When I drove a Tesla back to the village, I was ridiculed by the villagers for being a "big wrong"

On the eve of the wedding anniversary, Li Xiaoning, who lives in a rural village in Xingtai, Hebei, secretly ordered a white Tesla Model 3 without his wife. I originally wanted to give my wife a huge surprise, but I never thought that this car frequently became the trigger for the couple's quarrels - it is too difficult to charge an electric car in the countryside.

When Wang Yilun, who had already settled in Shenzhen, returned to his hometown in Shandong for the first time with his Model 3, he quickly became the target of onlookers in the village. When it was learned that he spent nearly 300,000 yuan to buy this "unknown" tram, the neighbors regarded Wang Yilun as a "big wrong" - what kind of car is not good to buy with 300,000 yuan? In the village, BBA is the "hard currency".

A car holds the dream of "consumption upgrade" for residents in 2,800 counties and 40,000 townships across the country. It is not easy for new energy vehicle companies to cut this trillion-scale cake. Especially for car companies such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli, the sinking market is a difficult meat bone.

Text | Chang Fangfei

Edit | Li Huanhuan

Operations | Yanan

"This car is really high-end, how can it cost 100,000, right?"

When Wang Yilun drove the Tesla back to his hometown in Shandong for the first time, he was regarded as a big wronged by his neighbors.

He has been working in Shenzhen for seven years. Shenzhen is a city where everyone embraces new things and new energy with open arms. By the end of 2022, Shenzhen had added 220,000 new energy vehicles, with more than 700,000 units, with a penetration rate of 57%, ranking first in the country. After working for five years, Wang Yilun bought his first car, the BMW X3. Later, watching his colleagues and friends gradually change to new energy vehicles, he also became interested in this "new species".

In 2022, Wang Yilun bought a Tesla Model 3. This Spring Festival, he tried driving an electric car home for the first time. Although he planned the route and charging plan in detail, he still underestimated the impact of the low temperature in the northern winter on lithium iron phosphate batteries. As soon as the car entered the territory of Shandong, the temperature outside the car plummeted to minus 15 degrees. In just 20 minutes, the battery dropped from 20% to 0. Fortunately, there are only 10 kilometers left from home, relying on the battery's "hidden reserve power", which saved Wang Yilun from the fate of being sent home by a trailer.

When I finally got home, I didn't have time to rejoice, and Wang Yilun was made to cry and laugh by the compliments of the neighborhood - "This car looks really high-end, how can it cost 100,000 yuan." He went to the county to charge, and as soon as he stopped the car at the supercharging station, a young man passing by quickly took out his mobile phone and took two photos - it was the first time he saw a "live" Tesla.

When driving in the village and county, Wang Yilun paid special attention to whether there were Tesla riders, and found that there was not even an electric car on the street, and his car "looked like an alien species." People always come around with curiosity to judge, but the goodwill brought by novelty often reverses the moment they hear the price.

At the small gathering after many years, everyone talked happily and drank a few glasses of wine. A friend asked about the price of Wang Yilun's new car, and when he learned that the full Model 3 was close to 300,000, which was almost the same as the price of an Audi A4L, all friends felt that he had a brain disease.

"In our hometown, if you have money, not buying an Audi is a big opposite." The first choice for businessmen with economic strength is definitely Audi, which was once an official car, "driving out with special face." If you really can't afford to buy Audi, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda are all good choices, Wang Yilun's former small is trying to save money to buy his first fuel car, most people's first choice is Audi, "but no one will buy Tesla."

But Wang Yilun is still happy to show his hometown friend Amway Model 3. Thinking that the old family cared about the cost of using the car, he specially calculated an account for the other party. At present, the price of Shandong No. 95 gasoline is 8.32 yuan per liter, and the fuel consumption of 7 liters per 100 kilometers is roughly calculated, and the fuel vehicle refueling cost per kilometer is close to 0.6 yuan. The Model 3's power consumption per 100 kilometers is about 15 kWh, calculated according to the average charging of 0.55 yuan per kWh of rural household charging piles in Shandong, only about 0.1 yuan per kilometer, and the cost of using a car is much lower than that of fuel vehicles. But the old family was hardly moved, "the temptation of four laps (Audi) is too great."

Tesla Model 3. Photo / Visual China

Also regarded as a "big wrong" is Zhang Peng.

