Tramway News: In the 2021 Chinese market new energy passenger car sales list, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV with nearly 400,000 units sales performance to rank first, such results in the global market is also far ahead.
Since its listing in July 2020, Hongguang MINI EV has stirred up the entire new energy market pattern with amazing market performance, and recently Japanese experts have disassembled and analyzed the Hongguang MINI EV, and finally found that there is no Japanese company among the parts suppliers of this car.
In order to exhibit at the event, the Japan Energy Rate Association imported the Hongguang MINI EV high-end version (38,800 yuan). Professor Masayoshi Yamamoto of Nagoya University in Japan and others dismantled it after the exhibition, and estimated that the cost structure was 480,000 yen (about 26,900 yuan).
There are two reasons for this low cost. One is that it is not equipped with devices that are considered common sense on ordinary pure electric vehicles. In particular, the regenerative brakes and water cooling devices are eliminated, and the effect of reducing costs is obvious.
However, such a design has more failures than that of general pure electric vehicles, but the Hongguang MINI EV has adopted a design for modules (composite parts) such as inverters that are easy to remove and replace for the car itself, which makes up for the weakness.
Another reason is that the parts are equipped with the same existing products. For example, bearings as core components are not designed specifically, but are made in China with universal products that meet the performance.
Electronic components such as inverters and chargers are made of semiconductors made by well-known European and American companies such as Texas Instruments (TI) and Infineon Technology of Germany. However, instead of using in-vehicle chips with high durability, semiconductors for home appliances are used.
General electronic components are of course prone to failure, but with a design where the entire module is easy to replace, it is easy to repair. It can be said that the Hongguang MINI EV is a pure electric vehicle with a very low price with the help of the streamlined design idea of "easy to damage, but easy to repair".
In fact, almost all the accessories of Hongguang MINI EV rely on procurement, and its main suppliers include Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Songzhi Shares, Ningbo Gaofa, Fuyao Glass, Founder Motor, etc., which are the leaders in various segments. Being able to gather so many high-quality suppliers to create a micro-electric vehicle with low profits shows that Wuling has made great efforts in supplier selection. Wuling Hongguang MINI EV gave up its own production, chose to purchase to reduce the silent cost of manufacturing new production lines, huge sales also allow suppliers to achieve scale effect can greatly reduce the price under the premise of ensuring quality, and has become a key factor in the low cost of Hongguang MINI EV.
According to the Japan Energy Rate Association, it is currently impossible to commercially import and sell Hongguang MINI EVs in Japan. The reason is that it is difficult to achieve profitability due to the need to modify in Japan, obtain safety certification, etc. However, the model is having an impact on Japan's pure electric vehicle industry on two sides.
One is that it does not use parts made in Japan. The core components are supplied by Chinese companies, and Japanese companies have not seized such business opportunities at all.
The other is that the demand for small pure electric vehicles like the Macrolight MINI EV has the potential to increase globally.
Written by the Nikkei Chinese Network, SAIC-GM-Wuling has accumulated development experience in the field of ultra-small transportation through the popularity of Hongguang MINI EV, which may form a market that Japanese automakers cannot enter.