Hyundai Express news in Nanjing, now to buy a mainstream new energy vehicle, about two to three months to wait. In the past year, China's new energy vehicle sales have ushered in explosive growth. In the view of many people in the industry, new energy vehicles have ushered in an inflection point relative to traditional oil vehicles, and the market has shifted from policy-driven to market-driven. However, with the subsidy standard for new energy vehicles falling by 30% in 2022, whether new energy vehicles can continue to maintain high growth requires the test of the market.
In 2021, the inflection point of new energy vehicles has arrived?
Zhao Peng is the head of the Nanjing Ideal Riders Association and one of the first car owners of Ideal ONE to deliver at the end of 2019, for which he waited for a whole year. The original two cars in the family, a Volkswagen station wagon, a Porsche Cayenne, replaced by an ideal ONE, used for two years, he thinks, the overall feeling is still very good.
When I first changed the car, I saw Tesla enter the country and wanted to try new energy; and there was a second baby, considered a commercial car, but the daily commute was not very suitable, and then I wanted to change a six-seat or seven-seat SUV would be better; plus the home parking space was not suitable for charging piles, so the pure tram was excluded. The ideal ONE for extenders is just right for your situation.
Zhao Peng said that his work requirements, occasionally to temporary business trips, the ideal is a mixture of oil and electricity, refueling can also run, itself has scientific and technological attributes, boys are very interested in this, "and new energy vehicles have a property that is most in line with people's current habits, that is, they can be upgraded and iterated, just like mobile phones." In this way, new features and new gameplay can be derived continuously. "For example, the ideal ONE, later added the function of karaoke in the car, as well as assisted driving." I used to drive my other cars, driving for two hours was tired, driving this kind of assisted driving, driving to four or five hours can be. ”
△ Xiaopeng car display
In the past year, Ideal delivered a total of 90,491 new energy vehicles, an increase of 1.77 times year-on-year. The other two "big three" of the new car-making forces, Weilai and Xiaopeng, delivered 91,429 and 98,155 vehicles respectively, an increase of 109% and 263% respectively. According to the China Automobile Association, from January to November 2021, the sales volume of new energy passenger cars on the retail side reached 2.514 million units, an increase of 1.7 times year-on-year, and the market penetration rate rose to 13.9%, compared with 5.8% in 2020.
△ Niolai Auto exhibits
Liu Ji, a senior analyst at the Head Leopard Research Institute, said bluntly that the inflection point of new energy vehicles has arrived. "The monthly penetration rate in November 2021 has reached 20.8%, marking that consumers' acceptance of new energy vehicles is getting higher and higher, and the new energy vehicle market has shifted from policy-driven to market-driven."
In Liu's view, there were three main reasons for the explosive growth of new energy vehicle sales last year. First of all, the iterative progress of new energy vehicle technology, the improvement of mileage, charging convenience, safety and other performance, so that consumers' acceptance of new energy vehicles is generally improved; secondly, policy support, the welfare of "subsidies + green cards + points", increasing consumers' desire to buy; the third is the richness of new energy vehicle products, driven by the double carbon background, the acceleration of the transformation of new energy by traditional car companies, the addition of new car-making forces and Internet giants, and the continuous enrichment of new energy vehicle products, new energy vehicles due to architectural advantages. Compared with traditional car companies, the degree of intelligence and networking is higher, and the shape is more fashionable, attracting a large number of consumers to pay.
According to the data revealed by the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Jiangsu Province, in December 2021, 36,499 new energy vehicles were registered in Jiangsu, an increase of 197.98% year-on-year, accounting for 25.08% of the total number of car registrations, an increase of 17.5 percentage points over the same period in 2020. In 2021, the province registered 239,000 new energy vehicles, an increase of 220.9% over the same period of the previous year, accounting for 11.4% of the total number of vehicle registrations. By the end of 2021, the number of new energy vehicles in the province will reach 505,000, of which 443,000 are pure electric vehicles, accounting for 87.8%.
Under the hot market, the investment in the relevant industrial chain is also very active. According to enterprise investigation data, there will be a total of 149 investment and financing of new energy vehicle-related enterprises in 2021, and the amount of disclosed financing will exceed 200 billion yuan.
Wuling singled out new forces, and the car-making war extended to the low end
In Zhao Peng's view, one of the biggest attractions of new energy vehicles is that it is "provincial", on the one hand, taxes and fees, on the other hand, for the same size SUV, the monthly electricity bill is about 200 yuan, and it is at least 2,000 yuan if you refuel, which is equivalent to one-tenth of the cost of new energy vehicles.
"After Tesla produced in China, the overall price of electric vehicles was pulled down, coupled with the actual configuration of domestic new energy vehicles such as Weilai, Ideal, and Xiaopeng, which were becoming higher and higher, and the functions of the original seven or eight hundred thousand cars were now enjoyed by three or four hundred thousand cars." Equivalent to the cost of buying a car has dropped a lot at once, everyone is willing to choose such a product, and a very large inflection point in 2021 is here. Zhao Peng said.
△ Xiaopeng Automobile shows aircraft products
A Zhe, a teacher in Nantong, bought a Nezha U Pro in October 2021. "I commute about fifteen minutes on weekdays, the distance is 20 kilometers, and I go out on weekends to play and drive for an hour. After changing the new energy vehicle, the cost of using the car is much less than that of the oil car, and the economic perspective is completely successful. ”
The official price of Nezha U Pro after subsidy was as low as 99,800, and it was advertised as "the first smart pure electric SUV with cost-effective hardbar fuel vehicle". But when it comes to cost performance, the Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, which starts at less than 30,000 yuan, is probably unmatched.
