In 2023, China's auto market and the global auto market are experiencing a historic moment, with industrial transformation surging, price wars, and new automakers, traditional car companies and joint venture brands. As the "four small strong" of the new car-making forces, "Wei Xiaoli Zero" has reached a watershed, Li Auto took the lead in "going ashore" and crossed the profit line, while Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Lingfang are still facing loss pressure.
At present, the competition in the new energy vehicle industry has entered a critical moment, and intelligence has become the general trend. Every player, in order to quickly seize the high ground to win, also needs to prepare ammunition and maintain stamina in order to fight this protracted battle.
The performance of the "four small strong" is differentiated
Li Auto was the first to go ashore
With the completion of the disclosure of the financial reports of listed new energy vehicles in 2023, their annual operating conditions have also become the focus of heated public discussion.
The "four small powers", a new domestic car-making force that went hand in hand, have now changed after fierce market competition. Li Auto took the lead in "going ashore", becoming the first new power car company in China with annual revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan, and also the third new energy vehicle company in the world to achieve profitability after Tesla and BYD.
According to the financial report, in 2023, Li Auto will achieve revenue of 123.85 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 173.5%, and a net profit of 11.809 billion yuan, achieving annual profit for the first time.
The financial report shows that Li Auto will deliver 376,030 vehicles in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 182.2%. At the same time, its gross profit margin also increased significantly, at 22.2%, surpassing Tesla's 18.2%, ranking among the top domestic car companies.
NIO, Xpeng Motors, and Leapmotor are still in the red. Among them, NIO's loss is the largest among the "four small powers" of the new car-making forces, mainly because in addition to product research and development expenditures, NIO's investment costs in the construction of battery swap stations and NIO's service system are also too high.
According to the financial report, NIO will achieve revenue of 55.618 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%, and the net loss will further expand to 20.72 billion yuan, compared with a net loss of 14.437 billion yuan in 2022, and the annual delivery volume will be 160038, a year-on-year increase of 30.7%.
However, Leapmotor, which is the last to be listed in the "Four Small Strong", will "make a fortune in a muffled voice" in 2023. Compared with the situation of relying on Leapmotor T03 to win the world in 2022, Leapmotor will increase the sales proportion of C series models to more than 80% in 2023. It not only achieved the goal of improving the brand, but also increased the overall profit with the increase in sales of mid-to-high-end models.
According to the financial report data, Leapmotor achieved revenue of 16.75 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.2%, a net loss of 4.216 billion yuan, narrowed from a net loss of 5.109 billion yuan in 2022, and delivered 144155 vehicles for the year, a year-on-year increase of 29.7%, and the annual target completion rate reached 72.08%, surpassing the annual delivery volume of Xpeng Motors and ranking third among the "four small strong" of new car-making forces.
More importantly, the gross profit level is one of the key assessment points for the "hematopoietic" ability of car companies. For the first time in 2023, Leapmotor will achieve positive gross profit margin and operating cash flow, which will be 0.5% and 1.08 billion yuan, respectively.
Although Xiaopeng Motors' revenue and net profit attributable to the parent company are both on the rise, it is not optimistic in terms of operation. According to the financial report, the net loss of Xpeng Motors will reach 10.38 billion yuan in 2023 and 9.14 billion yuan in 2022, and the loss will further expand. At the same time, Xpeng's gross profit margin also fell sharply to 1.5%, far lower than 11.5% in 2022. Although the overall gross profit margin is positive, the gross profit margin of Xpeng Motors has fallen to -1.6%.
In this regard, Xpeng Motors said that the main reason is the increase in promotions, the expiration of subsidies for new energy vehicles, and the loss of inventory provisions and procurement commitments related to the upgrade of G3i and existing models, which had a negative impact of 2.4 percentage points on the gross profit margin of automobiles in the current fiscal year, and if the G3i and other molding reasons are excluded, the gross profit margin of automobiles is 0.8%.
Price wars are rife
Car companies have entered a "life and death" decisive battle
Entering 2023, the national purchase subsidy policy will officially withdraw from the stage, which means that the new energy vehicle market has changed from policy-driven to market-driven, and the cost pressure of new energy vehicle companies has increased. As a result, many brands such as BYD, Ideal, Weilai, Chery New Energy, Changan Automobile, and Leap have announced price increases of different ranges.
However, not long after the domestic new energy vehicle companies announced price increases, Tesla "bucked the trend" and lowered prices, firing the "first shot" of the domestic price war, with the domestic Model 3 and Model Y dropping by 20,000 to 36,000 yuan and 29,000 to 48,000 yuan respectively. In March, Hubei staged the "strongest car purchase discount season in history", like a "catfish", quickly prying other regions and car companies to follow up, and the price war entered a white-hot stage.
