BYD rode in the dust, and the besiegers were ambushed on ten sides
Written by Zhang Siming
Editor/Wan Tiannan
Judging from the latest sales in June, BYD has won numbness again.
On July 2, BYD announced that it sold a total of 250,000 vehicles in June, a year-on-year increase of 88.2%. From this point of view, the previous high-profile report of the old enemy Great Wall Motor has not significantly affected BYD's terminal sales.
Since 2021, BYD has gradually occupied the market by relying on the gradual development and iteration of DM-i technology over the past 17 years, and will become the new sales champion in 2022.
If BYD can quickly become the head car company in China's car market before, it is a plug-in hybrid technology that has been smashing DM-i for many years, and it is a slow worker. After 2021, BYD rapidly expanded its production capacity, launched a radical cost reduction and price reduction strategy, and gradually ate the fuel vehicle market, relying on a sharp fast attack.
At the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum held in April this year, Wang Chuanfu, chairman and president of BYD, publicly said that the market is changing every day, and BYD is now walking on thin ice. The industry is now not big fish eating small fish, it may be fast fish eating slow fish.
However, for plug-in hybrid technology, independent brands take it as a major direction of attention, but invest time and intensity later than BYD.
Nowadays, the opponents' mixing technology has caught up, and BYD itself has been reported by friends because of its low-cost strategy.
Relying on the strategy of cost reduction and price reduction, BYD, which has been rushing all the way, is also facing potential worries.
The challenge of "low configuration" under high cost performance
After the report letter, Great Wall and BYD still showed a tense situation.
On June 29, "Financial Story Club" visited the Great Wall Haval store and the BYD 4S store located in Huikang Road, Tianjin.
"The fuel consumption of the Thunder Dragon Max reaches 5.5L, and the fuel consumption of the BYD Song PLUS actual test actually reaches more than 7 oils. You must have heard of BYD's 'chopstick suspension', and we use the multi-link suspension that only luxury cars use. "In the Haval 4S store, the sales staff listed the shortcomings of BYD models to "Financial Story Club", and did not forget to list the comparative advantages of the Thunder Dragon, which is a young and fashionable new energy compact SUV under the Haval brand.
BYD 4S store, dozens of meters away from the Haval 4S store, the sales staff also admitted that "the suspension determines the upper limit of the car, but BYD is to use the manufacturing cost in the 'enough' place, for a non-luxury brand such as BYD, the driving experience of using three or four links is not much different, but the cost performance is much higher." ”
The reason why BYD's suspension, which was used by Haval salespeople, was criticized by opponents was because BYD was equipped with a three-link suspension used by Toyota models, which is an entry-level independent suspension, and was nicknamed "chopstick suspension" because of its fewer and thinner linkages. Unlike the four-link and five-link suspensions used in other models, the three-link suspension structure is simpler, the difficulty of tuning is lower, and the corresponding cost is lower.
"In terms of suspension, I think BYD should not learn Toyota chopstick suspension so early, independent brands are still in the climbing process of gradually changing user cognition through their own products, services and technologies, and they cannot be compared with foreign brands, and must obtain user recognition through better performance." A BAIC Research Institute staff member said bluntly to "Financial Story".
The battle between the Great Wall and BYD is of course not limited to stores. On May 25, Great Wall published a letter of complaint from BYD on the official WeChat, saying that the latter did not use the high-pressure fuel tank commonly used in hybrid vehicles, but a lower-cost atmospheric pressure fuel tank, and there was a possibility that emissions would not meet standards.
The contradiction between the two companies became public.
Even though Great Wall's report on competitors attracted a lot of boos in the industry, it did not seem to significantly influence the choice of BYD's potential car owners, did not shake the foundation for BYD to continue to win the championship in sales, and even on the second day of its report, the stock price fell more than BYD.
But BYD's low-cost route has also been widely publicized.
