient capacity layout. However, idle capacity means waste of resources, and excessive idleness means that the industry is in an unhealthy state.

The Association has long put forward an early warning that the automotive industry should solve the problem of overcapacity of traditional automobiles while also preventing overcapacity of new energy vehicles. The industry understands this very well. As early as the 2019 Davos conference, Lin Boqiang, president of the China Energy Policy Research Institute, pointed out that there are two major problems in China's electric vehicle market: too fragmented and large overcapacity.

In fact, overcapacity is not aimed at all car companies, such as Tesla, BYD and other popular models, is a serious lack of capacity, waiting for the car time is even up to half a year, the so-called overcapacity of the automotive industry, in the understanding of Xiao Daoge, should be "uneven distribution of production capacity".

According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, among the 98 automobile manufacturers in 2021, more than 50 companies produce less than 1,000 vehicles per month, of which nearly 20 are in a state of suspension and produce 0 vehicles per month. The sales volume of the top ten enterprise groups in automobile sales accounts for about 90% of the total automobile sales, and the production capacity utilization efficiency is much higher than the industry average, and even reach 100%.

This means that the utilization of new energy vehicle production capacity in the mainland shows a development trend of "the stronger the stronger, the weaker the weaker", and then to put it bluntly, the head effect appears, new energy is no longer a hundred flowers, the first batch of elimination tide has come, and small and medium-sized new energy vehicle companies are facing market elimination.

This has begun to show signs in 2021, some small and medium-sized car companies have withdrawn from the market, including Changjiang New Energy, Borgward Automobile, and some car companies that we have not even heard of, such as Cheetah Automobile, Byton Automobile, Singularity Automobile, etc. have been "dying"; and in terms of traditional car companies, FAW Mazda and Changan Mazda merger, Brilliance China, Renault Gold Cup and so on have also withdrawn from the market.

Some weak new force car companies, in the next time, the opportunity to play cards will become more and more precious, coupled with the entire new energy subsidies will continue to decline, the speed of supply chain price reduction, can not keep up with the speed of the decline, which will make new energy vehicle manufacturers under pressure. This is a great opportunity for traditional car companies to fight back, so in 2022, there are still new market variables for the long-discussed "oil and electricity dispute".

05 Wisdom and Action

There are still various challenges in the process of replacing fuel vehicles with new energy, and fuel vehicles have not completely withdrawn from the market, and before 2040, new energy vehicle companies have enough time to solve the current drawbacks, whether it is the maintenance cost or retention rate of the car. Moreover, new energy and fuel vehicles have never been opposing competitive relations, both of which are products that conform to the development of the times, and are not black and white choices.

Behind the so-called "oil and electricity dispute", in fact, it also reveals a very clear positive signal, although now new energy vehicles are not perfect products, but also face a series of problems such as raw material price increases, fuel vehicles are also facing problems such as rising oil prices, but at least in this era, we have room to make more diversified choices, in the future, whether it is new energy vehicles or fuel vehicles, there are still unlimited travel imagination possibilities, we as participants in this era, A variety of lifestyle choices is the best gift. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media APP)