In the luxury car market in 2023, BMW won the championship, why didn't the domestic new energy move the BBA cake?
According to the latest data from the Passenger Association, in 2019~2023, the average price of domestic luxury cars has dropped from 340,400 yuan to 328,000 yuan. However, the price reduction has been exchanged for sales. According to the data, the wholesale sales volume of the domestic luxury car market in 2023 will be 3.39 million units, a year-on-year increase of 9.7%.
Judging from the luxury car brands that have announced their sales in 2023, except for Cadillac and Lexus, which have slightly decreased year-on-year, the sales of the rest of the luxury car brands have all grown positively. The BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) qualifying race is still one of the biggest attractions in the domestic luxury car market every year.
In 2023, the BMW Group (BMW and MINI Cars) won the championship with sales of 824,900 units, followed by Mercedes-Benz with 765,000 new car deliveries and the Audi brand, which ranked third, with more than 729,000 deliveries in China. In terms of growth rate, the Audi brand has the strongest momentum, with full-year sales in 2023 increasing by 13.5% year-on-year, BMW Group increasing by 4.2% year-on-year, and Mercedes-Benz increasing by 1.77%.
Judging from the first two weeks of 2024, BBA still occupies the top three in the sales of luxury brands, not to mention the sales of BBA, even the actual sales of second-tier luxury such as Volvo, Cadillac, and Lexus in 2023 have not fallen or have fallen very slightly.
This data makes many people wonder, why can't the domestic new energy products move the cake of BBAs?
In the author's opinion, there are probably several reasons behind this.
The first is that the main battlefield where the BBA is located has not yet achieved sufficient competition
The main battlefield of new energy and fuel vehicles is still in the price range of 20-300,000 yuan, judging from the data, the penetration rate of this price range is 44.9%, and the price range below 50,000 yuan has been almost completely occupied, with a penetration rate of 80.9%.
For 30-400,000, the penetration rate is 36.3%, and 400,000 and above, the penetration rate is only 29.5%. Therefore, from the perspective of the mainstream price range of the main battlefield competition between new energy and oil vehicles, the impact on BBA is not too great.
Secondly, among luxury car brands such as BBA, their new energy is also rising. First of all, we see that BMW is pure electric, and the reason why BMW won the championship also depends on the growth of new energy, i3 and iX3 sold a total of 9.3W units!
The ideal domestic sales performance is actually in the same position as BBA, but there is no comparison, because the ideal is actually a dislocation war. Because the types of cars sold are different, the ideal is only to sell large cars above 30W, and the ideal models of various levels are not at the same price level as BBA and KL models of the same level, and the pricing of cars of the same level, Mercedes-Benz and BMW is far beyond the ideal. The Ideal L7 is benchmarked against the BMW X5, and there is still a price difference. The ideal pricing is closer to Volkswagen and Buick, but it is not yet a luxury brand.
Why BMW New Energy sells well, in fact, it is also directly related to BBA's price-for-volume play. The official guide price of the BMW X3 2023 xDrive30i Premium M Yao Night Package is 486,900 yuan, and the price of the naked car after the discount is 376,900 yuan. Lexus is also from the previous price increase of tens of thousands to 100,000 to the current discount of 10%.
Domestic new energy rushes to the high-end, and BBA is cost-effective
This year, we saw that domestic new energy rushed to the high-end, attacking the 500,000, 600,000, and 700,000 markets, and giving up the 300,000 market to BBA. There is a saying that if you don't work hard, you can only buy BBA. Sure enough, many consumers believe that they are not strong enough to buy BBA, so this leads to the rapid growth of BBA sales.
The consumer base of fuel vehicles is still huge, and the high-end brand image of BBA is deeply rooted and difficult to shake in a short period of time.
Secondly, we must see that the fuel vehicle market is still very large, at the beginning of January this year, fuel vehicles ushered in a wave of growth, which stems from the stability and cost performance of fuel vehicles is still valued by many consumers. Especially during the Spring Festival, we saw a large number of young and middle-aged people who wanted to go home for a blind date early for the New Year. In rural areas, BBA is recognized by most people as a representative of luxury cars, and brand recognition is deeply rooted in the rural market.
In general, China's high-end luxury car market at present, BBA is still the first line, the annual sales are basically more than 700,000 units, but the overall impact of domestic new energy, BBA has basically adopted the strategy of exchanging price for volume, through a large discount to promote the market, although the market share seems to be unchanged, but the profit should be a lot discounted.
In particular, Huawei-led Wenjie Auto is rising rapidly and is becoming a disruptor in the luxury car market in 2024. The pressure on the BBA will increase.
The recognition of domestic new energy has grown, but BBA has been underestimated
At present, the recognition of domestic production by young people in China is gradually increasing. Ten years ago, BYD would not have been ridiculed if it had a model of 1 million, or even a model of 4 or 500,000 yuan.
New energy vehicles have changed the track, giving domestic cars a chance to turn over. By focusing on intelligence, even if hardware integration cannot catch up with international standards, intelligent integration is definitely a world-class level, which crushes many international brands.
On the whole, each has its own advantages, and in terms of brand power, BBA still has an unshakable brand mental advantage. BBA has a thick foundation, whether it is capital or technical strength, if it is in the field of pure electric and hybrid, it is not impossible to catch up, after all, the best extended-range new energy sold now is what BMW played back then.
At that time, the i3 had an extended-range version, with an electric range of 355km, which could be fully charged in early 3 hours, equipped with an 8-liter fuel tank and a small extended-range engine, and it was estimated that it could run up to 500km when fully charged.
It's a pity that BMW's family has a big business, and it didn't calm down to study the prospect of extending the range of this route, i8 made a carbon fiber body with an outrageous cost, and finally couldn't give full play to the performance of the supercar, and then it was not easy to sell and cut this product line directly. Today the i3 is left for the all-electric version of the 3 Series. From the perspective of heritage and accumulation, the long-term competitiveness of BMW and Mercedes-Benz should not be underestimated.
Therefore, domestic new energy is actually at a peak moment, in the product power and intelligence of the overall lead, still not able to move the BBA cake, which actually means that the strength of domestic new energy has not yet reached the stage of real quantitative change to qualitative change, not yet the impact of 500,000 ~ 1 million luxury car stage, BBA's heritage and strength are underestimated.
In fact, with the passage of time, due to the blessing of brands, funds and channels, and overseas market supply chains, BBA is likely to achieve growth earlier in the overseas new energy market, and the gap between domestic new energy and BBA's products and technologies in the field of pure electric and range extension will be narrowed.
After all, BMW and Mercedes-Benz put the supply chain and factory focus of new energy vehicles on the Chinese market, and also used domestic supply chain capabilities, but they hit the global market, and the original channels and supply chain resources can be reused, which is their inherent advantage.
Domestic new energy should not be in a hurry to go to the ultra-high-end market at the moment, and if independent brands want to conquer the luxury car market, they are basically fighting with BBA and Tesla. How to make the mainstream range of the 300,000~400,000 market competitive enough, expand the influence in the overseas market as soon as possible, and then gradually float up, step by step, may be the key to standing firm in the luxury car market in the future and winning the protracted war.
Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission