Written by / Jacob
Edited / Zhang Nan
Design / Shi YuChao
It's been the ninth season since Automotive Business Review launched its first season in August 2016. It's full of traces of time. I remember that some other media also followed up to do such a ranking, but soon the flag subsided, and we continued, the only change was that it was thought that after the "Wei Xiaoli" formed a stable market pattern, this list would probably shrink to a maximum of ten players. Unexpectedly, in 2020, because Tesla's stock price continues to rise and the news that Apple Cars will officially enter the game, another batch of new players will play, and there may be real players, and the market pattern is far from conclusive. It is in this context that we have launched the ninth season of the new car-making power list.
In the past five years, our grasp of the top three companies is almost 100% accurate, that is, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal; our grasp of the top five companies is also close to more than 90% accuracy. The so-called accuracy rate is to match the market share achieved later. That is Nezha and Gaohe. The only companies that have undergone a fundamental change in evaluation are two such companies: WM and Zero Run. Weima's ratings are indeed falling, while the zero-run rating is rising. Although we never gave up on zero running, it is true that confidence was still a bit lacking from the beginning. Now we conclude that if an enterprise has a strong, visionary leader who can unify the will of the upper and lower levels, then there is a high probability that there is still hope for the future. It is for this reason that we have never given up FF on our list. Of course, the same reason is that Evergrande Car has not had an ideal position on this reliable list from beginning to end, and this time it directly reached the last place.
The ranking of new car-making forces is also worth talking about the new car-making forces in three directions.
One direction is represented by Xiaomi Cars. Because of Lei Jun's success in the construction of xiaomi products and ecological chains, because of his in-depth layout in the automotive industry chain in recent years, and because of his understanding of new cars, I think Xiaomi auto is largely timely. We ranked it directly in fourth place, second only to Wei Xiaoli, while similar companies that entered almost at the same time or even earlier did not have such treatment.
In this direction, Huawei's car entry is probably just around the corner, but it is not yet time, and it is still in the "clinical" stage. It is precisely for this reason that we have also raised Thex, which Huawei has fully assisted, up the list a lot. Xilis was born out of Xiaokang Automobile, in a sense, just like Jihu was born from BAIC New Energy and Lantu was born from Dongfeng Motor, but because it originally had an independent founder to carry out this business in the United States, we classified it as a "new force for car-making", rather than Lantu calling itself "new strength of car-making".
Some people may ask, why does this list not add OPPO cars? The fundamental reason is that it has no official announcement, and we are actually looking forward to it, after all, it can be killed in the strong mobile phone market, and OPPO's insight into users is worthy of respect. Of course, after all, the mobile phone is still different from the car, and the mobile phone company's deep cultivation of the industrial chain is far less than lei jun, so even if it officially announces that it wants to build a car, we must still have reservations. As for other companies such as home appliances and cars, or rumors, I am seriously skeptical.
The new car-making forces in the second direction are the group that previously made low-speed electric vehicles, which were upgraded to A00-class electric vehicles, and the best of them were car brands such as Reading, Punk and Lingbao. This direction, which we have paid attention to before, has not given much attention to. However, because of the debut of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV in 2020, the products on this track have gained unprecedented market opportunities. In view of the market reality of low-speed electric vehicles in the countryside and townships in North China, central plains and Shandong in the past, and the difficulty of national norms to be truly introduced, these new forces in the new car manufacturing are likely to have a lot of achievements in such a niche electric vehicle market in the future. We must not ignore the advanced travel needs of the vast number of low- and middle-income people.
There is also a direction related to low-speed electric vehicles, that is, Kering Automobile, which previously made high-value low-speed electric pickup trucks, should be the king of terminal logistics. The so-called terminal logistics is the service provided by the three-wheeled car opened by SF's courier brother. Kering's end-of-line logistics electric vehicle will be a digital, intelligent and revolutionary product. So we have raised it to the highest position in the reliable rankings for the first time. Last time in the "Jia Ke To Readers" mentioned that the founder Wang Chao recruited a lot of Xiaomi executives to join, this time in the cover article we have a special report to introduce this person and his company. It is believed that similar enterprises will appear in the future.
The reason why the new car-making forces can once again flourish is closely related to the rapid increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China has increased from less than 0.1% in 2013 to 17.8% in August 2021, of which the penetration rate of new energy passenger cars is close to 20%. There is no doubt that penetration rates from 1% to 5% will be very slow and slow, so slow that you will doubt whether this path is correct. Then, the time from 1% to 15% is much longer than 15% to 30%, and it is also half-believed that their own path is doubtful, but from 15% to 30% will be fast, I am afraid that by 2025, it will break through 25%. The truth is very simple, all of which have to do with media communication, consumer psychology, infrastructure, product maturity, etc., which tests the leader's insight, concentration and carefully arranged rhythm.
Unlike the new car-making forces and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the progress of autonomous driving technology on a global scale does not seem to be good. The vision of automatic driving itself is also an important driving force to promote the development of new car-making forces, but perhaps we are too idealistic, especially want to step into communism, resulting in the public opinion field of the industry from the beginning to declare that this is automatic driving or driverless, rather than more real intelligent driving, which also misleads some consumers, even if manufacturers remind them that they are not automatic driving, they still take it for granted that the car automatically drives and thus flies to the disaster. I noticed that this was very detrimental to the accident manufacturer. Li wants to remind the industry to unify the Chinese terminology standards for automatic driving, and I even hope that the national level will be unified in automatic driving or unmanned driving as intelligent driving, intelligent driving L4 is automatic driving, L5 is unmanned driving.
Globally, more than 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents every year, not counting the number of people who are disabled, which is tens of millions of lives in a ten-year period. Progressive smart driving is sure to save tens of millions of lives over the next decade. However, we must not be radical and let the daredevil die. So now, a driverless car with two staff members to watch over, in any case can not be considered unmanned, although they are only as security officers. This practice is only to make the outside world, especially the capital market, feel that Robotaxi is still progressing. This kind of misdirection, in some cases, is harmful to nature.
Finally, just as the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the inherent fragility of overstretched supply chains and the inefficiencies caused by over-reliance on paper documents and manual management, the ups and downs of new car-making forces have also given us a clearer picture of the nature of new cars. This is also an important reason why we have spared no effort to do this ranking.