Among them, Leapmotor chose to take the initiative and lowered the prices of all products when the 2023 products were collectively launched, with a maximum reduction of nearly 60,000 yuan. In the view of Zhu Jiangming, chairman of Leapmotor, it is now the stage of fighting, and for an enterprise, volume is more important in the growing market.
As a means of commercial competition, the price war will lead to a decrease in the profits of car companies on the one hand, and on the other hand, it will accelerate the market share to move closer to the head enterprises, resulting in smaller and smaller opportunities for edge car companies, especially those new energy car companies that have not yet formed a production scale and their own brand recognition is not strong, and the industry reshuffle will be significantly accelerated.
Among them, WM Motor, a new force in car manufacturing, filed for bankruptcy reorganization in October last year, and some brands such as Tianji Automobile, Aiways, Singularity Automobile, Reading Automobile, Hengchi Automobile, and Ziyoujia fell into a storm of work stoppage and wage arrears, and some embarked on the road to bankruptcy.
In the fierce competition environment of new energy vehicles, although some people leave the scene, there are also people who actively enter the game. In March 2021, Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, announced, "Xiaomi will officially enter the smart electric vehicle market." At the end of 2023, Lei Jun appeared at the technology conference with the "last entrepreneurial project in his life" - Xiaomi Auto SU7, and announced that Xiaomi Auto aims to enter the first camp of the autonomous driving industry in 2024.
In the view of industry insiders, with the escalation of the price war, the involution of the new energy vehicle industry will continue to intensify, the performance differentiation between car companies will become more and more obvious in the future, the Matthew effect will be more prominent, and the "fight" of new car-making forces will become increasingly intense.
New energy vehicles entered the second half of the competition
Intelligence is the trend of the times
Under the dual wave of globalization and new energy revolution, China's auto market is undergoing unprecedented changes. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2023, the production and sales of automobiles in mainland China will exceed 30 million for the first time, with 30.161 million and 30.094 million respectively, an increase of 11.6% and 12% year-on-year, respectively, and the annual production and sales will both hit a record high.
While the automobile market is soaring, competition is also further intensified, and car companies are not only rolling in price but also in technology. Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, once said that the first half of new energy vehicles is electrification, and the second half is intelligence; He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, said that the future is the era of intelligent electric vehicles. Nowadays, the intelligence of new energy vehicles has become the consensus of the industry.
According to the global network, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a flight to Beijing on April 28, and Musk is seeking to meet with Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the launch of Full Self-Driving (FSD) software in China and seek approval.
At present, the new domestic car-making forces have ignited the fire of war in high-end intelligent driving, and are in full swing to promote the "urban NOA" (driving assistance system developed for the urban traffic environment) to more users and cities.
"Urban NOA" is considered to be the last part to complete the L3 autonomous driving function, and the leading car companies focusing on intelligent driving are promoting their own urban NOA layout to strengthen their technical strength in the face of L3 autonomous driving.
Previously, Xpeng Motors announced that it would expand XNGP to 50 cities, Li Auto announced that Li AD Max would open "urban NOA" in 110 cities, NIO announced that its NOP+ completed the verification of 250,000 kilometers of urban pilot routes, and opened 60,000 kilometers of route mileage in 200 cities, Huawei insisted on the goal of opening the NCA function in urban areas across the country, and Xiaomi Auto announced that in August 2024, major cities across the country will open "urban NOA".
"With the addition of technology giants such as Huawei and Xiaomi to the new energy vehicle industry, China's new energy vehicles have been injected with more 'Internet genes', accelerating from electrification to a new highland of intelligence, and green and intelligent are becoming the core of a new round of automotive industry revolution. Building strong intelligence capabilities is more important than ever for car companies. Jia Zhichao, co-founder of the Pattern Research Institute and chief observer of automobiles, said in an interview with a reporter from Dahe Finance Cube.
At the same time, Jia Zhichao also said that the current new energy vehicle industry ecology is gradually evolving from a "chain relationship" between parts, vehicle R&D, production and marketing service enterprises to a "network ecology" with the participation of multiple subjects in multiple fields such as automobiles, energy, transportation, and information and communication. Cross-industry and cross-field are also becoming the characteristics of the development of the new energy vehicle industry.
Editor-in-charge: Wang Shidan | Reviewer: Li Jinyu | Review: Li Zhen | Supervisor: Wan Junwei
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