She has not returned home for three years during the epidemic, and last month, she deliberately drove a new car, Tesla Model Y, from Shanghai to her hometown in Nanping, Fujian Province, to attend a good friend's wedding. She wanted to take this opportunity to prove in front of relatives and friends that she was doing well in Shanghai, who knew that just after entering the city, the car was "nesting" in the middle of the road. An "activity alert" suddenly appears on the big screen, showing acceleration and a decrease in top speed, and after two seconds, the motor is disabled and the car comes to a complete stop. One hour later, the rescue trailer arrived – causing Zhang Peng to miss her best friend's wedding. There is also bad news that after testing, Zhang Peng's Model Y is most likely a problem with the motor inverter. Less than 10 days had passed since she picked up the car.

There is no maintenance and testing point in the hometown, and his parents can only accompany Zhang Peng to the Fuzhou Tesla Center.

The after-sales promised to get her a new car, but Zhang's father became worried. He had never seen this brand before, and couldn't help but ask, "Doesn't this car have a door handle?" "Nearly 400,000, why didn't it break in a few days?" "It's not convenient to charge, why not buy an oil truck?" Although Zhang Peng patiently explained how epoch-making intelligent assisted driving and voice control are, his father's killer sentence still left Zhang Peng speechless - Douyin said that this brand could not stop the car, which was too dangerous. Zhang Penghao said badly, and finally persuaded his father to accept the proposal to change to a new car.

A harsh reality lies ahead of Wang Yilun and Zhang Peng – the villagers do not accept electric cars, and their choices are difficult to understand in front of their families.

According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the cumulative sales volume of new energy vehicles in rural areas in 2021 was 1.068 million units, a year-on-year increase of 169.2%. Even so, the electrification rate of rural dwellers' cars is less than 1%, which is only one-third that of urban residents.

In fact, not only in the vast rural areas, but even Liuzhou, a model student in the sinking market, has begun to worry about selling new energy vehicles.

Tao Liang has been doing car sales in Liuzhou for five or six years. People who are in the tide can feel the change in water temperature the most. In 2020, fuel vehicles are becoming more and more difficult to sell, and Tao Liang has transformed into new energy vehicle sales. In the three years of the epidemic, the best sellers are Wuling Hongguang MINIEV and Baojun e100/e200, because of their cute appearance, they are called "baby buses" locally. Those who come to Tao Liang to buy a car are newcomers who have graduated 1-2 years ago, in addition to fancy fashionable and young appearance, the most important consideration is cheapness.

Tao Liang can say many of the shortcomings of these models in one breath: the interior space is cramped, the seats are uncomfortable, and the low-end version does not even have air conditioning; The cruising range is only 170 kilometers, which is more like a toy than the range of conventional new energy vehicles of five or six hundred kilometers.

But in the face of price advantages, all the above shortcomings seem to be inclusive. The low-end version of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV is priced at only 28,800 yuan, and the new top version in 2022 is less than 100,000 yuan. The disposable income of urban residents in Liuzhou in 2022 is 42,500 yuan, which is a car that ordinary people can easily buy by saving money. Coupled with Liuzhou's preferential policies for new energy vehicles - free exclusive parking spaces and almost comparable to the right of way of buses, Liuzhou's new energy vehicle penetration rate has ranked first in the country from 2018 to 2020, and is still in the fourth place in 2021, second only to Shanghai, Shenzhen and Sanya.

But in recent years, Tao Liang felt that the "baby bus" was not easy to sell.

In 2023, Tesla will take the lead in reducing prices, driving new energy vehicle companies to join the price war. Wuling Hongguang MINIEV's entry-level new car also dropped the price by 3,000 yuan with the big stream.

The price of cars drops, everyone chases the price and kills, waiting for a cheaper price. In the past month, the store has often had less customers than staff. The entire store has a sales team of 8 people and only sells 25 cars. Tao Liang couldn't help but miss the good times, last year "I (sell) eight or nine cars (all) a month is nothing."

To make matters worse, the price of the car is lower, the sales profit is even smaller, and "the profit from selling three new energy vehicles can barely match that of one fuel vehicle."

I thought that pure electric vehicles could penetrate into a wider rural world through the success of Liuzhou, but the reality backfired.

▲ Liuzhou Street is full of "baby buses". Photo / Visual China

It is difficult for villagers to go both ways with the electric daddy

Wang Yilun did not expect that it would be so difficult to convince his family to accept new energy vehicles.

