Accord and Camry are cutting prices, but pure electric cars are sold for more than 200,000 yuan, and B-class cars are rolled up

On January 5th, Geely Galaxy E8 held a press conference in Hangzhou, photographed by the author

Author | Yue Jiachen

Edit | Chen Fuye

Produced by | Prism Tencent Xiaoman Studio

Domestic new energy vehicles are suffering from the pressure of involution. At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, with the release of several new cars, major car companies competed in the field of B-class pure electric cars.

In recent years, continuing the hot sales of SUVs in the era of fuel vehicles, some new energy vehicle companies have also focused on SUVs, which makes the competition of pure electric cars slightly insufficient, especially the pure electric cars in the range of 200,000 yuan, in addition to Tesla Model 3, BYD Han EV, Xiaopeng P7, etc., there are not many mainstream models that really go volume.

"This year, the involution of car companies may be concentrated in the sedan market. A person from a domestic car company told the author.

Coincidentally, in the pure electric car with a price of about 200,000 yuan, following the dominance of the BYD Han family, a number of new products with the prefix "7" began to chase me. Among them, it includes not only Huawei Zhijie S7 and Xiaomi Auto's first model SU7, but also new products such as ZEEKR 007 and the new Feifan R7.

The latest to join the "battlefield" is the Geely Galaxy. On January 5, the Galaxy E8 held a press conference in Hangzhou, which is also the first pure electric sedan in the Geely Galaxy series.

The length of the car is about 5 meters, the wheelbase is 3 meters, the price is about 200,000 yuan, and the range starts at 600 kilometers...... These industry upstarts are desperately "heaping configurations" and trying to compete in terms of cost performance.

"Full of gunpowder", satirizing BYD, Xiaopeng and Xiaomi

At the Galaxy E8 press conference on January 5, Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue frequently released "golden sentences" full of gunpowder.

"Screen" is still the focus of the involution of major car companies. At the press conference, Geely released the screens of competing models, such as BYD Han EV, Xpeng P7 and Ideal L7, etc., through comparison, they showed the advantages of the Galaxy E8 large screen. Gan Jiayue said meaningfully: "Geely Galaxy E8 is not an Internet celebrity car, it should be a word-of-mouth car and conscience car in the hearts of the people." ”

The smell of gunpowder is not only the comparison of models, but also the remarks of car company executives.

At the press conference, Gan Jiayue bluntly said: "It will not succeed in building a car without common sense, and it is unsustainable to build a car without long-termism." This is believed to be an allusion to He Xiaopeng and BYD. He Xiaopeng said in a media interview a few days ago that he basically only thinks about the next six months.

Regarding "losing the common sense of car making", Gan Jiayue criticized by name: "The show-off skills that can dance and turn in circles will not really bring users a sense of high-value gain." And "dancing" and "turning in circles" are the "black technology" of BYD's pure electric supercar looking up to U9.

In addition, for the drag coefficient of Xiaomi SU7, Ganjiayue also commented. In his opinion, the Xiaomi SU7 was tested at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour, a high speed that has little practical usability.

In terms of turning radius, the Galaxy E8 showed a video of a BYD Han EV crashing into an obstacle due to a large turning radius, while the Galaxy E8 successfully dodged the obstacle, and Geely used it to show its handling performance.

In addition to the press conference, Geely executives also frequently called out to friends. On December 28 last year, after Lei Jun's three-hour speech, a number of Geely executives spoke out one after another, questioning Lei Jun's concept of "ecological car building".

At that time, copywriting that paid tribute to friends such as "Xiaomi Auto pays tribute to Xiaopeng Motors" and "Xiaomi Auto pays tribute to Li Auto" was also ridiculed by Geely executives. Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of Geely Holding Group, posted on Weibo: "If people always want to be tributed, it will be over, but if people always want to pay tribute to others, it will be useless." ”

The domestic pure electric sedan accelerates the involution, but the ceiling is still the Model 3

Behind the "full smell of gunpowder" is the intensification of competition in the pure electric car market.

Geely, on January 8, Geely's Zeekr delivered the 200,000th car, this car is Zeekrypton 007, which is positioned as a pure electric luxury car, with a starting price of 209,900 yuan. ZEEKR will deliver a total of 118,600 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 65%.

