The wedding car market is gradually abandoning BBA: the new car-making force has become the new favorite The unit price of Wuling wedding car rental is close to that of luxury cars
Tencent Auto & High-quality Creators specially planned the year-end "2023 Auto Market Tide AB Side" series of "New Energy Vehicle Owners' Annual [All Living Beings]", which is jointly planned and output by [Everyone Auto], focusing on the entry of high-end new energy models from new car-making forces into the market in 2023 to compete for the BBA market, affecting the choice of Chinese people to buy cars and important occasions (such as wedding cars, head cars), and the traditional perception of BBA's luxury brand is gradually changing.
During the 2023 National Day holiday, Meng Yan went back to his hometown for the holiday, which is a small northern city, where young people get married during the 11th Golden Week, and on the streets of his hometown town, Meng Yan unexpectedly saw a team of special wedding cars driving over the Weihe Bridge, led by a dark red Tesla Model Y. In this small northwest city where it is difficult to see a new energy vehicle all day long, it is a new thing that a newlyweds actually use Tesla as a wedding car.
Text: Wang Xiaojuan, Wei Bing
Edited |
Operation: Potatoes
The wedding car is no longer the world of BBA
At 7 a.m., a convoy of wedding cars shuttled through the third-tier city. Unlike traditional wedding cars, this fleet is not composed of BBAs, but NIO. The first car is a white ET7, which means that the white head will grow old together, followed by the star-gray EC6, ES6, and finally a Polestar blue ES8 finale.
According to northern customs, the kissing link needs to be completed before noon, and there are a series of procedures to follow, such as "squeezing the door, finding wedding shoes, and recognizing relatives". Therefore, the time on the road is more urgent, and the driver in charge of the wedding car drove very fast, and when he stepped on the electric door, the camera car was left behind, "The camera car is a German luxury SUV".
After arriving at the bride's home community, the neighbors were curious to gather up, accustomed to seeing the BBA team, the new energy team made everyone feel fresh, until the end of the wedding, there were still people in the community owners to discuss, most of the comments were "novelty" and "cool".
It was the groom Chen Cheng who decided to use one of the new car-making forces as the wedding car.
Chen Cheng has lived in the northwest city of Yinchuan since he was a child, and most of the wedding cars he has seen since he was a child are Toyota Domineering, Range Rover, and BBA. Chen Cheng has two Mercedes-Benz at home, and there are many luxury cars such as Mercedes-Benz and Bentley among relatives and friends.
He wanted to highlight a sense of ceremony, Chen Cheng's own EC6 followed behind the head car ET7, and the license plate number was the anniversary with his wife, "This license plate number and this car are very special to us", witnessing the birth of a small family, Chen Cheng hopes that the wedding car can be special.
Wedding cars have a new trend. Like Chen Cheng, Weng Xinchen and his husband Peng Junlin chose their own Xpeng G6 as their wedding car, but the difference is that they didn't even form a team.
Weng Xinchen began to prepare for marriage in February last year, and picked up the car in August, before picking up the car, they always felt that it was good to engage in a normal luxury brand fleet, and after picking up the car, especially after the film, they felt that their car was "unique in the world". As a result, there are suddenly new options for wedding cars. "If you rent a luxury car like Maybach, just to support the scene, everyone knows that it is rented, and it doesn't mean much to you." If you use your own car, it will be different, "in the photos and videos that have survived, it will feel different in retrospect because it is your own car."
▲ The wedding car at Weng Xinchen's wedding. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
As soon as the mind is opened, there are more options.
In October last year, Yang Yi got married, and her wedding car was even more different — it was a bus. Yang Yi's work content is traffic planning, and where to set up the stop and starting station of each bus is one of Yang Yi's jobs. Therefore, for Yang Yi, buses have a special meaning.
From the beginning, Yang Yi did not consider the traditional wedding team, she has also participated in many weddings, as a bridesmaid a few times, she found that many brides and grooms sleep in the car or play with mobile phones, get off at the station, and the wedding car is just a means of transportation. Yang Yi especially dislikes the traditional send-off link: parents send their daughter to the car, and then lie on the window and cry, "It's too sensational, I don't like it." With the "bus wedding bus", sending relatives has also become joyful, "Mom and Dad and friends are on the bus, and when they encounter a red light for parking, everyone opens the window and greets the driver of the car next door and passers-by, and has a lot of fun."
Fun and interesting small cars have also been favored by newlyweds, and in some lower-tier cities, the cute and cute Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has also become the main force of wedding cars.
▲ Wuling Hongguang MINIEV Macaron Edition. Photo / Visual China
Jiang Yi, the owner of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV in Jiangsu, prepared to build such a wedding team. In 2021, Jiang Yi's friend got married, and the bride always "wanted to use Wuling Hongguang MINIEV to form a wedding team", so Jiang Yi recruited more than a dozen Wuling Hongguang MINIEV owners to serve newcomers in need, and now it has grown to more than 40 people.
