BYD and Changan Liangjian BBA, which are not low-key, have greater destructive power than Huawei or Ideal?

The difference between Chinese and foreigners' understanding of automobiles is not much weaker than the bipartisan battle in the US election.

BBA will be dropped at least once every 1 month. In the various press conferences of various companies, the ideal said that the best SUV within 5 million yuan, Yu Chengdong redefined the luxury SUV within 10 million yuan, and the time entered January 2024, the words of the car company bosses have become more advanced and the things they do are more direct. For example, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, said, "We have entered the era of electric vehicles, but many partners are not interested in the experience of new energy vehicles, and only know that Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW are backward things, so you think about how backward these people are." ”

Just the day before this press conference, Wang Chuanfu also showed BYD's technical foundation in the dream day, although he did not talk about which is better or worse, but the number written on every PPT is more than the existence of BBA.

And the day after Chang'an's press conference, when the CEO of BMW Greater China was asked how to understand the refrigerator color TV sofa, the Germans' thinking about building a good car is naturally not this dimension.

In the field of industry and technology, there is always a technological battle, although no one can explain to consumers with scientific theories and logic who will be the winners in the future. There is no doubt that Chinese car companies have not only shown their desires for the long-coveted luxury car market, but also showed their edges.

In the next 2024, there will be a battle.

Everything, there is more than a battle

This battle is not only the rapid rise of shallow Chinese brand new energy vehicles, such as Weilai and Ideal have gained a foothold in the market of more than 300,000 yuan. Combined with the latest speeches, a series of personnel adjustments and technical route announcements of Changan and BYD, in 2024, the heavy troops of the two companies have completed the layout in the market of 300,000 yuan or even higher.

On December 12, Zhu Huarong, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Changan Automobile, was appointed as the new chairman of AVATR Technology, and the chairman of the group personally handled the operation of the sub-brand, which is rare in the industry. Obviously, the importance of AVATR has also reached a new high in Chang'an.

In fact, at the launch conference of AVATR 12, Zhu Huarong had a golden sentence "As long as AVATR needs it, Chang'an will support it, ask for money for money, ask for people to give people, and ask for technology for technology." ”

Take charge in person, personally explode all kinds of golden sentences, and then look at AVATAR's price positioning and 2024 new car plan, pointing at BBA has become an indisputable goal.

AVATR 11, with a guide price of 290,800-600,000 yuan, covers the market from Audi Q5L to BMW X3 to Mercedes-Benz GLC, and even the larger Audi Q7, while AVATR 12, with a guide price of 300,800-400,800 yuan, covers BBA's 56E market, and the price is even more advantageous.

According to Huawei's "Industry In-Depth Report" given by relevant institutions, the size of AVATR 15/AVATR 16 will be smaller than the current 11/12 models, and the price performance is directly predicted by the agency to reach the range of about 200,000 yuan. This is equivalent to that in the 532 market, which has already been seen in 2024, AVATR will also have to be involved. Moreover, if you take Huawei's whole family bucket to get involved, the situation is likely to be a dimensionality reduction blow.

And, the previous official announcement also included AVATAR's extended-range model.

AVATAR's logic is very clear, BYD's thinking is also visible to the naked eye, and BYD is gaining momentum, and Wang Chuanfu's appetite is obviously greater.

There are several explosive information in Dream Day, and the key words are as follows:

1. Looking up to the U9 is about to be released, with the foundation and popularity of looking up to the U8 before more than 1 million, the traditional supercar is not necessarily challenged by the opportunity;2. Whether it is Xuanji architecture or Yi Sifang technology, these will also be the first to be used in the upper model, which is naturally expensive;3. Now in the market, the new rigid function - urban NOA, Wang Chuanfu's arrangement is 200,000 yuan level option, 300,000 yuan standard configuration.

Everything new and good is laid out to the superstructure. After all, BYD has initially won the right to define the ordinary civilian market, and what it wants to do now is to compete with Tesla and new forces in the market of more than 200,000 yuan.

