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A deeper understanding of the transformation of the automotive industry
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Produced by: Electric Planet News
Author: Yufei, Fat Fei
For the year-end special issue of 2021, we wrote impassionedly.
If we were to use one symbol to describe the 2021 of smart electric vehicles, we would use the exclamation point "!". It represents technological innovation, product explosion, increased penetration, and confidence in everyone in the industry.
In 2022, we decided to use ",", a comma.
The comma represents the pause in the middle of the two sentences, which is also our impression of Smart Electric 2022. Lithium mines are soaring, car prices are following the trend, automatic driving has entered the deep water area, and new forces are shuffling...
In the past year, we have witnessed a new high penetration rate of nearly 40%, but we have also recorded the struggles and iterations in the development of smart electric vehicles. Therefore, 2022 is more like a pause, the replacement of old and new is not completed, and the landing of new technologies is half a beat slower than expected.
But at the same time, 2022 also represents the "connection" of two eras, such as the rise of plug-in hybrid transition products between pure electricity and pure oil; The automobile industry, once dominated by Europe, the United States and Japan, now has to add a China, and so on.
So, how do we sum up the past year?
After discussion by the editorial department, it was finally decided that this year's special issue would be divided into three releases, respectively talking about the people, things and things that will affect smart electric in 2022. Rest assured, each article is absolutely sufficient in length and will not be hydrological because of the upcoming holiday.
In the year-end special issue, we selected 8 things, or 8 perspectives, to let everyone fully recall the smart electric vehicles in 2022. These 8 events not only symbolize the moment of progress of China's automobile industry, but also the spiral and detour in the process of technological development, as well as the loneliness and unwillingness of the old power.
Let's get started.
First, the second wave of hybrid dividends
According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2022, China's annual sales of new energy vehicles will be 6.887 million units, of which PHEV sales accounted for 1.518 million units. From the data point of view, although the entire new energy market is still dominated by pure electricity, the growth rate of PHEVs this year has reached 1.5 times year-on-year, which is higher than pure electric 81.6%.
Hybrid is becoming the second wave of dividends after the tide of new energy.
In this context, the rapid growth of two head brands this year has become the epitome of the entire market, one is BYD, which represents the traditional brand, and the other is the head force ideal car of the new force camp.
According to the data officially disclosed by the two brands, BYD's sales of plug-in hybrid models in 2022 will be 946239 units, accounting for more than 50% of the total sales of 1852625 units; The ideal car that focuses on extended-range electric vehicles has 133246 units, becoming the second largest sales force after Nezha Auto.
In other words, this year, the combined hybrid vehicle sales of BYD and Li Li alone accounted for two-thirds of the entire Chinese PHEV market. The current Chinese PHEV car market is also reflecting the interesting phenomenon of BYD's unique family and encirclement.
Yes, car companies are profit-oriented, and friends are naturally unwilling to let this wave of PHEV market dividends be exclusively enjoyed by BYD.
In 2022, you will see a number of independent brands make a strong push in the PHEV space. Following BYD and Ideal, traditional brands such as Geely's Raytheon, Great Wall's Lemon DHT... Among the new forces, Qianjie, Nezha, Lantu, Deep Blue, and Zero Run and so on.
Among them, traditional brands that are closer to the fuel business prefer traditional PHEV solutions, while new forces prefer range extenders with simpler technical forms. The same thing is that they are all aiming at the pain points of short-term users of "oil and electricity".
The reason why we think it is "short-term" is because we firmly believe that with the initial improvement of infrastructure, pure electricity is still an unshakable future. As for how long the current wave of market dividends will last, it is impossible to give a specific judgment.
But what is certain is that cities that promoted PHEVs earlier have begun to tighten policies, and the first to make moves is Shanghai.
From 2023, hybrid models in Shanghai will no longer enjoy free green cards, which may mean that some policy-oriented users may be lost. However, optimists judge that this policy change has little impact on the development of the hybrid market, and they believe that PHEVs will continue to seize the stock market of fuel vehicles under the general trend of electrification.
However, the brands that have been the first to taste the market dividend have shown signs of transformation.
In 2022, Li Auto revealed the news of "launching the first pure electric vehicle in 2023" at the Q2 earnings conference, and the outside world speculated that this may be a pure electric MPV equipped with an 800V high-voltage platform.
Ideally, it was disclosed at the L8 press conference that the company is actively developing components of the 800V high-voltage pure electric platform, including power chips, power modules, electronic controls, motors, and transmission systems, and is also planning to put the Kirin battery of the Ningde era on the car.
