After Tesla’s price cuts, the delivery volume hit a new high. How can the new Chinese forces not be left behind in the scuffle?
A quarter later, Tesla once again broke the single-season delivery record——
In the first quarter of 2023, there were more than 422,000 Tesla owners worldwide, contributing to the new energy automaker's deliveries.
According to the official production and delivery report, Tesla produced a total of 440,808 electric vehicles during the quarter and delivered 422,875 of them. Most of them are Model 3/Y, with a total of 412,180 vehicles, and another 10,695 are new Model S/X.
Compared with the same period last year, Tesla's total production in the first quarter increased by 44% year-on-year, and its deliveries increased by 36% year-on-year.
At this stage, Tesla, which has only four mass-produced passenger car models of S3XY, can continue to break the delivery record, which is not unrelated to its forward-looking hardware design and continuous iterative software updates. This is reflected in the new Model S/X. more obvious.
In fact, these two luxury pure electric models, which have just begun to be delivered in mainland China, have been on the market for 10 years, and the design language of that year can be said to be timeless.
Compared with the so-called "reshaping the shell and changing the model", it may be a more correct way to upgrade the hardware pre-embedded for a good-looking design. At least the new Model S/X has become a competitive high-performance luxury model with the blessing of new technologies such as carbon fiber rotor sleeves.
If you have a good car, you don’t have to worry about selling it. Tesla is firmly on the top of the sales list in many countries and regions. However, China, the world’s largest new energy vehicle market, is not listed here .
At the recent China Electric Vehicle Hundred People Forum, Li Bin, chairman of Weilai, said that Tesla does not have pricing power in China. "Tesla's price reduction is a method adopted after facing fierce competition in the Chinese market, but It doesn't have pricing power in China."
He believes that Tesla has pricing power in the US market because it has a 60%-70% market share in the US, but in China, Tesla's share is only 7%.
In other words, it is not only Tesla that has achieved excellent results this year, but the performance of domestic auto companies is also not lacking in bright spots.
Mixed first quarter, fierce competition
From January to February this year, with the launch of the subsidy policy and the vitality of terminal consumption has not yet recovered, the price reduction measures of various car companies have aggravated consumers' wait-and-see sentiment, and the domestic auto market continued to show a downturn.
According to the information released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the first two months of this year, among the top ten companies in the domestic sales of domestically produced cars, only BYD has achieved positive growth in sales growth, while other car companies have declined to varying degrees.
However, judging from the March report cards released by various car companies, most domestic car companies have climbed out of the trough of the previous two months, and the overall delivery level has rebounded . Some car companies even surpassed the delivery level at the end of last year, hitting a new high .
Among them, BYD's sales continued to lead, and it sold 207,100 new energy vehicles in March, almost doubling year-on-year growth. In the first quarter of this year, BYD's cumulative retail sales reached 552,100 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 92.81%.
The performance of the Aian brand under GAC Group is also quite impressive. In March, sales reached more than 40,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 97%, and a month-on-month increase of 33%. The total sales volume in the first quarter exceeded 80,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 79%.
Turning our attention to new forces, the official addition of Ideal L7 has successfully brought the monthly delivery of Ideal Auto back to the level of 20,000, an increase of 88.7% year-on-year; the quarterly cumulative delivery reached 52,600 vehicles, an increase of 65.8% year-on-year.
According to Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Auto, the steady growth of delivery volume has something to do with the timely adjustment of its multi-model sales strategy and organizational structure.
The biggest challenge in the automotive industry comes from organizational capabilities.
After studying Huawei, IBM, Apple and other companies, Li Auto applied the IPD development process in the R&D system, turning the past linear process into a three-dimensional process, which was managed by the PDT manager and solved the problem of "combat chaos"; Its organizational structure has also changed from a functional organization in the past to a matrix organization, helping Ideal to realize the replication of popular models and increase the speed of supply and production capacity .
On the other hand, Weilai, which is engaged in both SUVs and sedans, also achieved more than 10,000 deliveries in March. In the first quarter, a total of 31,000 new cars were delivered, a year-on-year increase of 20.5%.
▲ "HUAWEI Wenjie" in the window
As for the AITO brand, which has recently caused a lot of controversy due to the HUAWEI logo, the delivery volume in the first quarter also reached 11,700 vehicles. Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Terminal BG, revealed that Chery, BAIC, and JAC will also produce cars equipped with Huawei's complete solution in the future, and will use the "Wenjie" ecological brand uniformly. The market performance of this brand after improvement is also worth looking forward to.
In addition to the above-mentioned companies, there are actually quite a few car companies that have obtained excellent report cards. For example, Jikrypton, which is backed by Geely, and Lantu, a subsidiary of Dongfeng, have achieved considerable growth in delivery, with monthly deliveries of 6,663 and 3,027 vehicles respectively. vehicles, an increase of 22% and 173% month-on-month.
Although many car companies achieved a rebound in sales in March, there are still some car companies that continue to slump, among which Xiaopeng, Leapao, and Nezha are particularly obvious .
Xiaopeng Motors did have a 17% month-on-month growth in March, with a monthly delivery of 7,002 vehicles, but it still fell 54.6% from the same period last year. Coupled with the sluggish data in the first two months, its quarterly sales will reach the previous sales guidance of 1.82%. 10,000 vehicles, and after one quarter, Xiaopeng Motors' annual target completion rate is still less than 10%.