The wedding team takes orders from the outside world, and the charge is 200 yuan per car, and 180 yuan for each car with more than 10 vehicles. Jiang Yi also inquired about the price of the local wedding car rental company, a BBA wedding car is about 280 yuan, don't look at the price of the car is worlds apart, but as a wedding car, Wuling Hongguang's offer is not much lower than BBA.
This generation of young people no longer blindly pursues "noodles" in the choice of wedding cars, and they care more about fun and personality. Two years ago, when Jiang Yi was just preparing to build a wedding team, "he could only receive three or five orders a year", and now "there is one order every two weeks", and every May, October and other wedding seasons, there are basically orders every week, "sometimes even two or three orders a day".
A history of the changes of wedding cars, half of the history of Chinese automobiles
Regarding the wedding car, the first memory of the Chinese began with the sedan chair. In the ten-mile red makeup exhibition hall of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, there is a treasure of the town hall - Wangong sedan chair. This Ningbo Zhujin wood carved sedan chair was born in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, by more than 10 craftsmen, spent ten years, more than 10,000 man-hours to build, belonged to the "wedding car rental company" Shanghai "Jucheng" sedan car line, it is said that the cost of renting a time is 200 oceans (equivalent to 20,000-40,000 yuan). The first bride to sit in this sedan chair was Yu Hanzhan, the daughter of Yu Qiaqing, the president of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, who was known as the "God of Living Wealth" at that time. Wangong sedan chair can probably be regarded as the first generation of "luxury wedding car".
However, for ordinary people, the top luxury "wedding car" is out of reach after all, across the ancient handmade artworks, with the gradual maturity of the modern industrial system, more and more ordinary newcomers have boarded their own wedding cars.
In the forties and fifties of the last century, the most common means of travel was the bicycle, which played a wedding car with a tractor for a period of time. This is also the time when China's automobile industry officially kicked off.
In 1978, the first wave of reform and opening up was stirring in Shanghai. In order to develop China's own automobile industry, SAIC Motor introduced a car assembly line from Volkswagen of Germany, and selected the first domestic model as the Santana. At that time, the production of cars was limited, and they had not yet flown into the homes of ordinary people, and newlyweds who were catching up with the trend chose to rent vans and buses to get married.
▲ Volkswagen Santana. Photo / Visual China
In 1991, the annual production of the domestically produced Santana reached 35,000 vehicles, and even if the production capacity increased a lot, it was still in short supply, and the rich had to rely on the relationship and go through the back door to buy it. At that time, being able to borrow a Santana as a wedding car was definitely a face-showing.
In addition to Santana, the most representative sedan of the time was the Audi 100. At the Beidaihe Conference held in 1987, the relevant departments established the overall pattern of "three major and three small" (the formation of three major car production plants of FAW, FAW and SAIC in the country and three small car production plants of Beijing Jeep, Tianjin Xiali and GAC Peugeot, commonly known as "three major and three small"), laying the foundation for automobiles to go to ordinary people's homes.
In September of the same year, Hahn, then chairman of Volkswagen, came to Changchun to negotiate with Geng Zhaojie, then director of FAW, and the two sides "agreed to sign a technology transfer agreement for the Audi 100 as soon as possible".
In the winter of 1993, a family in Haining, Zhejiang Province welcomed their daughter to get married, and used their own Audi 100 as a wedding car. At that time, especially in rural areas, cars were a rare species, and the wedding naturally attracted onlookers from the men, women and children of the village, and many years later, it is still the talk of the locals.
In 1994, China's first automobile industry policy was released, which clarified the direction of automobile development based on cars, proposed for the first time to encourage automobile consumption, allow private car purchases, and have clear requirements for the localization of joint venture models.
With the increase of joint venture car companies, the types of models on the market have gradually been enriched, and in addition to German cars, Japanese and American cars have also entered the field of vision of the Chinese people. According to the description of those who witnessed it, it was a colorful era in the history of Chinese automobiles.
Kirin's parents had their wedding in those days, and his father borrowed a Lexus from a friend as a wedding car. At that time, Japanese cars had not long entered the Chinese market, and luxury cars like Lexus were even rarer, so when a Lexus carried the newlyweds through the city of Hangzhou, the scenery was unparalleled for a while.
After entering the 2000s, China joined the WTO and entered the 20 years of economic surge. In the field of automobiles, Audi took the lead in seizing the official car market and already has a place in the luxury market, while Mercedes-Benz and BMW have also become new players in the luxury car market and have established joint ventures in China.
In the nearly two decades since then, BBA has established a solid foundation in the luxury car market and has been recognized by consumers, and the top three German companies have long "dominated" the wedding car market.
Pei Yi does a wedding car rental business in a third-tier city, according to him, for a long time in the past, BBA's position in the wedding car market has been standing, "the rich are on the high-end, and those with a small budget choose BBA's ordinary models", when it comes to wedding cars, young people's first reaction is always BBA.