Wang Yilun's parents have an Audi Q3 in their hometown and plan to buy another car with low fuel consumption as a means of transportation. Wang Yilun thought that the opportunity to recommend electric vehicles has finally come. From the surround view brought by the installation of 8 cameras under the car to Tesla's pure vision self-driving solution, he hopes to bring the convenience brought by technological change to rural homes.

Wang Yilun understands that the new energy brand represented by Tesla has rebuilt the evaluation standards of automobiles. For electric vehicles, brand premium, power system, and control sense have become less important, and factors such as intelligent assisted driving, cruising range, and intelligent cockpit have gradually occupied an important position in people's car purchase decisions.

But this is only the consumption habits of young people, and most of the people left behind in the countryside are the elderly, who prefer to judge based on past experience. In the fuel vehicle market, BBA's brand power still holds the top position. For Zhang Peng and Wang Yilun's family, cars are mass consumer goods, which are not only a means of transportation, but also a symbol of status and circle. The old man rejected Wang Yilun with only one sentence - "I drive an Audi, do I want to buy a motley car next car?" ”

Another harsh reality is that even if it is difficult to persuade villagers to buy electric vehicles, there are too few public charging piles and it is difficult to replenish energy, which is a big problem.

The China Charging Alliance has released a set of data: as of December 2022, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in the country is 5.210 million, while data from the Ministry of Public Security shows that the number of new energy vehicles in the country has reached 13.1 million, and the vehicle pile ratio is about 2.5, far from reaching the 1:1 plan.

At the same time, there is still an uneven distribution of charging piles, most of which are concentrated in the economically developed eastern coastal areas, and the coverage of charging piles in the central and western regions and the northeast region is extremely low. Statistics from the China Charging Alliance show that in 2022, the total number of public charging piles built in ten regions of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing, Hubei, Shandong, Anhui, Henan and Fujian will account for 70% of the total number of public charging piles in the country; According to the statistics of the "Small and Medium-sized Cities and Rural Electric Vehicle Development Report", the coverage rate of public charging piles in fourth-tier and fifth-tier cities is only 6% and 2% of first-tier cities.

In the imagination of many people, even if the construction of public charging piles cannot keep up, household charging piles can be installed. Wang Yilun immediately laughed after hearing this. In rural areas, during peak periods of electricity consumption in winter and summer, power rationing is the norm, and every household is still stretched for electricity. He always has a household voltage regulator at home, "otherwise the TV and refrigerator circuits will burn out, not to mention installing a charging pile at home."

Charging is not guaranteed, and even parking is difficult. Wang Tong, who lives in a rural village in Xingtai, Hebei, and her husband Li Xiaoning just quarreled. Before his wedding anniversary, Li Xiaoning secretly bought a white Tesla Model 3, and before Wang Tong returned home, he put the car keys on the dining table, wanting to surprise his wife. Unexpectedly, the imaginary surprise did not happen, but caused Wang Tong's great dissatisfaction.

Wang Tong's self-built house is stuck between two neighbors, the yard is small, and it is difficult to park two cars at the same time. Wang Tong's Model 3 had just been charged, and the neighbor's car came back and had to be moved. This has happened many times. It is inconvenient to charge your own home, and it is difficult to charge it outside. There are no public charging stations in the entire village, and if you want to charge, you can only drive 30 minutes to the county town near the mall.

Even Tesla's admittedly high appearance has lost its advantage. There are many dirt roads in the countryside, and when the wind blows, "Xiaobai immediately becomes old yellow, where is the beauty?" A month has passed since the incident, but Wang Tong is still angry when he thinks about it, "I really can't love this electric car."

▲ Tesla that lost the advantage of "high appearance". Figure / Courtesy of respondents

Zhang's experience of "lying on the nest" also forced her to rethink the suitability of rural and electric vehicles. Due to the limited layout of Tesla's service center, her car had to be maintained, and she could only go from her hometown in Nanping to Fuzhou for maintenance. In contrast, the maintenance of fuel vehicles is much more convenient. If "for peace of mind", you can go to the 4S shop in the county, if the picture is convenient and affordable, there are large and small auto repair shops in the county and rural areas.

In fact, it is not only that Tesla's after-sales outlets are difficult to see in the countryside, but it is difficult to find traces of new energy vehicle outlets in the sinking market. The services promised by the brand side, such as one-click power up and free car wash, have become a dead letter. If you encounter a problem, if you are in a provincial capital, you may only have to wait a few hours or even faster to wait for the service staff; But in rural areas, the official app will only display a few helpless words - "no service people around".