Although Nezha Auto achieved more than 10,000 deliveries in March, it actually fell short of expectations, down 16.1% year-on-year, and the quarterly delivery of 26,200 vehicles was only half of the same period last year. The situation of zero running is even more difficult. The quarterly delivery just exceeded 10,000, a year-on-year decrease of 51.3%.
As the price of lithium mines gradually drops, the new energy vehicle market will only become more "involved". Whether the above-mentioned car companies can maintain their competitiveness and survive in the market is still a problem.
The competitive landscape is taking shape, and the development of the industry requires new thinking
In 2014, Xi Jinping emphasized during his inspection at Shanghai Automotive Group that the development of new energy vehicles is the only way for my country to move from a large automobile country to a powerful automobile country. These remarks have been made nearly ten years ago, but ten years is far from enough for the development of the industry.
Zhang Xiyong, general manager of BAIC Group, pointed out three major issues in the development of my country's new energy vehicle industry at the China Electric Vehicle 100:
- Unbalanced regional development
- The development of energy forms cannot afford to lose sight of the other
- Both electrification and intelligence need to be grasped
1. Unbalanced regional development
Needless to say, my country has a vast territory. However, new energy vehicles are currently mainly concentrated in the south of the Yangtze River, North China, and the Central Plains. The market penetration rate in the Northeast and Northwest is far from sufficient, and the market potential needs to be tapped.
The key lies in the research and development of key new energy technologies, such as the efficiency and power of power batteries, charging efficiency, and the environmental adaptability of vehicles. In addition, the difficulty of long-distance charging is still a very common problem. Even in the south, where the penetration rate of new energy vehicles is higher and the environment is more friendly, the charging experience during peak travel periods is not good.
2. The development of energy forms cannot be neglected
Within the territory of 9.6 million square kilometers in my country, the resource endowments of different regions are not the same, the energy advantages are different, and the capabilities of infrastructure construction are also different, which leads to the differences in consumption habits and usage scenarios in different regions.
This means that my country needs to simultaneously develop three technical routes of pure electric, hybrid, and fuel cells to meet different market needs. As the saying goes, "if it is suitable for mixing, then it is hybrid, and if it is suitable for hydrogen, then it is hydrogen."
A very gratifying situation last year was that the sales of plug-in/extended-range hybrid vehicles in my country increased rapidly, with a year-on-year increase of 1.5 times, and the market penetration rate reached 5.7%, accounting for 20% of new energy vehicles. In the past ten years, this figure has never exceeded 15%.
On the other hand, although Volkswagen just announced that it will not launch a new Golf with an internal combustion engine, the internal combustion engine must still have its value.
With the coordinated development of plug-in/extended-range hybrid power, the combination of internal combustion engine and electric drive technology will be closer, thereby improving the integration, intelligence and high efficiency of the power system, and at the same time driving the transformation and upgrading of the traditional power system. For example, some enterprises have begun to develop special engines for PHEV/REV.
3. Both electrification and intelligence need to be grasped
Big names in the car circle including Wang Chuanfu and He Xiaopeng have said a word:
The first half of new energy vehicles is electrification, and the second half is intelligence.
However, Zhang Xiyong believes that this statement one-sidedly divides electrification and intelligent networking, which is not comprehensive and scientific.
At present, my country's new energy automobile industry is still in the growth stage, and has just entered the stage of large-scale popularization in 2022, and the integration and development of intelligent network technology is still in its early stages, and it still needs to continue to develop in depth.
For example, Ford, which was the first to apply the vehicle-road coordination system on mass-produced vehicles, has only passed through some areas of the four cities of Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuxi, and Xi'an since its launch in 21 years. According to the relevant person in charge of Ford China, the implementation of vehicle-road coordination is closely related to the infrastructure construction conditions of the city.
What's more, the current vehicle-road collaboration can only provide information to drivers, and cannot directly convert information value into action value. Decision-making and execution still depend on the intention of the car owner.
The technical direction is not the same, but the industrial chain will be independent
Although China is the world's largest new energy vehicle market and has bred a complete industry ecology, there are still many "stuck neck" problems and encountered serious technical constraints.
The power battery is one aspect.
Among the top ten battery manufacturers with global installed capacity in 2022, Ningde Times and BYD rank first. At the same time, the combined installed capacity of Zhongxinhang, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Sunwoda, and Funeng Technology also reached 50.7GWh, accounting for 10. %. But when it comes to lithium metal solid-state batteries, it still lags behind.
On the other hand, as the cornerstone of realizing high-level automatic driving, the wire-controlled chassis is also one of the key core technologies that our country is "stuck".
Whether it is L1 and L2 level functions such as AEB and ACC, or high-level assisted driving functions such as long-distance valet parking and urban NOA, the intention of automatic driving must be realized through the control of the vehicle in all directions.
Tao Zhe, CEO of Hinason Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd., said that for a long time, core chassis technologies such as brake-by-wire and steering-by-wire have been firmly dominated by foreign component giants. Meet the landing of L3 and above high-level automatic driving technology.
But there are also people who hold different views on autonomous driving.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, said on the same day, "Unmanned driving is all nonsense, and anything that is fake is all deceit." He believes that the main direction of the future is assisted driving, which requires the driver to hold the steering wheel. ADAS algorithms and high-level assisted driving are deified under the coercion of capital.
And the market will eventually return to rationality.
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