▲ Audi wedding car wedding team. Photo / Visual China
In recent years, with the rise of domestic new energy vehicles, young people's concept of wedding cars has changed dramatically, compared with brand awareness, this generation of newlyweds care more about fun, and when choosing a wedding car, they are more inclined to leave unique memories for the wedding. For example, Pei Yi found that Gaohe Automobile has an electric rear wing and its cool shape has attracted the attention of many young people.
Young people who get married across the city simply regard the high-speed rail as a wedding car, and there are not a few short-distance newlyweds who choose bicycles, tricycles, and even buses as wedding cars. In Hangzhou, the route of bus No. 1314 passes through the West Lake South Line, which is very popular among newcomers.
▲ Bus wedding car. Photo / Visual China
New energy attacks traditional luxury cars
The change of dynasty in the wedding car market reflects the consumption change of China's automobile market.
The past 2023 is regarded as a year of comprehensive rise of independent brands, especially in the high-end field, and no small breakthroughs have been made.
In the past year, million-level new energy brands have been listed one after another, and the Yangwang U8, which began to be delivered at the end of the year, has thousands of users. NIO ES8, Wenjie M9, Li L9 and other models have also gained a firm foothold in the new energy luxury car market of 400,000-500,000 yuan.
On the other hand, traditional luxury cars are faced with a different scene. As of press time, Mercedes-Benz and Audi have not yet released their full-year sales in 2023, and judging from the data of the first three quarters of 2023, the growth momentum is far less than that of players in the new energy field.
For example, BMW sold more than 820,000 vehicles in China in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%, Mercedes-Benz delivered a total of 578,700 new vehicles in the Chinese market in the first three quarters, a year-on-year increase of 3%, and Audi delivered about 522,000 vehicles in the first three quarters, a year-on-year increase of about 5%, and the growth rate of BBA remained in single digits. In contrast, BYD continued to grow by 45% on the basis of the previous year's large base, the ideal directly doubled, a year-on-year increase of 137%, and Aion was not inferior, with a year-on-year increase of 53%.
▲ BMW i3. Photo / BMW's official Weibo
The slowdown in the growth of traditional fuel vehicle business and the unsatisfactory new energy sector are the difficulties faced by traditional luxury brands such as BBA.
In order to sell cars, an Audi 4S store is suspected of hanging a banner with the words "Audi also has new energy" to attract customers. However, the embarrassing thing is that, according to the data of the passenger association, Audi's new energy vehicles have always hovered at the level of about 3,000 monthly sales.
▲ Audi 4S store. Photo / Visual China
In the third quarter of 2023, Porsche's sales in China plummeted by 40%, and in the first three quarters combined, Porsche delivered a total of 60,700 new cars in China, down 12% year-on-year. A Porsche sales person said that the intended car owners in their hands either turned to look up, or chose new energy brands such as NIO, Ideal, and Wenjie.
New energy brands continue to rise, and the traditional luxury car market is being impacted. In its December 2023 passenger car market analysis, the Federation of Passenger Cars pointed out: "Although the shortage of luxury cars affected by the shortage of chips in 2022 has gradually improved, the demand for traditional luxury cars is not strong. ”
For luxury car veterans, sales are mainly contributed by traditional fuel vehicles, but the fuel vehicle market continues to shrink, and electrification transformation has become a proposition that must be faced.
According to official data, BMW's annual sales of pure electric models in 2023 will be 99,972 units, a year-on-year increase of 138%. In addition, BMW is also actively developing intelligence, and has taken the lead in obtaining a license for L3 autonomous driving pilots.
When it comes to the transition to electrification, Mercedes has its own pace. Ola Källenius, chairman of the board of directors of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, said at the 2022 earnings conference that Mercedes-Benz is unlikely to invest heavily in extreme policies until the high-end electric vehicle market matures.
Nowadays, car companies such as Wenjie, Ideal, and Weilai have driven the new energy luxury car market of about 500,000, and Mercedes-Benz has also reached the time to exert its strength.
According to official information, Mercedes-Benz has planned 60 billion euros for electrification transformation, and it is expected that in the next few years, part of the production line of its existing plant will be completely transformed into a pure electric vehicle production line. "We are reorganizing our manufacturing to adapt to the new requirements. Kang Linsong said.
As the former leader of BBA in China, Audi is in the most awkward position. The new energy sector has the smallest volume and the lowest sales, so it has to ask its old partner SAIC for help. In July 2023, SAIC Motor confirmed that it would jointly develop an electric vehicle platform with Audi, but nearly half a year has passed, and no new progress has been seen for the time being.
New players are still playing their cards. On December 26, 2023, the M9 will be launched, and the intelligent taillights can provide interactive services, such as the word "Xi" can be displayed in the taillights, saving the trouble of stickers.
Young people choose a wedding car, and there seems to be another option.
(At the request of the interviewee, except for Weng Xinchen and Peng Junlin, the names in the article are pseudonyms)
The article is original by each Auto, and infringement must be investigated.
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