If you look at the pattern of the entire automobile market, in fact, it is not only BYD and Changan that are staring at BBA, there are many participants, such as the ideal of selling 800,000 units in 2024, the recently hit Audi is very uncomfortable with the extreme krypton, more than 15 models of 532 sedans, and Huawei, which has recently muddied the SUV market of more than 400,000 yuan by relying on AITO Wenjie M9.

A win for suppliers? or a win for OEMs?

Victory, car companies want to win, but the victory is too many types, there are sales wins, but may not be able to win a win-win in profits, such as Toyota, which does not vigorously engage in electric vehicles, handed over a high profit that no one expected, and even attracted Audi at the same frequency, postponed its plan for the next generation of pure electric vehicles, and went back to tap the potential of fuel engines and PHEVs again.

BBA or Chinese auto brand wins, if you use the perspective of financial reports and stock markets, there is no answer. Among China's new forces, only the ideal and the two independent seedlings have completed the profit turnaround, and the ideal has a revenue of 34.68 billion yuan and an operating profit of 2.34 billion yuan in the latest third-quarter financial report, accounting for less than 10%. Leap's gross profit margin finally turned positive in the third quarter, at 1.2%. Weilai continues to be in the red, Xiaopeng's single-quarter financial report even has a negative gross profit margin of a single car, even if it is in the limelight, and its in-depth cooperation with Cialis is still losing money, by 2025 Yu Chengdong will face Huawei's internal profit assessment of the car BU, of course, it is not the only option.

Since 2020, we have interviewed foreign executives of multinational automakers many times, and they affirmed the growth rate of China's new energy vehicles and their own lack of transformation speed, but when talking about what has made Chinese automakers achieve their current results, the growth rate of local suppliers is even greater than that of Chinese automakers.

The largest component of the cost of new energy vehicles - power batteries, the global conclusion has always been that the world looks at East Asia, and East Asia looks at China. Japan has Panasonic, South Korea has LG Chem, and China's giants include CATL, BYD Fodi, Great Wall Hive, China Innovation Airlines, Funeng and so on.

So purely from the perspective of cost, European and American car companies without core battery suppliers in China have a higher procurement cost than Chinese local car companies, and in terms of power battery procurement, European car companies have been deeply tied to Chinese batteries. According to SNE Research statistics, the global installed capacity of power batteries will reach 304GWh in the first half of 2023, with CATL contributing a cumulative installed capacity of 112GWh to power batteries, and BYD, which ranks second, has a cumulative installed capacity of about 47.7GWh. The combined installed capacity of the two power batteries is close to 160GWh, accounting for nearly half of the global share. According to Fitch's statistics, according to the current plan, European automakers will only have control of key components such as batteries around 2030, which before could only rely on Chinese/South Korean companies.

The innate advantages of power batteries make it very difficult for overseas car companies to explore the cost, so they have similar actions, that is, on the one hand, they sign large orders with Chinese battery factories to dilute the purchase unit price, and on the other hand, they are shareholders or strategic cooperation battery factories. Volkswagen directly controls Gotion Hi-Tech, and the global battery hegemon CATL was the first to be promoted into the automotive industry by BMW, and later was invested by BMW Brilliance, and Mercedes-Benz has invested in Funeng Technology. The above behaviors are all recognition by European and American car companies of the strength of China's supply chain and their way of competing.

However, in addition to power batteries, although the current sales of Chinese brands far exceed those of foreign-funded models, in the dimension of motor/electronic control, in fact, China's automotive industry faces only a few practical cases in the world. In the 2022 Ward Top Ten Engine and Power System, the winner of the PHEV in the 2.0T off-road dimension is Jeep, the large-displacement hybrid is Toyota's 3.5T V6 hybrid, and the five winners of the electric drive system are Ford, Hummer, Mercedes-Benz, Lucid, and Hyundai. The 2023 Ward Top Ten is also about to unveil the answer, and BYD Tang was nominated and entered the second round of evaluation, which is a preliminary progress.

So in short, the key factor for multinational car companies to panic about China's new energy vehicles is very simple, that is, low prices. Therefore, we can see the anti-subsidy investigation in front of us, and we can see the continuous decline of foreign-funded car companies. Considering that around 2025, BMW and Mercedes-Benz's new generation of pure electric architecture and models will be launched one after another, and it will be the moment when the advantages and disadvantages of technology will be known.