According to 36Kr's automotive media launch PowerOn report, some industry insiders said that the cost of high-pressure fuel tank + control valve can be about 600 yuan more than that of ordinary pressure fuel tank. This cost difference is not small in the automotive industry, which is currently involved in extreme and fierce bargaining. But in order to cope with the tightening of emission regulations, most car companies dare not save this money.
Looking at the automotive industry, Ideal, Lantu, Leap and Geely Galaxy have said that their PHEV models use high-pressure fuel tanks.
The aforementioned BAIC Research Institute insider told "Financial Story Club": "BYD Qin, Song, Han, Tang dynasty series models adopt a low-cost strategy, from the design side to try to save costs, chopstick suspension, atmospheric pressure fuel tank, the use of industrial specifications instead of automotive chips, all reflect low-cost design." ”
Low-cost path dependency
In view of the risk of leakage caused by plug-in hybrid models, which can be oiled and electrified, and the fuel tank cannot be burned for a long time, high-pressure fuel tanks that increase pressure on the fuel tank have become the standard equipment of plug-in hybrid models under most car companies.
After being reported, BYD publicly stated that the company did not use high-pressure fuel tanks because it had a special patent, and even if it used atmospheric pressure fuel tanks, it could achieve emission standards. The general mode of the patent is: when the engine is not used, such as pure electric mode, vehicle shutdown, etc., the engine is still started to burn the excess oil and gas in the atmospheric pressure tank.
"I heard that BYD's way to meet the standard is to start the engine by itself, and I am a little worried about this, whether there will be any risks in starting the engine without knowing it," a person who consulted about the relevant model in the BYD 4S store in Tianjin and did not buy it in the end told Financial Story Club.
"Car Review Network" has reported that the Qin and Song exported by BYD are high-pressure fuel tanks, and after being reported by the Great Wall on May 25, BYD's Xi'an factory quickly replaced the atmospheric pressure fuel tank with a high-pressure fuel tank.
In response to whether this news is true, "Financial Story Club" asked BYD for confirmation, but as of press time, it has not received a reply.
Relying on strong vertical integration capabilities, BYD can produce and sell a number of core automotive components, including chips.
However, it is worth mentioning that BYD's self-produced chips are industrial-grade chips, which have lower technical requirements and costs than other automotive chips purchased by other car companies.
If the service life of the industrial chip requires more than 5 years, the temperature range is required to be -40 °C ~ 85 °C, and the automotive chip requires a service life of more than 10 years, and the applicable temperature should reach up to 150 degrees.
"The pass rate of the industrial chip production line is lower than that of the car specification, but the car requires 100% that there can be no problem." The aforementioned Beijing Research Institute insider emphasized.
The cost advantage brought by the core components can be produced and sold by itself, coupled with the plug-in hybrid technology that has been sharpened for 17 years, has begun to show its strength, starting in 2021, BYD has emerged in the Chinese auto market, selling 730,000 vehicles that year, a year-on-year increase of 75%, ranking 13th among Chinese car companies.
BYD ushered in an outbreak in 2022, and the word-of-mouth effect of its hybrid models with low fuel consumption and high cost performance has brought about a surge in sales.
In that year, BYD's sales reached 1.86 million units, a year-on-year increase of 153%, surpassing FAW-Volkswagen to become the sales champion of Chinese automakers.
In 2023, BYD is still racing all the way. In February this year, BYD announced that it would launch new cars at the same price for oil and electricity
秦PLUS DM-i
The starting price of the 2023 Champion Edition has been reduced to 99,800 yuan. After the price was further reduced, BYD successfully broke through in the sedan market, which its own brands are not very good at.
Since February this year, BYD Qin has replaced
Nissan Xuanyi
, to become the number one in the car sales ranking.
In the past, independent brands have been relying on more configurations and lower prices to compete with joint venture brands, but because of the high fuel consumption of self-owned brand fuel vehicles and the high comprehensive cost of use, they have never been able to truly challenge joint venture brands.