But on the eve of this transformation, ideal president Shen Yanan suddenly announced his resignation, and the official reason was "to invest more time in personal affairs".
As the No. 2 executive of Li Auto, Shen Yanan is in charge of the supply team (supply chain, manufacturing, quality) and commercial team (sales, service, charging network), and his departure has undoubtedly added a lot of unknowns to the ideal of "range extension to pure electric".
It can be expected that at a time when the charging infrastructure is not 100% perfect, the market dividend of PHEV will remain for a long time as many manufacturers work together to mix and mix. The question is, if you had to choose now, would you choose pure electric or hybrid?
Second, the "stagnation" of intelligent driving
In 2021, we have a keen expectation that 2022 will usher in the explosion of urban pilot-assisted driving. However, this expectation was not realized until the end of 2022.
In 2021, everyone witnessed the intelligent stacking frenzy that may be unprecedented, and the hardware ceiling of intelligent driving is refreshed almost every quarter, and the computing power is not three digits or even embarrassed to go on stage.
Logically, we tried all the city navigation assistance functions except Tesla FSD in 2022 - Huawei's Extreme Fox NCA, Xpeng CNGP, Great Wall NOH, etc. - but one point is that their "beta" prefix has been on top for too long.
As of the fourth quarter, we ushered in the news that Guangzhou and Shenzhen partially opened high-definition maps. And the full opening of the main roads of large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen is already a matter of the second half of 2023.
But it does not mean the stagnation of intelligent driving - or rather, intelligent driving has developed to a new stage, requiring the cooperation of regulations and society.
Back to the technical and product level, there are still a lot of big news for intelligent driving in 2022.
NVIDIA released the next generation of intelligent driving computing chip "Thor" at GTC 2022, with a single-chip computing power that even exceeds 2000TOPS, and under the combination of two cores, the computing power reaches 4 times that of the four-chip solution in the Orin era.
At the same time, NVIDIA's intelligent driving "public version" business is becoming more and more popular, cabin driving integration, DRIVE SIM driving simulation system, Hyperion intelligent driving hardware packaging solution... There is a trend of "once entering NVIDIA as deep as the sea, from then on the whole stack becomes a passerby".
On the other hand, Qualcomm has also launched the Snapdragon DRIVE FLEX solution that integrates cabin and driver - two monopoly giants in the field of mobile Internet and consumer GPU, finally meeting in the era of smart cars, trying to determine who is the T0 supplier.
Talking about intelligent driving naturally can't bypass Tesla, FSD still hasn't entered China in 2022, and entering Europe is only Musk's mention in March. However, this does not affect the accelerated expansion of FSD users in North America.
On November 24, Tesla officially pushed the FSD beta function to all users in North America who purchased FSD. Although the price of FSD has risen to $15,000 and has the "beta" suffix, it is still the world's first city pilot feature to be widely launched.
In 2023, can we usher in urban navigation and even a larger popularization of intelligent driving?
Third, the midfield battle of luxury car companies
2022 is another big year for pure electric products - covering more price segments, more forms, and including the entry of traditional luxury brands. Compared with 2019, luxury car companies in 2022 are more prepared, they have launched a new pure electric platform, and intelligence has also shown their strengths.
If you want to review the fierce battle in 2022, you must first look at the traditional luxury three.
Following the flagship EQS, Mercedes-Benz launched mid-to-high-end products for the EVA platform in 2022 - EQE and EQE SUVs. We tested the EQE sedan for the first time, which retains all the advantages of the EVA platform: passive safety, long range, low energy consumption, and Mercedes-Benz's usual luxury atmosphere.
After the EQS SUV entered the market, the EVA platform has completed the high-end-high-end layout, and Mercedes-Benz has also become the first player in the BBA top three to complete the high-end pure electric layout.
But the two old rivals still have cards in their hands.
BMW brought the pure electric flagship i7 in 2022, and the Munich people, who have always pursued driving, played "flower work" this time, stuffing 5 screens into the pure electric flagship - not much, but including a 31-inch 8K rear giant screen, and two rear control LCD screens.
Mercedes has the largest front LCD screen in its class, and BMW wins in the back row and playfully complements each other.
After the launch of two mid-range models i3 and i4, as well as the high-end SUV iX, the BMW Group's pure electric family has finally broken through to the high-end and even luxury field: Rolls-Royce also brought the first pure electric model, the SPECTRE Shining.
In contrast, the purely electric offensive of the Audi 2022 is half a beat slower. The PPE platform, which will be produced simultaneously in Djer, Hungary and Changchun, the mainland, and the corresponding model, the A6 E-Tron, etc., we will wait until the second half of 2023.
