A collective test in the name of "supply chain security".
In April, the automotive industry still failed to usher in spring.
New car-making forces Weilai and Ideal have slashed sales this month. The more capable of playing is Xiaopeng, with a monthly sales of 9,002 vehicles.
Unexpectedly, the new car-making forces of the second echelon performed well, with Nezha delivering 8813 vehicles and zero-run delivering 9087 vehicles, becoming the top seller of the new car-making forces in April.
Behind the decline in sales of the new car-making forces is the waterloo of the entire automobile supply chain.
Because of the epidemic, the Shanghai automotive industry was once forced to press the pause button. The automotive industry has touched the whole body, and the shutdown in Shanghai has impacted the automotive industry across the country.
Today, the auto industry in various places is actively resuming work, but considering the complexity and fragility of the auto supply chain and the uncontrollable epidemic situation, the supply of auto parts is still tight.
The fragile new energy automobile industry is forced to face one collective test after another of "supply chain security".
Sales are slashed, and a haze hangs over the car market
In April, sales of various new car-making forces fell in unison.
Ideal and NIO's sales are in unison. Let's start with NIO, nio only delivered 5074 vehicles this time, while the delivery data in March was 9985 vehicles.
At the beginning of April, Weilai had a terrifying moment - "suspension of production".
Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, had to shout to the outside world: "A car without a part cannot be produced." Affected by the epidemic in Changchun and Hebei, we cut off some parts in mid-March, relying on some parts inventory to barely support until last week. Recently, there have been epidemics in Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places, and many partners cannot supply goods and can only suspend production. ”
Figure | Weilai founder Li Bin explained the reason for the suspension of production on the WEILAI APP
At present, NIO is gradually resuming production. On April 26, NIO's 200,000th production vehicle rolled off the production line at JAC NIO's Hefei plant.
But this is not the first time that Weilai has stopped production, last year, Weilai stopped production for 5 working days due to chip shortages. In addition to external shocks, it has to be admitted that Weilai's supply chain is indeed relatively fragile. Unlike other companies, many parts of NIO have only a single supplier. Putting eggs in one basket, Weilai's ability to cope with risks is obviously much worse.
Ideal has always been a top student, and when the entire industry is facing supply chain problems such as "lack of cores and batteries", ideals can always ensure stable delivery. But this time, the impact on the ideal is also relatively large, in March, sales broke through 10,000, and in April, only 4167 vehicles were sold.
Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Ideal Automobile, directly pointed out: Affected by the epidemic in the Yangtze River Delta since the end of March, some suppliers in Shanghai and Kunshan, Jiangsu And other regions have been unable to supply... As a result, existing parts inventory cannot be continued to maintain production after digestion, which has a great impact on the production of ideal cars in April...
Xiaopeng's monthly sales performance of 9002 vehicles is indeed not prominent enough in the longitudinal comparison, but in the perspective of the whole industry, it is really excellent. Xiaopeng has been relatively unaffected by the epidemic, on the one hand, the Xiaopeng factory is in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, on the other hand, Xiaopeng may have stockpiled some parts in advance.
"Wei Xiaoli" could not fight, but the runners of the second echelon ran up. The most surprising thing was the zero run, with 9,087 vehicles delivered, a slight decrease compared with the 10,059 in March, but in the environment of "no rice under the pot", such a result is remarkable.
Why has Zero Run not been affected by the epidemic? Zero run official gave such a reply: "The epidemic has a direct impact on the supply chain, based on zero run global self-research, in the supply chain selection of multi-regional planning, effectively improve the supply situation." ”
Zero Run had previously spent a lot of effort to do global self-research, and it didn't attract much attention at that time. But at the critical moment, Zero Run achieved "there are goods at home, and I don't panic in my heart.".
Industry-wide supply chain test
Since 2020, the country's automotive industry has faced several waves of external shocks.
The first is the pandemic. In April, due to the epidemic in Shanghai, the automobile industry once stepped on the brakes.
What does the shutdown in Shanghai mean for the nation's auto industry?
Xiaopeng Chairman He Xiaopeng gave an explanation. On April 14, he made a surprising judgment on Weibo: "If supply chain companies in Shanghai and the surrounding areas cannot find a way to dynamically resume work and production, all Chinese automakers may have to stop work and production in May." After this passage, he also added a crying expression.
As an important city in the national automotive industry, one for every ten vehicles produced in China comes from Shanghai.
Figure | Derived from pexels
In addition, the automotive supply chain enterprises in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai almost cover most of the parts production of a car. Most of the world's top 100 parts and components companies have set up factories in the Yangtze River Delta region, including Bosch, Aptiv, BorgWarner, Ningde Times, etc.
The suspension of production and production of only one parts company at Bosch will directly affect the output of automobiles.
In order to promote the orderly resumption of production under the premise of doing a good job in epidemic prevention, Shanghai has identified the first batch of 666 key enterprises "white list", of which 251 are automobile and automobile industry chain enterprises. Shanghai's auto industry is struggling to restart.
The impact of the epidemic is big enough, this is not over, the automotive industry is still suffering from the negative results of the mismatch between supply and demand, and the most direct impact is "lack of core and less electricity".
Since last year, the haze of lack of core has still hung over car companies. Many car companies, including BBA, have even begun to "sweep goods" at high prices on the black market. Also last year, some new car-making forces, such as Ideal and Xiaopeng, were forced to reduce their allocation and delivery.
In addition to the lack of cores, car companies are also facing the situation that batteries are too expensive to buy. Since the beginning of this year, almost every car company has announced price increases, and some cars such as Euler Black Cat White Cat have been forced to stop production. In order to ensure the supply of batteries, many car companies even ran to the source of the supply chain to snap up lithium ore.
Judging from the current situation, these shocks from the external environment are difficult to end in the short term. China's new car-making forces have to run wildly in the cracks.
There has always been such a problem in the mainland automotive industry, although there are many parts companies, but the scale is not large enough, the technology is not advanced enough.
Round after round of external shocks may force car companies to reflect on their own supply chain management and supply chain models.
As the electric vehicle hundred will say in the article "Stop Production and See Stop Production, a New Stage in the Automotive Supply Chain", when the supply chain has suffered several shocks, the suspension of production and shortage of goods will also leave a "memory of the times" for car companies. This may affect the pattern of the global supply chain of car companies, and may accelerate the process of mainland supply chain autonomy.