This situation was broken by BYD's DM-i technology, and the fuel consumption of the car using this plug-in hybrid technology car Qin is only 3.8L per 100 kilometers, which is also known for its low fuel consumption
Nissan
The fuel version of the Xuanyi has a value of 6.1 liters.
At the same time, the price of BYD's plug-in hybrid series models is also quite attractive, and the 21 Qin models start at 105,800 at that time. Previously, the price of plug-in hybrid models launched by Japanese brands exceeded 200,000, and BYD was the first domestic car company to reduce the price of plug-in hybrid models to less than 150,000.
Compared with BYD's hybrid models, the comprehensive cost advantage of other fuel vehicles that once dominated the sales list is no longer there, and sales are gradually declining.
Nissan Xuanyi,
Haval H6
is a typical representative of this, replacing the two to become the sales champion of the market segment is BYD Qin and BYD Song.
The storm is constant at a fast pace
BYD, whose sales have been rising, has also been "popular and popular" in recent years, and negative turmoil has continued one after another.
The most striking negative news is that BYD's proud blade battery spontaneously combusted. "Automotive Industry Concern" once revealed that on November 15, 2022, a new model was on a highway in Wancheng District, Nanyang City, Henan Province
BYD seals
Spontaneous combustion occurs.
According to "Golden Horn Finance", on April 3 this year, at the Cen Xi East exit of Baomao Expressway, a 2022 BYD Han DM-i spontaneously combusted, and the driver named Yang Qinglan on the car was burned to death.
After the above incident, BYD responded in a report on the accident published on April 11: "BYD has sent a professional team to the scene to investigate, and will actively cooperate with relevant departments to deal with it." ”
However, according to the investigation of Golden Horn Finance, as of April 20, BYD has not contacted the family of the deceased driver, nor has it provided the traffic police with relevant data on the accident vehicle.
"Financial Story Club" asked about the latest investigation results of this spontaneous combustion accident, and BYD did not reply.
Startup PowerOn suspects that since last year, the frequency of battery thermal runaway events 1-2 times a month is related to BYD's cost-reduction strategy.
BYD engineers told PowerOn that the company had seen risk points in the early thermal diffusion design and suggested adding mica material, but the battery team thought it could increase the cost of 20-30 pieces, which was ultimately not adopted. It was not until frequent thermal runaway events that BYD urgently improved the design.
Although today's joint venture car companies are slow to electrify and their products are not competitive, joint venture brands that have been manufacturing cars for a longer time can still regard the safety of their electric vehicles as a major publicity point.
Take the Leaf, which Nissan launched in 2011, for example, in 2019
Tesla Model 3
Before opening the market, the car was the world's best-selling electric vehicle, with cumulative sales of 400,000 units by 2019.
To this day, Nissan still regards the Leaf's "cumulative driving of 21 billion kilometers and zero major accidents in the battery" as a major selling point.
There have been BYD owners on the "Autohome" forum broke out that BYD needs to pay attention to tightening the screws of the wheel lining after picking up the car, 80% of the screws here are loose, need to be tightened by hand, otherwise there is a risk of loss. However, the above revelations may only be individual cases.
"Nissan's batteries need to be immersed in seawater for 14 days, requiring that the batteries must not rust and seawater cannot enter. Even the tires on our cars have to do more than thirty test projects. I feel that the market is now in a fast-paced state, and consumers are also affected. A Dongfeng Nissan related person told "Financial Story Club".
The besiegers followed frantically
In recent years, many independent brands have devoted themselves to the research of plug-in hybrid models. Because plug-in hybrid vehicles have the advantages of fuel saving, fuel and electricity, and eliminating battery life anxiety, they are ideal excessive products in the process of new energy. Among them, BYD launched models one step ahead and reduced prices, resulting in a sudden increase in sales.
In fact, in hybrid technology, Great Wall, Geely,
Chery
are catching up head-on, and the gap with BYD is not too big.