However, with the platform strength of the Volkswagen Group, in 2022, Audi released the Q4/Q5 E-Tron based on the MEB platform, entering the competition of 300,000-400,000 markets - using the MEB platform to face the most serious price point of "involution" of new forces in car manufacturing.
Represented by BBA, luxury brands entered the "midfield" of intelligent pure electric in this year - all-out offense and new products.
It is precisely for this reason that we not only witnessed luxury brands benchmarking new cars for the first time in 2022, but also ushered in the first wave of million-level high-end pure electric products, and may even be a precursor to another "reshuffle" of the luxury camp in the new era.
Volvo, which announced the transformation into a pure electric car company, brought the successor of the XC90, the EX90 based on the new SPA2 platform, and its high-end brand Polestar also released the Polestar 3 on the same platform;
Lotus, which also transformed into pure electric, brought Eletre, which is known as "track-level intelligence";
Mercedes AMG has also released a series of new EVA platform products, spanning EQE and EQS.
As of 2022, luxury brands seem to have completed the "giant wheel turning", with corresponding products from 300,000 to 5 million.
However, new forces representing change are still marching forward. Even in the mid-to-high-end market, where luxury car companies are best at, there are new cars in the name of intelligent driving + intelligent cockpit, challenging the "sense of ritual" that BBAs were familiar with.
The midfield also represents that the competition is becoming more intense, and the two sides are already equal, can luxury car companies hold on to the once solid market? We'll see you next round.
Fourth, the loneliness of the Japanese system
In the previous section, we talked about luxury, but did not talk about Japanese luxury - or, throughout 2022, the Japanese system is still "semi-absent" from the smart pure electric track.
The reason why "half" is absent is because the product is not absent. The Japanese troika also launched its own new pure electric platform in 2022: Toyota bZ4X, Nissan AYIRA, and Honda e:N series.
And the reason why you say "half" is absent is because you rarely hear their voices in the public opinion field: the product is on sale, but the popularity is not online.
The essence of not being famous lies in the lack of ability.
Some people like electric vehicles that last long enough, some people need fast enough charging speeds, and some people hope that the smarter the car, the better - and the Japanese pure electric 2022, all of the above is not done to the extreme.
bZ4X was once released with the world's expectations for Toyota, but missed all the hot spots in the 2022 electric world; The e:N is still promoting Honda's driving heritage, but the parameters are not outstanding in the same price range; Nissan AYIRA is the intelligent level of these three, and the three electric capabilities are relatively more "2022", but it has not yet been listed in China.
Behind the lack of ability, there is hesitation.
Open Toyota's official website, Toyoda's latest event, at the January 13 press conference, he announced that he changed an 86 to hydrogen energy, and then modified the motor and battery for a LEVIN, but still retained the manual transmission.
In August 2022, Hollis, vice president of Toyota North America, even said that "the electric market is not ready, and consumers are not so much in need of pure electric vehicles."
There are many reasons why the Japanese system does not focus on pure electricity, such as the thick credit book of the hybrid market, energy security and so on. But in the end of the 2022 market, only the reputation brought by hesitation is not obvious.
Japan has a strong automotive industry heritage, even in the intelligent era, Renesas and Sony are still the world's top suppliers of automotive-grade chips and CMOS. But in the field of vehicles, can Japanese players such as Mitsubishi Mazda Subaru sweep away the decline in 2022 and counterattack again?
Fifth, the battle between power exchange and fast charging
On December 1, 2022, Tesla officially delivered the SEMI truck.
At the same event, Tesla officially announced that the "Megacharger" released in 2017 is the latest V4 supercharge, with a peak power of 1000kW, and the new design makes the volume of the cable equal to V3.
Tesla isn't the only car company to launch a new generation of ultra-fast charging in 2022.
On August 15, Xpeng Motors' first S4 fast charging pile went online, supporting a maximum charging power of 480kW and a maximum current of 670A per pile; On August 30, GAC AION released its "super speed" battery technology, which also achieves a maximum power of 480kW in combination with its A480 charging pile.
By the end of the year, this ultra-fast charging war became more complicated.
On December 24, NIO's 2022 NIO Day, Li Bin released NIO's new generation of supercharging piles, with a peak power of 500kW. It takes 20 minutes to charge from 10% to 80% on the 400V model and 12 minutes on the 800V model – and is available to all electric vehicles at the same time.
