Completely counterintuitive, new energy vehicles are exploding, but Toyota's sales and performance have reached a new high!

This is the 824th original article on the front of new energy

Recently, I saw someone embarrassingly brag about Toyota with a news that has been going on for months, and it really made me laugh.

 01 

Toyota's performance reached a new high

According to the "2023 Global Auto Company Sales Report for the First Half of 2023" released by Marklines, a global automotive industry platform, in the first half of 2023, Toyota Group's global sales will be 5.41 million units, the second Volkswagen Group will be 4.37 million units, and the tenth place BYD will be 1.25 million units.

Toyota Motor announced its financial results for the first half of fiscal 2024 (April-September 2023), with revenue of 219816 billion yen, up 24.1% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to the company for the period of 2,589.4 billion yen, up 121.1% year-on-year. Toyota also raised its profit forecast for the entire 2024 fiscal year to 4.5 trillion yen due to its good performance in the first half of the fiscal year.

As a result, some automotive media boasted that Wei Xiaoli was still losing money and Toyota was still making money with a sledgehammer, saying that it was doing a good job between accelerating electrification and intelligent transformation and maintaining high profits.

Let's not mention that this data was a few months ago, I don't know why I suddenly used such data to brag about it. Besides, although Weilai and Xiaopeng are still losing money, they have made money and have achieved profitability for 4 consecutive quarters, and the revenue in the first three quarters exceeded 80 billion, and the annual revenue of more than 100 billion this year is almost a sure thing, and the key people are still developing at a high speed.

Let's not forget, this is a company that has only been established for 8 years, and only launched the Ideal ONE model in 2018, how terrifying this growth rate is.

They won't mention at all that in this Marklines report, BYD Group jumped to the tenth place in global sales with 1.25 million units in half a year, which is the first time in history that a Chinese car brand has entered the top ten in global sales, and it has only been two years since BYD completed this sales miracle.

Let's talk about Toyota's sales and financial reports this year.

Although they are all objective facts, not even Toyota, many other fuel car giants have had a good time this year, and even like Suzuki, which is almost invisible in the Chinese market, people are still alive and well in the global market, similar to Korean cars, which are not far from losing the Chinese market, but their sales in the global market are also good. Why?

 02 

Why did the oil truck giant achieve a record high performance?

Because they're oil trucks! Yes, because they're oil trucks!

The answer may seem like a paradox, but it's the truth. Fuel vehicles have a history of hundreds of years, the industrial production of assembly lines of automobiles also has a history of hundreds of years, is an extremely mature industry, although the giants in the industry are still doing R & D investment, but relative to their revenue and profits, it is negligible, for them the biggest impact is the market.

In the past two or three years, with the rise of new energy vehicles, the fuel vehicle giants who have felt the existential crisis still want to save it, and they are actively transforming, Volkswagen was once the most radical, but after trying for a while, the pace has slowed down. There are also those who lie flat and just want to concentrate on selling fuel vehicles. Of course, there are also balancers, trying to explore a balanced path between fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles, the most typical is Toyota.

However, without exception, they are actively or passively pulling up sales, after all, no one knows how long such a good day of making money will last, and how much can be earned now, especially in the most powerful Chinese market, which is crazy about price reduction, and many of the myths of price increases have been broken.

Having said that, it can also be seen from Toyota's financial report that these fuel giants were so profitable before, and they were still profitable after price reductions and promotions.

But according to their current performance, they are embarrassed to brag, thinking that the new energy wave has no impact on them, that will cause a big incident, more than ten years ago, Nokia has done a very vivid demonstration.

In 2007, Steve Jobs released the first generation of iPhone, and the mobile phone has since entered the era of intelligence, which has attracted some attention at that time, but at that time it was when Nokia was in full swing, and they did not take Apple to heart at all, and even many executives ridiculed, "What is the future of a mobile phone that doesn't even have a keyboard?"

Then in 2010, the iPhone 4 came out, everything changed, and Nokia's peak was left in 2010, and since then it has been greeted by a downhill road, until it is completely unworthy of mention in the field of consumer electronics, and it is even about to become history.

The impact of new energy vehicles on fuel vehicles is similar to Apple's impact on Nokia before the iPhone 4 came out.

When will the iPhone 4 moment for new energy vehicles arrive?

 03 

Wait for the iPhone 4 moment for new energy vehicles

It is likely to be the time when unmanned driving technology is commercialized on a large scale, at that time, with the progress of battery technology, the range of 1000 kilometers is almost standard, and the discount rate in winter is relatively low.

However, fuel vehicles do not need to be too pessimistic, compared with mobile phones such as consumer electronics, new energy vehicles for infrastructure requirements are higher, if there are not enough charging piles laid, it is difficult to improve the penetration rate, especially pure electric models, plus unmanned driving technology to be mature enough to take a few years.

But there won't be much time left for them, and the iPhone 4 moment for new energy vehicles should be around 2025 to 2026 at the earliest, and 2030 at the latest.

Whoever gets the first to complete the transition in the next few years will have a chance to stay at the table, or Nokia will be their fate.

Is Toyota's conservative, or to put it nicely, a prudent balancing strategy?

Not necessarily, objectively speaking, in the face of such a great wave of history, it is very difficult for these hegemons of the old era. If you don't transform, you will definitely die, and if you don't transform, you will probably die. On the contrary, it may be the most appropriate to conservatively transform and try to find a strategic balance between new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles.

It's a pity that the sky has changed, and time is not on their side.

New energy vehicles are a new track, the pioneers in the track have gone too far, fuel vehicle giants in the new energy vehicle track is just a catch-up, and the chaser must run faster than the leader to be expected to catch up, their conservative and steady strategy, doomed to be impossible to catch up.

As the wave of new energy vehicles gradually spreads around the world, their lives will only become more and more difficult.

It is said that "the twilight of the beauty and the end of the hero are the most helpless sorrows in the world." This sorrow is the most sympathetic and the most deplorable. ”

But for new energy vehicles, for the twilight of the overlords of fuel vehicles, we are obviously happy to see it, which means that the era of China's automobile industry has finally come!

Statement: The article only records the author's thoughts, does not constitute investment advice, investment has huge risks, need to be cautious and cautious, I hope you treat your investment like decorating a house, don't let the time to pick a company is not as much as the time you pick furniture, you can repeatedly weigh small money, how to treat big money is so sloppy?