Written by / Zeng Guang Lee Hyun-hwan
Editor/Dong Yuqing
From policy-oriented to market-oriented, the domestic new energy automobile industry is in full swing, but in the fluctuating delivery volume of new car-making forces, the market has not yet completed the final screening. Standing in the last quarter of 2022, when Xiaomi cars have not yet been mass-produced, Huawei has not yet personally built cars, and Apple cars have not yet been officially announced, the window left for latecomers has become smaller and smaller.
On this year's National Day, the first day of the announcement of the delivery of new cars in September, Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, as an investor in the ideal car, improvised on the sales performance of the new car in the circle of friends. He said: "In the past two or three decades, the leader of China's premium high-end car market has been the Ashkenazi BBA, and in the next two or three years, it will be up to Li Weihua, no matter which wins, China will win." ”
In fact, not only has the ranking of seats given by Wang Xing changed, as major new energy vehicle brands have successively announced production and sales in September and the third quarter, while the industry competition has intensified, the reshuffle effect between different brands has emerged.
Among them, BYD's sales have surpassed Tesla for two consecutive quarters, and it is expected to sit on the throne of the world's first place this year, while the "pro-sons" of the automobile giants are vying to rise and begin to squeeze the living space of the "new car-making forces".
Under the great reshuffle, old players are left behind, new players counterattack, and the industry pattern is undecided, especially in the fluctuating delivery volume of new car-making forces, the entire market situation has become more confusing.
The number of seats is still changing
Just past September, is an important sales month for new energy vehicles, major manufacturers bloomed, pushing the domestic new energy vehicle market market up a long way, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has further improved, has approached 30%.
Among them, BYD, which has the most amazing sales, has become a "thriving", with sales directly exceeding 200,000 vehicles in September, and the cumulative sales volume this year has exceeded 1.18 million vehicles, which has far exceeded the "new car-making forces" floating up and down in a single month, and even opened up some gaps with Tesla, which is not worried about selling.
Just last quarter, BYD surpassed Tesla for the first time to become the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturer, and only three months later, BYD further widened the gap between the two sides. According to BYD and Tesla sales data, BYD achieved sales of 539,000 vehicles in the third quarter, Tesla achieved sales of 343,000 vehicles, and BYD led by 196,000 vehicles.
In addition to the change of the top spot, the new forces in the second echelon of sales are still playing hot.
As a representative of new cars, "Wei Xiaoli" has long occupied the forefront of the sales list of new forces, but in the third quarter, Wei Lai and Xiao Peng are somewhat weak, but the Nezha and zero running of the low-cost route have begun to start. This change was even more pronounced in the sales performance in September.
Specifically, Weilai delivered 10,878 vehicles in September, up 2.4% year-on-year, and Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 8,468 vehicles in September, down 18.67% year-on-year, and has fallen below the threshold of 10,000 vehicles for two consecutive months. With the delivery growth of existing models gradually weakening, the recently released Xiaopeng G9 is expected to carry the banner of sales growth.
Ideal Car finally came out of the "water retrograde" of the first two months with the newly released L9, and of the 11531 vehicles delivered in September, the Ideal L9 directly occupied 10123 units. On the last day of September, Ideal Motors also launched two new models, the Ideal L8 and Ideal L7, and deliveries are expected to begin in early November.
At the same time, the same as the high-end positioning of the industry began to rise relatively fast, as Huawei hand-in-hand support and Celis together to make a brand, the industry has set a new high, to achieve 10142 deliveries, two consecutive months of delivery exceeded 10,000, basically sitting on the high-end new energy SUV market. Just last month, Yu Chengdong released the Meijie M5 EV at Huawei's autumn conference and began to enter the pure electricity market.
It is no wonder that Wang Xing directly changed the title of "Wei Xiaoli" to "Li Weihua".
Nezha and Zero Run, which are slightly lower in price, also performed well. Nezha "U+V" delivered 18,005 units, an increase of 134% year-on-year; Through its four mass-produced models, S01, T03, C11 and C01, Zero Run delivered 11,000 units, an increase of more than 200% year-on-year.
Of course, in addition to the above manufacturers, GAC Egan, Jikrypton and other brands born from traditional manufacturers have also begun to gradually "go up" in the field of new energy.
In September, 8,276 units were delivered, up 15.5% month-on-month; GAC Ean gave September sales figures of 30,016 units, an increase of 121% year-on-year, and achieved monthly sales of more than 30,000 units for the first time.
From policy-oriented to market-oriented, the domestic new energy automobile industry is in full swing, but in the fluctuating delivery volume of new car-making forces, the market has not yet completed the final screening. Standing in the last quarter of 2022, when Xiaomi cars have not yet been mass-produced, Huawei has not yet personally built cars, and Apple cars have not yet been officially announced, the window left for latecomers has become smaller and smaller.