The advantages of the growth of Chinese suppliers also lie in 800V, semiconductors, refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas. But there is also a big difference in the difficulty of the technical threshold before and after,The integration and polishing difficulty of the refrigerator color TV sofa is not high,The slightly difficult thing is that the voice can control it,The seat can be further folded or even rotated,Although this is indeed a new demand of Chinese users,But there are few difficulties in technical implementation。

Behind 800V, there is essentially a battle for analog chips. 800V is a generalized concept, more than 500V can be called 800V, at present, the highest control in this field in China is self-developed and self-produced BYD, most of the key components of car companies rely on procurement, and the upper technology is mainly based on overseas suppliers. In addition to the Huawei system, Qualcomm almost occupies the largest profit share of the intelligent cockpit, and Nvidia occupies the largest share of the intelligent driving level.

There is a technical threshold, and it is the supplier sector of core components, and the fastest growing is actually lidar. Including Suteng Juchuang, Hesai Technology, Huawei, DJI, etc., have been involved in this field, but under the current popularity of pure vision + no picture solution, from the perspective of stock price fluctuations, the enthusiasm of capital for it is actually fading, and lidar has not ushered in the expected explosion.

It can be said that the advantages of China's automotive industry in the field of new energy are all due to the first-mover advantage, but only using urban NOA, NOA, and intelligent cockpit to explain that the support is not sufficient. After dismantling the relevant technology, the advantage of Chinese cars within 200,000 yuan is that the cost can be lower than that of foreign capital under the same configuration, and more than 200,000 yuan has an advantage, but it is also facing a counterattack. With Volkswagen's stake in Xpeng to win the platform, Volkswagen Group's purchase of Leap's technology platform, and Audi and SAIC's in-depth cooperation in electric platforms, it remains to be seen whether the advantages of Chinese automakers can continue to maintain their current magnitude.

The end of the giant, the destructive power is greater than that of Huawei or ideal?

So in essence, the main reason for the current market status quo is that under the same price, domestic cars can give far more functions than multinational car companies, and under the same configuration, the price of domestic cars is much lower than that of multinational car companies. The main reason behind this is the rapid growth of power batteries and large-screen, intelligent, and intelligent driving-related suppliers.

From the perspective of 2024-2025 alone, BYD and Changan have a significantly high winning rate against BBA. The reason is that under the first-mover advantage, the configuration of domestic cars is not available for luxury cars now. In 2024, first of all, it will be the year of a large number of applications of urban NOA, and Huawei's full-blooded ADS2.0 has been verified in many models, which can well assist human drivers in commuting scenarios such as commuting. However, the rear-end collision bus of AITO M9 and the reversing of AITO M5 do not brake, etc., still show that such functions need to be optimized and strengthened. In addition, BYD's urban NOA technology, which was released at the Dream Day, performed well in the use of high-precision maps, but it also required more human intervention when encountering corner cases such as illegal parking vehicles.

Geely, Great Wall, Chery, etc. have also successively released relevant NOA landing plans, while multinational car companies have not yet moved. This will bring a comfort period of about 2 years to Chinese cars. However, considering that Mercedes-Benz and BMW have respectively won the L3 China test license, and they have been/will be commercialized on a small scale overseas, the actual difference in technology is not as huge as the public recognizes.

However, it is precisely because of the current fate of BYD and Changan that all this has a chance to change. Because on the one hand, it is a joint venture established by Changan and Huawei Car BU not long ago, and Huawei promises not to enter the field of vehicles, and on the other hand, it is the core information of BYD's dream day this time, which is highly self-developed and self-produced, and has a higher ability to resist changes in international relations.

Then, when these two giants with an annual production capacity of 2 million to 3 million units come down, the overall cost reduction and skill increase are obviously stronger than those of Ideal and Huawei. However, the next question is when Chinese car companies come up with recognized world-class platforms, electric motors, and electric drives, then it is possible to really say that "Chinese cars are on the edges".