At the same press conference, NIO's third-generation replacement station was officially released, which can store 21 batteries, and the single-day service capacity has been increased to 408 times. In addition, the edge computing chip of the third-generation replacement station uses dual Orin, combined with dual lidar, and NIO has even launched an intelligent driving scenario of "pilot power replacement".
In other words, NIO rolled up both charging and power exchange at the same time.
Platforms with 800V or even higher voltages, some people think are equivalent to "5G for smart cars", making the refueling speed of electric vehicles closer to gasoline vehicles; From 2022, the high-voltage charging platform has also officially begun the popularization process.
But there are still questions that must be answered for high-voltage charging: the rate is reduced after 80% of the SOC, but the owner needs to be full, how to deal with humanity and efficiency? How to solve the power capacity required for multiple ultra-fast charging? Is it a waste when the extra capacity is idle?
NIO, which goes the two ways together, also needs to answer these questions, even if it sits on more than 1,300 energy storage devices.
High-voltage ultra-fast charging and power exchange of 500kW or more, what will you choose?
Sixth, the loneliness of Evergrande Automobile
The story of Evergrande's car building should be familiar to many people. 2022 is the first year of Evergrande Automobile's "handover", but this year is not worth joy for Evergrande.
With the gradual demise of Baoneng Automobile, Evergrande Auto has become one of the few remaining forces in China's real estate car manufacturing. But as a survivor, Evergrande Auto's recent situation is not much better than other players.
At the end of October 2022, Evergrande Auto finally began delivery after experiencing 9981 difficulties, but as of December, its first model, Hengchi 5, only delivered 100 units, and the dismal sales volume formed a strong contrast with the high hold of the brand that year.
Friends who follow Evergrande should remember that in 2018, Xu Jiayin, the head of Evergrande, "braved the world's great opposition" to throw 6.746 billion Hong Kong dollars into the then moribund FF car (Faraday Future), taking this as an opportunity to officially cut into the automotive industry.
In the following six months, Evergrande suddenly announced that he would personally build a car after staging a breakup farce with FF, and Xu Jiayin at that time could be described as full of spirit.
At the 2019 Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Global Strategic Partner Summit, Xu Jiayin announced that the world's top 60 leading auto parts enterprises signed a strategic cooperation agreement, and after acquiring a number of enterprises, he also put forward the grand slogan of "investing 45 billion yuan in three years, synchronous research and development of 15 models, and mass production in 2021".
On the product side, Evergrande Auto released six models from Hengchi 1 to Hengchi 6 in one go, and strived to cover all categories of cars, SUVs and MPVs when it first debuted.
In terms of manufacturing, Xu Jiayin has made bold statements to establish ten vehicle production bases along the Belt and Road, each with a planned production capacity of 500,000 vehicles, and plans to produce more than 1 million vehicles per year in 2 to 3 years, and more than 5 million vehicles in 10 to 15 years.
It seems that in the eyes of Xu Jiayin at that time, if you have money, you can do whatever you want, but this state of "rich" did not last long.
Time to 2021, the planned mass production of Evergrande Auto has not come, and only the Hengchi 5 of the six models has been put on the agenda. At this time, the Evergrande Group, which is backed by the automobile business, is already full of holes and debts, with a debt wall of up to two trillion yuan.
Under such internal worries, Evergrande Auto is struggling to enter 2022, and the automobile business was even pinned on the last straw of Evergrande's turnover.
On the one hand, Hengchi 5 was exposed to various product problems after delivery: overlapping text in the central control, confusing UI interface, virtual battery life, abnormal brake noise, and automatic driving assistance functions could not be used;
On the one hand, there are constant scandals at the company level: internal employees have stopped work and left their jobs with arrears, factory layoffs, and there is news that the headquarters of Evergrande Automobile is dissolved, and there are various rumors that are very popular.
For the endless negative news and even rumors, although the official once refuted the rumors, the problems exposed by Evergrande Auto are difficult to hide.
With these doubts, Evergrande Auto staggered into 2023, but in the next year, where will Evergrande Auto go? Its prospects are not encouraging.
The "fever" of Evergrande Automobile, and even the possible exit that may occur next, once again confirms the curse of "real estate car building", in the matter of car building, money really does not necessarily have to do whatever you want.
7. Brand upward
Brand upward has never been a strange word for the Chinese automotive circle, and in the era of fuel vehicles, there are countless cases of independent brands seeking upward.
From the earliest Qoros, to the later Lynk & Co, Weipai, etc., domestic car companies try to enhance their image and improve their bargaining power by launching high-end brands and high-end products. Among the players, there are those who have fallen and those who have persisted until now.
But this wave of brands can hardly be said to be successful.