The pressure came to Tesla's side
In the second quarter of this year, when BYD surpassed Tesla for the first time to become the world's largest shipment of electric vehicles, many analysts believed that this was mainly due to the limited production capacity caused by Shanghai's urban control. But the recently announced third-quarter sales further validate BYD's growth potential, while Tesla blames less than expected deliveries on logistical constraints.
On October 3, US time, the day after Tesla's delivery was announced, its stock price plunged more than 8%, its third-quarter car delivery volume was 343,800 units, less than the market expected 357,900 units, as of the close of Friday, October 7, Tesla three days of cumulative decline of about 16%, setting a record for the worst weekly performance since March 2020.
Since the beginning of the global popularity of electric vehicles, Tesla has almost always been in the top spot, but in the second quarter of this year, the market situation began to change, BYD for the first time surpassed Tesla to become the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, and after entering the third quarter, the gap between the two sides expanded rapidly.
BYD's speed is indeed amazing, just two years ago, its annual sales were only 190,000 vehicles, while Tesla's sales reached 500,000 units, and BYD sold less than half of Tesla's sales. In 2021, BYD's sales tripled to 604,000 units, and Tesla's sales also increased to 936,000 units. After entering 2022, a rather surprising situation occurred, BYD quickly narrowed the gap with Tesla, and successfully reached the top in the second quarter, and now the sales gap between the two is further widening.
It seems to be unexpected, but it is actually reasonable.
This has a lot to do with the explosion of China's new energy vehicle sales market, data show that in the first half of this year, the global sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 4.22 million, of which China's sales reached 2.6 million, accounting for more than 60%.
A significant problem with Tesla is that the model is single and the iteration is slow, and there are four models currently on Tesla's official website, namely Model 3, Model Y, Model X, and Model S. Of the 343,800 electric vehicles sold in the third quarter of this year, Model 3 and Model Y accounted for 95%, and these two models were released in 2016 and 2019, respectively.
In contrast, BYD's product line is much richer, and the different models of its Dynasty series and Ocean series cover different price points of 100,000 to 300,000 yuan, of which the cheapest Yuan Pro starts at less than 100,000 yuan, while Han, Tang and other models are priced up to more than 300,000 yuan.
In addition, the ternary lithium battery mainly used by Tesla is accused of insufficient safety, and many safety accidents seem to reduce the trust of consumers, especially the recent accident of star Lin Zhiying driving Tesla, which has caused an impact in the hearts of many consumers. "Now who dares to buy a Tesla, I have to avoid it when I see it on the road." A ride-hailing driver who drives new energy complains.
At the 2022 World Power Battery Conference, Sun Jinhua, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, revealed a set of data that in 2021, there were more than 3,000 electric vehicle fire accidents across the country, of which six became ternary lithium battery models, while lithium iron phosphate batteries were only 5%.
On the other hand, BYD has frequently moved, and the ambition to compete for the supremacy of global new energy vehicles has been put on the table. First in March, the production and sales of fuel vehicles were officially stopped, focusing on the development of BEV (pure electric vehicles) and PHEVs, and then in the past September, it was announced that it had officially entered the European market, and the three models of Han, Tang and Yuan were released in the European market.
According to the current sales situation, BYD is quite close to the annual sales target of 1.5 million vehicles, and in the final quarter, BYD is expected to hit a higher sales target.
But it should be noted that the BYD era of electric vehicles has not really arrived, in the new energy vehicles delivered by BYD, hybrid models and pure electric models are still half of the present, and the former is mostly considered to be the transition model of the new energy era, pure electricity is the real other shore.
In addition, from the perspective of profitability, Tesla is still the king of the current market. Although BYD is higher than Tesla in terms of overall sales, because the main models are basically less than 300,000, there is still a gap between revenue and profitability and Tesla.
According to the financial report, BYD's revenue in the first half of this year was 150.6 billion yuan, of which revenue from automotive-related business was 109.267 billion yuan and net profit was 3.595 billion yuan, while Tesla achieved revenue of 16.934 billion US dollars (about 120.285 billion yuan) and net profit of 2.256 billion US dollars (about 16.057 billion yuan) in the second quarter alone.
There is no doubt that for these two new and old giants, the war situation is still in its infancy, and there are still many prospects in the future around the further competition between the two giants in the field of pure electricity and the high-end market.
Is the era of trams coming early?
Six years ago, consumer Zhang Xi drove his newly purchased new energy vehicle on the road, and he liked to observe how many of the vehicles driving on the road were new energy vehicles. "In 2016, I still got my first new energy vehicle with the mentality of a guinea pig, so I wanted to see who would start trying it so early like me."