Today, the 175,800 yuan Geely Galaxy E8 is on the market, not only competing with Tesla Model 3, Zhijie S7, Xiaomi SU7 and other models for the market, but also competing head-on with its own Krypton 007, and the top price of the Galaxy E8 is only less than 20,000 yuan more expensive than the minimum configuration of Krypton 007.

In 2023, Geely's annual sales will reach 1,686,500 units, a year-on-year increase of 18%. At the new car press conference, Ganjiayue said that the sales volume of Geely Galaxy in the seven months on the market has exceeded 100,000, and the average price of a single car has exceeded 160,000. At the same time, Geely also announced its sales target for 2024: 1.9 million units.

However, Geely still has room for improvement in the field of new energy. In 2023, Geely's competitor BYD sold a total of 3,024,400 new energy vehicles, and won the double crown in domestic and global new energy vehicle sales.

However, Geely's cumulative sales of new energy vehicles in 2023 will only be 487,500 units, although it will achieve a year-on-year increase of 48%, but there is still a big gap compared with BYD.

For Geely, the Galaxy series will take on the responsibility of Geely's new energy vehicle growth in 2024.

However, the Galaxy E8 has plunged headlong into the highly competitive B-segment electric vehicle market. In addition to the Extreme Krypton 007 and Geely Galaxy E8, in this wave of B-class pure electric car boom at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the prices have been announced as well as Zhijie S7 and Star Era ES. Among them, the price of the Zhijie S7 2024 Max is 289,800 yuan.

The Dongfeng eπ07, which is about to be launched, as well as the Kaizen AO7 and Roewe D7, which have already been listed, are all looking forward to taking a share of the B-segment car market.

However, although the independent new energy "fancy involution" on the B-class sedan, bringing the performance of the vehicle to a new height, back to the market performance, the Model 3 is still the best-selling B-class pure electric car. According to the data of the Passenger Car Association, in 2023, the sales of the Model 3 in China will be 300,800 units.

Many lists such as Autohome and Chedi show that the five traditional fuel vehicles, including Toyota Camry, Volkswagen Passat, Volkswagen Magotan , Honda Accord and Mercedes-Benz C-class, firmly grasp the top five sales of the B-class sedan market in 2023.

In the Autohome list, the 6th to 10th places in the B-class sedan market are Tesla Model 3, Hongqi H5, Audi A4L, BYD Seal, and Nissan Teana. Only the BYD Seal is among the top 10 domestic new energy cars.

Volkswagen and Toyota will not give up the market

The "new energy war" of car companies has spread from SUVs to sedans, and one of the major opponents they face is the fuel cars of joint venture brands.

At present, B-class sedans are still the world of fuel vehicles, and traditional joint ventures and luxury brands still dominate fuel vehicles, with joint ventures and foreign brands accounting for up to 90% of the sales in this segment.

According to the data of the China Passenger Car Association, as of the end of November 2023, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in mainland China has reached 36%. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in the B-segment sedan market is only 22.87%, which is much lower than that of other segments.

Fan Junyi, general manager of Geely Automobile Sales Company, said in a media group interview at the 2023 Guangzhou Auto Show that the "532" market may be the most volatile in 2024. The 532 market is a market with a 5-meter car length, a 3-meter wheelbase and a price of 200,000 yuan.

The reason may be that there is still a large "blank area" in the pure electric car market, and consumers do not have much choice in this field except for the Tesla Model 3.

Because of this, for the new energy vehicle market, which has been extremely involuted, the pure electric car market has become an attractive cake.

Recently, among the new cars that car companies have been lining up to release, high-popularity models are also targeting this market. According to known news, in the future, Xpeng 02, Xpeng F57, Lynk & Co 371, Star Era ES and other models will be unveiled.

However, the traditional forces of the "old era" fuel vehicles are also almost crazy to reduce prices to save themselves. In the past year, classic B-class cars such as Camry, Passat, Teana, and Accord have pushed the price of the main sales model to the level of 15-200,000 yuan. In contrast, the mainstream B-class pure electric car is still above 200,000 yuan.

In this context, Volkswagen and Toyota will also not give up this pure electric car market. Starting from the second half of 2023, the joint venture brand will also bring a blockbuster pure electric sedan.

At the end of 2023, the first version of FAW-Volkswagen's pure electric B-class car ID.7 VIZZION has begun pre-sale, with a price of 227,700-262,700 yuan, and a total of 3 models will be launched, which is also the first time that the Volkswagen ID. series has entered the B-class car market.