On January 6, SAIC-GM-Wuling released data showing that the cumulative sales of its GSEV series models exceeded 750,000, including Hongguang MINIEV, Wuling NanoEV, KiWi EV, etc. Among them, Hongguang MINI EV sold 55,700 units in December 2021, occupying the top spot in China's new energy vehicle sales list for 16 consecutive months.
Compared with the new car-making forces generally impacting the high-end market of more than 200,000 yuan, Wuling has created a new path in the low-end market and attracted many imitators. In a similar price segment, Lingtu Automobile launched "Baizhi Daxiong", Chery launched "QQ Ice Cream", slightly higher price segment, and Great Wall Euler launched "Black Cat" and "White Cat". Coupled with many players such as Nezha, the product line of domestic new energy vehicles has almost covered the complete price band from less than 30,000 yuan to nearly one million yuan.
Analyst Liu Yi believes that the reason why the new forces generally take the high-end route is related to the high cost of power batteries and the upward expansion of the brand, in the field of traditional fuel vehicles, the reputation effect of foreign high-end models is obvious, the competition pattern of head car companies is relatively mature, and domestic car brands do not have outstanding advantages. In the field of new energy vehicles, the number of domestic patents ranks first in the world, and the development of new energy vehicles has created market opportunities for new forces to enter from the high end.
The reason for Wuling's success in the low-end route is its significant price advantage, accurate market positioning, high product quality and strong practicality. Liu Yi said that from the past consumption experience of fuel vehicles, mid-range models are the biggest demand in the consumer market. Benchmarking the mature consumer market of traditional fuel vehicles "spindle type" and the "dumbbell type" market shows that the consumption of new energy vehicles has not really been popularized.
"The high-end of Tesla and independent brands and the new energy vehicles going to the countryside have promoted the expansion of the low-end and high-end markets. Judging from the recent new product planning of various car companies, most of the new products are still concentrated at both ends of dumbbells. In the future, the sales volume of high-end and low-end models in China's new energy vehicle market will continue to rise, but with the popularity of mid-range models, the high-end market share may decline. Liu Ji said.
Subsidies decline, can new energy vehicles maintain high growth?
Although the sales of new energy vehicles continue to grow at a high rate, in the past year, the problem of lack of cores has always plagued the entire industry, and during the National Day last year, the news of "charging 1 hour queuing for 4 hours" also made many consumers still have doubts about pure trams.
"My car is charged slowly for seven or eight hours, fast charged for two hours, and the charging pile at home is less than 6 mao one kilowatt hour before 9 o'clock in the evening, and less than 4 mao one kilowatt hour after nine o'clock, which is cheap and convenient." Nantong teacher A Zhe said. But despite this, "there are not many new energy car owners around, and most people still have a wait-and-see attitude towards new energy." ”
At the end of last year, Weilai CEO Li Bin said in an interview with the media: "I don't understand at all, why are there still people buying fuel trucks?" What good is the gas truck except that it can smell a little gasoline? He also said, "Charging anxiety is basically the heart of gasoline car users to operate electric vehicles." ”
However, this statement is considered by many netizens to be a sense of superiority of "why not eat meat paste". Advertising director @flypig said on Weibo, "Like me, the basement of a company does not have charging piles, the basement of the family does not allow charging piles, does not want the wind and Xiao Xiao to go to the long-distance self-driving without returning, does not want to fall into the painful mileage anxiety in the winter in Beijing, and can only have one car under his name, I am afraid that it is impossible to replace his only travel vehicle with a pure electric vehicle at this stage." ”
Zhao Peng also said that although pure electricity is the trend of the times, unless the future fast charging energy reaches 5 to 10 minutes to complete the charging of the oil car, it will not be easily replaced by a pure tram.
△ Huawei asked the boundary car display
With Huawei, Xiaomi and other technology giants joining the ranks of car manufacturing, the new energy car-making war will undoubtedly continue. On December 31, 2021, the Ministry of Finance and other four ministries and commissions jointly issued a notice that the subsidy standard for new energy vehicles in 2022 will decline by 30% on the basis of 2021, but the current technical indicators remain unchanged, and the subsidy scale will be relaxed from the original expected upper limit of 2 million subsidy scale.
With the decline of subsidies, can new energy vehicles maintain high growth? In Nanjing, if you want to buy a mainstream new energy vehicle, you have to queue for two to three months. At noon on January 7, the sales of a domestic new energy vehicle store in Xinjiekou, Nanjing, told reporters that a main model for sale, the system showed that it would take 10 weeks to 11 weeks to deliver. "Recently, many consumers have come to consult every day, because the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles is almost gone."
At Tesla next door, the staff said that it now takes 3 to 4 months for the booking to be delivered. Liu Yi believes that although the decline of subsidies will bring pressure on car companies to increase operating costs, but with the scale effect brought about by the surge in downstream sales, the decline in production costs will further enhance the self-hematopoietic capacity of car companies, "We expect that the scale of the new energy automobile industry will continue to expand in 2022, and the market penetration rate will continue to increase." ”
Dongxing Securities also believes that the subsidy decline will increase the cost of car purchase for consumers, but from the performance of the domestic new energy market since 2020, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV and Ideal ONE, which do not enjoy new energy subsidies, also have strong sales, "We believe that subsidies are no longer the main consideration of car owners when buying cars, and models with high cost performance and strong product strength are more likely to be recognized by consumers." ”
CITIC Construction Investment expects that global sales of new energy vehicles will be 9.56 million units in 2022, of which 5.48 million in China, and the demand boom will continue. CITIC Securities predicts that domestic sales of new energy vehicles will reach 4.8 million in 2022, an increase of 38% year-on-year.
Intern Xu Wei Modern Express + reporter Pan Rong Gu Wei/Wen Xu Yang/Photo