This novelty gradually disappeared in the following years. Because with the rapid evolution of the market and technological development, new energy vehicles have become more and more popular.
This kind of rapid change was something that the entire industry did not expect at first. In the traditional automobile era, the design, research and development, manufacturing and other aspects of the automobile have been very mature, and the related industrial chain is large and stable. In the first round of competition with traditional car companies, it is the consensus of the industry that the new car-making forces are one step ahead.
In the first wave of new car manufacturing led by Tesla, the new car-making forces have jointly led the outbreak of new energy vehicles with a more agile attitude and a firm pursuit of new technologies.
At that time, the traditional car manufacturing enterprises relied on the car manufacturing industry for tens or hundreds of years, and from the realization that the organizational transformation was one step behind, it was considered to have the problem of "ship disaster U-turn" for a long time. As a result, every step of the new forces is to do their best, and the traditional car companies are more concerned about the fuel vehicle market as the basic disk, and then hold the existing drawings in their hands to produce several "oil to electricity", no accidents, will be one step behind in the transformation.
From the perspective of the market, the new energy industry, which was originally driven by policies, has developed faster than the original market expectations in the past two years.
At the 4th Global New Energy and Intelligent Vehicle Supply Chain Innovation Conference held in September this year, Miao Wei, former minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said: "The target of new energy vehicle penetration rate of 25% can be achieved three years ahead of schedule, that is, this year. ”
Only 20 days later, according to the latest forecast data of the association, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in September is expected to be 580,000 units, an increase of 73.9% year-on-year, and the sales penetration rate of new energy vehicles has reached 29.7%. There are optimistic predictions that by 2023, this penetration rate may reach 50%.
After the early swing period and exploration stage, the traditional giants found a response in front of the new market, and began to face the competition of Tesla with the establishment of the "new force" brand. New brands such as Lantu, Jikrypton and Ean have gradually been established, backed by giants while also throwing away heavy baggage.
So we can see that the brands known as the new forces of the big manufacturers are catching up quickly in terms of technology and products, and the marketing, experience and other aspects have also jumped out of the original 4S store model, following the path Tesla has taken.
A year or two ago, especially in the high-end new energy vehicle market, the players concerned were represented by Tesla and "Wei Xiaoli", and the innate sense of science and technology and fashion was more easily accepted by consumers.
After the new energy vehicles of traditional car companies are gradually on the road, the market pattern is changing rapidly.
With the tight supply of parts and components, the price of raw materials soared, the new forces that are already difficult to make profits have exposed their shortcomings to varying degrees, and since the first half of the year, Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng have all experienced sales bottlenecks, and the delivery volume has fallen sharply.
In the first half of this year, Weilai had 5 months of delivery of less than 10,000, ideal in the last month also suffered a "water reverse", the delivery volume to 4571 vehicles, lower than the worst epidemic in April, while Xiaopeng in the last two months of continuous sales fell below 10,000.
In the rhythm of the replacement of new and old products, the new forces and the traditional giants still have a big gap, resulting in large fluctuations in their delivery, in comparison, the traditional car companies with deep roots and extensive layout have gradually shown their advantages under this wave of impact.
In terms of products, unlike Tesla's dedication to creating fist products, traditional car companies are besieged with richer products. Taking BYD as an example, BYD currently has two series of products, Dynasty and Ocean, involving 11 models for sale, of which 9 are high-end products priced at more than 200,000 yuan.
The dense product portfolio of "dumplings" constitutes a more complete product matrix and accelerates product iteration.
In addition, in the context of the continuous influence of external factors, the control of the upstream of the industrial chain is also crucial. In this regard, Founder Securities Research Institute pointed out that BYD's business layout revolves around the core of electrification, covering the familiar vehicle manufacturing + battery manufacturing + electronic control chip manufacturing + motor.
After the soaring price of lithium batteries that began last year, traditional giants also have more conditions to achieve closer binding with the upstream through acquisitions and other means. And this is also the innate advantage of the new forces of large manufacturers from traditional car companies.
At present, the new forces are also gradually looking at traditional car companies, starting the layout of the all-round upstream and downstream industrial chain, and taking the fate into their own hands.
When new energy vehicles have passed the early trial and early adopter period, into the second half of large-scale replacement of fuel vehicles, from the product extension to the back of the process, the supply chain competition is unfolding in an all-round way, in addition, the technical competition represented by automatic driving is still continuing, in the intelligent track where the product is becoming more and more "inward", this scuffle has just begun.
(Zhang Xi is a pseudonym in the text)