The new forces of car-making are both ice and fire, and the number of brands that have fallen behind has increased

The new M7, which has only been on the market for more than 100 days, has accumulated more than 120,000 units, the blind order of the M9 has exceeded 15,000 units before its release, the monthly sales volume of Li Auto has exceeded 50,000 units, and the cumulative annual sales volume has exceeded 370,000 units......

In the past month's New Year's Eve stage, the joys and sorrows of the new power car manufacturers are not only incompatible, but they have simply gone to two extremes. Different from the above-mentioned companies, some new power car manufacturers that have also been smash hits have ushered in a lot of negative news at the beginning of the year, such as salary cuts, production stoppages, large-scale withdrawal of dealers, and suspension of delivery by suppliers.

In recent years, the new energy market has developed rapidly, and new EV brands have sprung up. With the promotion of new designs, new technologies and new service models, coupled with the emergence of endless marketing methods, new EV brands have ushered in an astonishing growth rate: NIO, Li Auto, Xpeng Motors, WM Motor and other brands have quickly crossed the 100,000 annual sales mark after the launch of new cars. However, the experience of the predecessors shows that even if the annual sales are million, it will only take three or five years to fall off the altar.

2023 is an extremely "exciting" year for new EV manufacturers, with some brands making great progress and some brands declining sharply. Under the intensification of involution in the industry, there has been obvious polarization among new car-making forces.

Image source: Xpeng Motors

Among them, the original vanguards Weilai and Ideal have basically regained their rhythm after a short period of twists and turns, and continue to lead the new forces of car manufacturing, but the impact from other brands is getting bigger and bigger; new players such as Wenjie and Xiaomi are menacing and ambitious; Weimar, Tianji, Evergrande Automobile, Baoneng Automobile and Singularity Automobile have been troubled and hovering on the edge of life and death.

Peers are not fatal, and the ice and fire of the new car-making forces are being staged.

The head effect is gradually revealed

The "soaring" of Li Auto has opened a huge gap with the new forces of car manufacturing.

In December 2023, Li Auto's monthly sales exceeded 50,000 units for the first time, and the cumulative sales volume in 2023 was 376,000 units, not only winning the 2023 sales championship of new car-making forces, but also surpassing the second place NIO by more than twice as much.

In fact, Li Auto has led the delivery list of new EV manufacturers for 12 consecutive months in 2023, and is the first and only company among new EV manufacturers to achieve profitability. It is worth mentioning that Li Auto's gross profit margin in the third quarter of 2023 is 22%, a new quarterly high, which is also higher than Tesla, which previously had the highest gross profit margin in the industry. According to the data, Tesla's gross profit margin has fallen below 18% in the same period.

Li Xiang, chairman and CEO of Li Auto, said that this is the first time in the history of China's new power car companies that it has crossed the 300,000 delivery mark, and the cumulative delivery volume of Li Auto has also exceeded the 600,000 mark. For 2024, Li Xiang said that Li Auto will challenge the goals of annual sales of 800,000 vehicles, monthly delivery of 100,000 vehicles, monthly delivery of 30,000 vehicles, and 2,000 overcharging stations. "In 2024, we aim to become the No. 1 luxury brand in the Chinese market in terms of sales. ”

NIO, the "big brother" in the new car-making forces, will be "busy" in 2023. In addition to launching new cars, NIO has also begun to build mobile phones, lay out battery swap stations, cooperate with other automakers, prepare sub-brands, and obtain independent car manufacturing qualifications.

When NIO bought two factories from JAC for 3.16 billion yuan, "JAC NIO" finally became "NIO Automobile". Li Bin said at the third-quarter earnings conference that if it produces all of its own, NIO's costs will drop by 10%.

In addition, another major event for NIO in 2023 is to reach cooperation with Changan, Geely, and the German Rheinland Group on the battery swap mode. The addition of giants has greatly shared the pressure on NIO, and to a certain extent, it also means that the battery swap model has been recognized by the industry and is expected to usher in an accelerated popularization period.

NIO will deliver 160,000 new vehicles in 2023, up 30.7% year-on-year, ranking second. Li Bin, chairman and CEO of NIO, once said frankly that there is only one expectation in 2024, and that is to "sell cars well". However, compared with other new car-making forces, NIO will usher in a product window period in 2024, and it is not easy to achieve "selling cars well" in the increasingly fierce competition environment of new energy vehicles.

Leapmotor, which ranks third in terms of sales, delivered a total of 18,600 units in December 2023, a year-on-year increase of 119% and a record high. In 2023, a total of 144,200 vehicles were delivered, a year-on-year increase of more than 29%. Although it is not much different from the fourth-place Xpeng Motors, Leapmotor has successfully entered the first echelon of new car-making forces.

Xpeng Motors followed with 20,115 deliveries in December 2023 and 141,600 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 17%. Nezha and Wenjie ranked fifth, respectively, with annual sales of 127,500 and 94,300 units in 2023.

In addition, new brands from traditional automakers have also performed well: Geely's Zeekr delivered nearly 120,000 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 65%, while Dongfeng's VOYAH has increased its sales by 1.6 times in 2023 on the basis of annual sales of less than 20,000 units, with a cumulative annual sales volume of more than 50,000 units.