Great Wall's Hi-4, Geely and Chery's DHT, and BYD's DM-i are all oily and electrically connected series-parallel structures that realize low-speed electric drive and high-speed engine intervention.
However, due to the use of multi-speed gearboxes by three car companies outside BYD, it has better performance and fuel economy at high speed than BYD that uses single-gear.
"Although BYD is at the head of the field of hybrid vehicles, it is not a few streets behind the opponent, and everyone has continued to track hybrid technology over the years, even if its sales were not high at that time, but the research in this field has not stopped." Now everyone's technology has basically caught up, the technical route taken is unified, and the product performance tends to be similar. The aforementioned BAIC Research Institute insider asserted.
Just recently, Great Wall and Geely respectively launched plug-in hybrid models Thunder Dragon MAX and Galaxy L7, benchmarking against BYD's popular SUV - Song PLUS.
In order to be able to open the market, Great Wall to the Thunder Dragon MAX, Geely to the Galaxy L7, also gave a sincere price-performance ratio.
The Thunder MAX starts at 159,800, but all models are equipped with four-wheel drive as standard; the Galaxy L7 starts at 138,700 and is equipped with a 1.5T engine. In comparison, the BYD Song starts at 154,800, the four-wheel drive version costs 207,800, and the engine is only 1.5L.
The opponent's counterattack is no less than BYD's aggressive price reduction to seize the market.
Taking the Haval Thunder Dragon MAX as an example, "Financial Story Club" learned that in order to boost the sales of the car, Great Wall gave a discount of 6,000 yuan to this new car on the basis of preferential pricing.
In addition, Haval terminal salespeople can get more than 1,000 yuan for every Thunder MAX sold, which is much higher than the commission of 500 yuan for selling pure fuel bicycles.
During this offline visit, the sales staff of BYD's 4S store revealed to "Financial Story Club" that in order to defeat BYD Song, the Haval Thunder Dragon series is still in the stage of losing money and making money, and it is not profitable.
Regarding whether this statement is true, some Great Wall people did not clearly express their position, but only claimed that Great Wall Motor achieved a competitive pricing strategy with sales scale.
According to BYD's official data, Song's sales reached 16,000 units in June this year, which is not at this year's high, while the model sold 27,000 units in April this year.
Song's sales are not as good as in the past, but the benchmark model is growing rapidly. On July 1 and July 3, Great Wall and Geely respectively posted the results of their new push-and-plug hybrid SUVs. The Haval Thunder Dragon series rolled off the production line for the first 10,000 units on the 45th day of its launch, and sold 6,098 units in June. The Geely Galaxy L7 rolled off the production line for the 10,000th car within 33 days of its launch.
Although the current results of the Great Wall and Geely models are not enough to challenge BYD Song. However, compared with their own old models in the past, Great Wall and Geely have made significant progress in the market performance in the field of plug-in hybrids.
Take Haval's plug-in hybrid model - H6 New Energy, which was put on sale in October last year, according to data provided by automotive consulting company SO CAR, the highest monthly sales of this model so far are only 1,097 units. It was released in June last year
Geely Emgrand L Hi· P
The highest monthly sales are only 2437 vehicles, and now, the gap between the new models of the two brands and the sales of BYD Song is narrowing.
A car owner who plans to buy a plug-in hybrid model, compared repeatedly, has not yet placed an order for BYD Song. He told the "Financial Story Club": "Before there were hundreds of thousands of plug-in hybrid models to choose from, but now there are more choices, I want to take another look." ”
In the past hybrid market, only BYD could provide models with attractive product power and price, and sales were overwhelming.
Today, more and more independent brands have entered this market. The latecomers came prepared, and in terms of product design, they tried to improve and optimize the shortcomings of BYD's model configuration; In the propaganda front, actively create momentum and try to follow BYD's low-cost strategy.
Although BYD's sales are still overwhelming, the momentum of the besiegers cannot be taken lightly - the iron throne, the flowing brand, it is not easy to win.