Of course, there are many factors that determine whether a brand can be successful, and we cannot analyze them all. However, the examples around us in 2022 tell us that independent brands or domestic cars can carry the banner of high-end.
You can understand that this is a kind of "time makes heroes", because the east wind they borrow is this unstoppable tide of electrification.
As the price "ceiling" of once domestic electric vehicles, NIO delivered a total of 122486 units in 2022, although its ranking fell to the third place in the new force, but NIO's unit price has always been the highest among the head car companies. Compared with BBA models in the same class, their total sales of new energy vehicles in 2022 will only be 114,000 units.
In other words, NIO alone sold more than BBA three.
However, NIO is not alone in wanting to carve up the BBA market.
For example, the ideal L9, which for the first time hit the ideal single product price to a height of more than 400,000, and achieved a single month of more than 10,000;
There is also Xpeng's G9, which is the highest positioned product of the Xpeng family, with the price of the whole series going to 300,000, and the high-end model has been sold to more than 400,000. The launch of the G9 is a show of Xpeng's determination to touch the high-end, and although its listing process was a little bumpy, it also showed good results in the third month of delivery.
There are many "upward" products similar to the ideal L9 and Xpeng G9, such as the Avita 11 that is being delivered, the 009 of the second model of Extreme Krypton positioning MPV, Lantu Dreamer and Denza D9, which are also MPVs, etc., their price ceilings have touched the unprecedented height of previous domestic cars, and there is no shortage of buyers.
It can be seen that self-owned brand vehicles are rapidly improving their product power and brand image under the impetus of electrification and intelligence, echoing the increasingly strong bargaining power, which is the rise of domestic high-end electric vehicles.
8. Go to sea
Under the general trend of "inner roll", in 2022, we have witnessed a new round of Chinese cars going overseas - this round of going overseas, the key word should be "beyond", beyond the image of once domestic cars, and even beyond the product power of international brands of the same level.
A friend in the industry once joked with us: "Look at what are the best-selling electric vehicles in Europe in 2021, we have no reason to lose when we sell them."
One point of joke, nine points of seriousness - the reason for seriousness, first of all, is product power.
China's pure electric in 2022 can be called "volume" to the extreme, and almost every quarter we can see the world's first hardware, record high battery life, and uncapped performance. Compared with European and American car companies in the same period, we can understand the phrase "there is no reason to lose".
The trend driven by product power is that we are about to become the world's number one automotive exporter.
In 2021, Continental's automobile exports exceeded the 2 million mark for the first time, and in 2022, it continued to soar by 60% to 3.321 million units. In front of us, only Japan, and the volume of mainland automobile exports in the fourth quarter has surpassed Japan.
In addition, according to the data of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, Chery, MG, Geely and Great Wall - Chery, MG, Geely and Great Wall - the four independent car companies have accounted for more than half of the total export volume.
The era of Chinese automobiles conquering the world has come, and smart pure electric is a siege weapon.
On September 8, 2022, BYD signed a land subscription and factory construction agreement with WHA Weihua Group. BYD's first overseas passenger car plant is expected to start operations in Thailand in 2024 with an annual production capacity of approximately 150,000 units, and the vehicles produced will be launched in Thailand, as well as neighboring ASEAN countries and other regions.
This is another overseas plant for BYD after the United States, Brazil, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
In addition to conquering the global production network, China's car manufacturing has more innovations, which we hope to share with the world.
On October 8, 2022, NIO held the NIO Berlin 2022 launch event in Berlin, Germany.
Six years after the London global conference, Li Bin once again stood on the European stage and announced NIO's plans to enter the European market system-wide - including the construction of 120 substations, 10 cow houses, and so on in Europe by 2023.
"System going to sea" has become another model for Chinese cars to go overseas after NIO's Berlin press conference.
Li Bin summarized this system as "truly catering to the trend, according to the mobile social era, from research and development, from supply chain, from service to community, completely build a new system, new business model".
A new story from China, how to conquer the world? We will see more clearly this year.
9. The dark tide is surging, and the general trend is the trend
These eight things are not all that will happen on the electric planet in 2022, but they each represent a trend. Under the trend, there are new and old replacement of technology, the instant overthrow of giants, and the momentum of new kings.
We describe the 2022 of electric vehicles as a ton because compared to 2021, some of the eagerly awaited moments have not arrived, and short-term fluctuations have affected the spray that should have appeared.
But under the slightly bleak surface, there is still a strong undercurrent, the pace of the electric vehicle industry will not stop, and the roundabout progress is also the norm for the development of things.
In 2023, we continue to run wild.
(End)