At the beginning of April, major traditional car companies have handed over the answer sheet of new energy vehicles in the first quarter of 2024! Overall, under the current price war, the sales performance of car companies is different, and there are two obvious development trends.
First of all, from the perspective of technical routes, in the mighty wave of electrification, many traditional car companies are not limited to pure electric, but prefer pure electric, plug-in hybrid, and fuel multiple technical routes to advance in parallel. Among them, PHEV models are considered by more and more car companies to be the growth point of the new energy track.
In addition, with the continuous popularization of new energy vehicles, the trend of increasing the unit price of products of major car companies is also obvious. According to market analysis, before the "flywheel" of economies of scale turns, the layout of car companies in the mid-to-high-end market may become a new breakthrough.
01Traditional car companies accelerate the layout of new energy
In the first quarter of this year, Geely continued last year's upward trend, with a cumulative sales of 475,700 units, a year-on-year increase of 49.49%, of which the sales of new energy vehicles reached 144,100, a year-on-year increase of 142.97%.
In terms of penetration rate, Geely Automobile is significantly higher than Changan Automobile and Great Wall Motor, which increased to 30.30% in the first quarter, an increase of 11.16 percentage points year-on-year.
Changan Automobile is also making a big push into new energy vehicles. In the first quarter, the sales volume of its own brand new energy reached 128,800 units, a year-on-year increase of more than 52%. However, despite the gratifying growth rate, Changan Automobile is slightly inferior to Geely Automobile, an old rival, in terms of the scale of new energy vehicle sales.
In contrast, Great Wall Motors has clearly fallen behind. Although Great Wall sold 275,300 new cars in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 25.11%. Among them, the sales of new energy vehicles were 59,200, a year-on-year increase of 112.82%, and the penetration rate increased to 21.49%. However, compared with Geely, Chang'an, etc., the sales volume is still a big difference.
A few days ago, Great Wall executives said frankly, "Great Wall Motors' new energy transformation has deviated in the middle, and some of the new energy products launched have not adapted to the soil and water, and have not kept up with the first wave of dividends of new energy outbreaks." ”
Generally speaking, the electrification of vehicles is the trend of the times and has become an industry consensus. From the data, it can be seen that the pace of new energy transformation of traditional independent brands such as Geely, Chang'an, and Great Wall is significantly accelerating, but the progress is different.
02Plug-in hybrid into "sweet and sweet"
From the perspective of technical routes, based on diversified consumer demand, the development of the new energy vehicle market has gradually shifted from "pure electric is king" to "diversified power development era".
According to the data of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2023, the sales of BEV and PHEV models will be 6.685 million and 2.804 million respectively, with a year-on-year growth rate of 24.6% and 84.7% respectively.
After seeing the huge "dividend" of the market, in recent years, many brands have actively entered the market to compete for the market cake of plug-in hybrid vehicles, and have launched several PHEV models.
Since the release of the DM-i super hybrid technology in 2021, BYD, the leader, has quickly driven the sales of PHEV models all the way up. In the first quarter of this year, BYD's passenger car plug-in hybrid models sold 324,300 units, accounting for 51.94%. Subsequently, Changan, Geely, Great Wall and other car companies began to accelerate their catch-up.
Recently, Changan UNI-Z, equipped with Changan's latest Blue Whale iDD plug-in hybrid system, was officially launched, with a total of 3 models.
Geely's Lynk & Co 08 EM-P continues to rank first among mid-size plug-in hybrid SUVs, and the launch of the "super-hybrid CP" consisting of Geely Galaxy L7 and Geely Galaxy L6 has further strengthened Geely's influence in the hybrid market. In the first quarter of 2023, the sales volume of Geely's plug-in hybrid product series surged by 11.5 times year-on-year to 59,300 units, far exceeding the industry average growth.
In terms of Great Wall, its Haval Thunder MAX and Wei brand new Mocha DHT-PHEV have also been launched. In fact, in addition to its own brands, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz are also paying more and more attention to the PHEV track.
It is foreseeable that as more car companies enter the plug-in hybrid track, the market cake will become bigger and bigger, and the competition will undoubtedly become more intense.
03The unit price of products has an obvious trend of increase
It is also worth noting that in the past two years, although the growth rate of new energy vehicle sales has slowed down, the specific sales of various price models have had intriguing changes. That is, the popularity of low-end models has faded, but mid-to-high-end models are becoming more and more popular.
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2023, the sales of new energy passenger vehicles in the pricing range of 150,000-200,000 will still account for the majority, accounting for nearly 30%;
Surprisingly, the 350,000-400,000 pricing range has also become the second main growth force in sales, with sales reaching 1.121 million units in 2023, accounting for 11.81%, a year-on-year increase of 103.1%, and models priced at more than 500,000 yuan also increased by 58.5% year-on-year. This shows that the demand for high-end new energy vehicles in the market is continuing to grow rapidly.
As the popularity of mini cars represented by Wuling Hongguang MINI EV fades, the sales of passenger cars below 80,000 yuan have also ushered in a decline, with only 842,000 units sold in 2023, accounting for 8.87% of the market.
All these signals are confirming that the "brand upgrade wave" of new energy vehicles in the mainland seems to be really coming.
In the planning of Changan Automobile, Qiyuan and Shenlan assume the important task of the group's new energy volume, focusing on mainstream market vehicles of 100,000-200,000 yuan. Among them, Deep Blue unveiled the first new model equipped with Deep Blue Super Range Extension 2.0 in March this year - the hard off-road product G318, with a price of more than 300,000 yuan, which is an attempt by Chang'an's independent new energy brand to impact the high-end.
As a mid-to-high-end new energy series of the Geely brand, the "Geely Galaxy" has been an instant hit since its release in February 2023. Thanks to the successive launch of models such as the Galaxy L7, Galaxy L6 and Galaxy E8, the sales of the Galaxy series will exceed 110,000 units by the end of 2023.
In the field of pure electric vehicles, ZEEKR is positioned as a luxury intelligent pure electric brand, with a price of more than 300,000 yuan. Among them, ZEEKR 009 is still at the top of the pure electric MPV market of more than 500,000.
In contrast, Great Wall Motor's high-end route is hardly smooth. Its WEY brand adheres to the high-end intelligent new energy route, and based on last year's low base, the cumulative sales in the first quarter of this year soared by 182.34% to 9,608 vehicles. Although the WEY brand has been launched for more than 8 years, the brand potential is still weak, accounting for only about 3.49% of the company's total sales, and the impact is minimal. In the highly competitive high-end market of new energy vehicles, the pressure on Great Wall Motors can be imagined.
All in all, in the environment of extreme "involution", the "price war" is fought from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, and how to break through the shackles of profits is a difficult problem in front of many car companies. High-end can not only bring stronger brand influence and bargaining power to enterprises, but more importantly, high-end can also force enterprises to develop new technologies.
However, it is necessary to be soberly aware that the high-end of car brands is not an easy thing. Most Chinese automakers are beginners in the operation of high-end products. How to get rid of the path dependence on the past joint venture model and form the brand power of Chinese enterprises needs to be explored more.
Author: Bottle