But speaking of it, car companies are also somewhat aggrieved. For new energy vehicle brands, opening a 4S store is not a profitable business. Even though it is known as the "new energy capital", Liuzhou's 4S stores are still mostly fuel vehicles, "because the maintenance of new energy vehicles is basically not profitable". Yan Jinghui, an expert of the Expert Committee of the China Automobile Dealers Association, also did not advocate that dealers invest in new energy vehicle 4S stores, "because the after-sales output value of new energy vehicles is low, which is not enough to support the operation of a 4S store." Moreover, the population density and economic development level of rural areas vary greatly, "so the layout of the sales network needs to be carefully calculated and analyzed on a specific market."

In addition, for new car companies such as Wei Xiaoli, they are still in the early stage of development of enterprises, and the current energy is not enough to support their penetration into the sinking market.

If you want to sink, you have to come up with a cheap model

But in the end, sinking is the only way for new energy vehicle companies, after all, the rural market means a huge increase.

As early as 2021, the China Electric Vehicle 100 People Association speculated that according to the average annual growth of disposable income of rural residents by 10%, by 2030, the number of rural cars per thousand people is expected to reach 160, and the total ownership will exceed 70 million, of which the new number can reach tens of millions, which is entirely possible to lead to electric vehicles.

In recent years, in order to find a new growth curve, car companies have also made efforts to the rural market. Tesla was the first to sink. As early as 2020, Tesla disclosed its central city settlement plan, which was also interpreted as a "sinking plan". At that time, its target cities included Yancheng in Jiangsu, Linyi in Shandong, Nanning in Guangxi, and Ganzhou in Jiangxi. In 2021, Tesla launched 218 Superchargers nationwide, including lower-tier cities such as Shanwei, Guangdong.

New forces followed. NIO's biggest move this year is to lay a swap station in the sinking market. A month ago, NIO founder Li Bin stressed in an internal open letter that in 2023, NIO will add 1,000 substations across the country, of which 60% will focus on lower-tier cities and counties that have a certain user base but lack substations.

▲ NIO will add 1,000 substations. Photo / NIO Weibo

This strategy comes from Li Bin's observation of rural sales. Xingfu Town, under the jurisdiction of Boxing County, Binzhou City, Shandong Province, has a registered population of only 50,000, while NIO has 500 car owners in the area. Li Bin believes that the reason why so many people are willing to buy new energy vehicles in the sinking market is because of the local construction of exchange stations. At the same time, in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, where NIO's network of substations is dense, it is also a high-density area where NIO owners are distributed. In Li Bin's view, the construction of substations is an important means to capture users.

Ideals have also begun to be deployed to third- and fourth-tier cities. Liu Jie, vice president of sales of Li Auto, predicts that in 2023, Li Auto will deploy 150 stores in 50 cities, basically completing the coverage of cities of the third and fourth tiers and above.

In addition to the layout of sales outlets, for new energy vehicle companies, the key to sinking is to come up with enough matching products.

In Tao Liang's customer group, in their eyes, new energy vehicles replace two-wheeled electric vehicles such as Emma and Maverick, rather than real cars.

In other words, low price is the car purchase factor that consumers in the sinking market are most concerned about. According to the "Research Report on the Development of Electric Vehicles in Small and Medium-sized Cities and Rural Areas" previously released by the China Electric Vehicle 100 People's Association, the purchase budget of residents in small and medium-sized cities is generally about 80,000 yuan, and in rural areas it is about 50,000 yuan.

According to Tao Liang's experience in selling electric vehicles in the sinking market - 80,000 is a threshold. "Beyond that number, everyone is very cautious." Like Ora white cat, black cat, Dongfeng Fengshen EX1, Chery New Energy Little Ant (eQ1), these models, "all come to sell one". The price of most of the main models of Tesla and Wei Xiaoli exceeds 200,000 yuan, which is a figure that will dissuade most rural consumers.

In contrast, BYD, which has a more complete product matrix, seems to be more competitive. In April this year, BYD may launch a new model - Seagull, according to the declaration information, this is a mini pure electric vehicle, according to previous news, the price of the entry-level model may drop to 60,000 yuan.

"It only costs 350,000 to realize the imagination of a freshly graduated student for white-collar workers." This is the biggest car purchase demand of young people in the sinking market at present.

▲ BYD seagull. Figure / Network

(At the request of interviewees, Wang Yilun, Zhang Peng, Tao Liang, Wang Tong, and Li Xiaoning are pseudonyms)