The number of brands left behind has increased

Nezha is the brand with the biggest change in sales ranking in 2023, not only has fallen out of the first echelon, but is also the only brand that has declined in the top 10 sales rankings of new car-making forces.

In this regard, Daniel Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Nezha Automobile, said that in 2023, Nezha Automobile's new and old production will not be well connected and the rhythm will be chaotic; the new product launch price is too high, and although the adjustment is in place in the second half of the year, the opportunity is lost; the loss-making product line has greatly reduced production; the communication method is old, and the marketing headquarters is centralized and the management is weak. In the face of 2024, Nezha Automobile fired two heads of marketing companies and announced a series of personnel changes, hoping to reverse the decline after the re-"blood change".

And WM Motor, which once won the sales championship of new car-making forces, is obviously not so solid compared to Nezha Automobile's "foundation".

Since the second half of 2022, WM Motor has frequently reported negative news such as salary cuts, suspension of production, rent arrears in the headquarters building, and large-scale withdrawal of dealers, and the founder of WM Motor has also been rumored to be a mystery. In 2023, with the freezing of the equity of many of WM's companies, WM's survival will be even worse. According to public data, the total amount of execution of WM Motor has exceeded 100 million yuan, and the equity of its subsidiaries has been frozen to exceed 10 billion yuan.

On January 3, WM Motor announced on its official Weibo that the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court accepted WM Group's application for pre-reorganization on October 7, 2023. During the pre-reorganization period, WM Group has completed the audit and evaluation, creditor's rights declaration, asset verification and other work, and has contacted a number of potential investors to achieve preliminary results.

It is reported that after multiple evaluations, WM Group has the value of reorganization, and the reorganization has strong feasibility. However, in the increasingly competitive new energy market, it is obviously difficult for WM to compete with its current competitors on the same stage.

Recently, Tianji Automobile has also added 5 pieces of equity freezing information, with a total amount of more than 240 million yuan. As early as the beginning of December last year, Tianji Automobile has added four new equity freezing information, with a total amount of 838 million yuan and a freezing period of three years. Compared with other new car manufacturers, Tianji Motors does not have a strong presence, and its two models, ME7 and ME5, have few sales.

As one of the earliest new car-making brands in China, Aiways is now hovering on the line of life and death. Since March 2023, Aiways has been exposed to negative information such as a financial crisis, arrears of employees' wages, employees needing to pay social insurance, arrears of the headquarters office, and factory shutdowns.

Recently, Gaohe Automobile has also been rumored to be "suspended". On January 2, Gaohe Automobile issued a statement in response, saying that the company's operation is normal, and the work of R&D, production, marketing, delivery and other work is progressing normally.

After more than ten years of development, the competition in the new energy track has been quite sufficient, and the arrival of the industry reshuffle is much faster than that of the traditional fuel vehicle market. Under the imbalance of sluggish sales, continuous losses, and capital disconnection, more and more new car-making forces have begun to fall.

Competition in the industry has intensified

At the same time, the cutthroat competition in the new energy market is still intensifying.

After experiencing the fierce price war of car companies in 2023, the competition in 2024 may be more "bloody".

On the first day of the 2024 New Year, Tesla once again took the lead in firing the "first shot of price reduction". The price reduction is mainly achieved through the official limited-time benefits of "financial low interest" and "insurance subsidies" in the New Year. Taking the Model 3 rear-wheel drive version of the current car as an example, according to the official subsidy calculation, before the end of January this year, you can enjoy a time-limited insurance subsidy of 6,000 yuan, and can save more than 16,000 yuan of low-interest discounts, converted, the car purchase benefit directly exceeds 22,000 yuan.

In the past year, due to Tesla's price reduction at the beginning of the year, it has triggered multiple rounds of price reductions, sweeping the new energy vehicle and fuel vehicle markets, and basically throughout the year. This year is no exception. Nezha, whose sales have declined significantly, also quickly followed up, and all its models launched a 5,000 yuan Nezha New Year's exclusive red envelope gift; FAW Toyota launched a "full system direct subsidy" policy, and all models can enjoy a time-limited direct subsidy of up to 5,999 yuan for purchase tax, and a replacement subsidy of 7,000 yuan; Geely launched a cash subsidy of up to 14,000 yuan for the Emgrand L HiP Champion Edition; and the Lynk & Co 09 model directly announced a guide price reduction of 10,000 yuan.

It is undeniable that the price war is a sharp blade to open the market, but it is difficult to become a long-term effective means of competition. From the perspective of the whole year, the "price war" has driven a significant increase in sales in the domestic auto market, but it has also diluted the profits of car companies, and the third quarter reports of many listed auto companies in 2023 show the characteristics of "increasing revenue but not increasing profits".

This will undoubtedly exacerbate the decline of weak car companies and brands.

In this regard, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the All-China Federation of Passenger Passengers, believes that the price war is not a simple double-edged sword, but the inevitable result of industrial technological progress and market competition. Cui Dongshu believes that the price war will continue until 2024, and the competition in the market will become more intense.

Author: Zheng Yu