After the price war, sales were not as good as expected, and the Chinese auto market became more and more agitated

With the announcement of the auto market sales in November, the retail sales in the market reached 2.08 million units, a year-on-year increase of 26%. For example, BYD's sales in November reached 301,000, which has broken 300,000 for two consecutive months, and is only one step away from completing the annual goal of 3 million. Other brands such as Leap, Xiaopeng, Zeekr, Wenjie and other brands have also grown sharply year-on-year, showing a good situation of "far ahead".

The reality is that despite their outstanding performance, they are all far from the year-end KPI. Coupled with the "declining trend" of joint venture brands, the sales completion of most brands in the auto market is not very satisfactory. Throughout 2023, only a few brands are carnivaling, and more are still in extreme anxiety.

Since December, nearly 20 car companies have been intensively cutting prices, which shows this anxiety at a glance. The industry believes that the price war is still the main theme of the auto market in 2024. For more car companies, if 2023 is a reshuffle, then 2024 will be alive - no profits, but also sales, occupy the market, and live first.

At the same time, the anxiety of various brands is also manifested in another aspect, that is, everyone is more keen to quarrel.

There is a small quarrel for three days, and a big quarrel for five days. Not long ago, the controversy between He Xiaopeng and Yu Chengdong about AEB was still lingering, and there was a-for-tat confrontation between Ideal and NIO in terms of marketing expenses. Today, that is, December 11, Huawei and Great Wall have successively questioned the winter test of a certain car emperor.

Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei's intelligent car solution BU, responded in the circle of friends, saying that the test of the deceitful people misleads the public! Science and rigor are the basic rules that should be followed; the Great Wall will hold a communication meeting called "Fishing Dry", which raised a series of question marks about the winter test standards of a certain car emperor.

That is to say, now it is not only the car companies in the "business mutual conflict", but now the scope has also been expanded, institutional media and self-media are included, a few days ago there was a self-media test formula Leopard 5 fuel consumption overspeed news.

The author does not want to make a judgment on who is right and wrong in the above public opinion war, but just want to say that the car Internet is now full of anxiety all day long. Perhaps after frequent price wars, each family has been exhausted, and there is a momentum of adding fists and feet if they don't agree.

It's just that for consumers, buying a car is a long and complicated decision-making process, and it takes a lot of effort and effort, and now it has added a lot of quarrels and tearing dramas, which is even more lively than the entertainment industry.

The question is, what happened to China's auto market?

The price war has yielded little gain

The initiator of the price war in 2023 is Tesla. On January 6, 2023, Tesla launched an official price cut, and the prices of the Model 3 and Model Y models were significantly adjusted, with a decrease of 20,000 yuan to 48,000 yuan. Then there was the big price cut in March, which affected dozens of provinces and cities across the country, and more than 40 car brands participated before and after.

However, the price reduction did not work as expected. According to the data of the Passenger Car Association, the cumulative retail sales of domestic passenger cars from January to June were 9.528 million units, and 9.261 million units in 2022, an increase of only 3% year-on-year.

As of November, the sales performance of each car brand varied. From January to November, BYD's cumulative sales were 2,683,300 units, with a target completion rate of 89.44%; Geely Automobile's cumulative sales were 1,536,000 units, 93.09% of the annual target of 1,650,000 units; Changan Automobile's cumulative sales were 2,337,900 units, 92.4% of the annual target of 2.53 million units; GAC Group, Chery Group, SAIC Group, and Great Wall Motor had cumulative sales of 2,245,800 units, 1,666,000 units, and 4,383,800 units, respectively. 1,118,200 units, and the annual target completion rates were 85.06%, 83.30%, 73.06%, and 69.88% respectively.

In addition to the ideal completion of the annual target ahead of schedule, the sales target completion rate of the leading new EV manufacturers in 2023 is generally poor. Among them, NIO delivered 142,000 units from January to November, a year-on-year increase of 33.1%, but only 57.95% of the annual target of 245,000 units.

Xpeng delivered a total of 121,400 vehicles in the first 11 months, only 60.7% of the annual target of 200,000 units; from January to November, Leapmotor delivered a total of 125,500 vehicles, completing 62.75% of the annual target of 200,000 units; from January to November, Nezha Automobile delivered 122,400 vehicles, with an annual target achievement rate of only 48.9%.

In other words, except for a few leading car brands, most of the rest are quite difficult to achieve the sales target.

In other words, the price war has been fought for a year, and the sales volume has not been completed, but it has disrupted the entire car market price system. This has been reflected in the repeated price adjustments of car companies.

The price war has been fought so far, and the fight is for whoever has a thicker blood bar and who has more hope of staying at the table.

Wars of words are frequent

When people are impatient, their temper is easy to catch fire, and they are easy to get into a fight. Car companies are similar, they like to fight war of words when they are impatient, so we often see car company executives "firing" on social media, or saying something like "wait for the independent brands to burn to death, and then come to grab the market by themselves", "the new forces will, we will learn in three years, we will, the new forces will not learn in ten years" or-for-tat between brands, such as the Great Wall report BYD, the controversy between He Xiaopeng and Yu Chengdong, Li Xiang is full of fire on Weibo, and the scope of artillery attacks involves the entire industry.

All in all, the content of the war of words of various car companies is very different, but they all basically follow a logic, that is, the words are not shocking and endless, and any sentence that is said is the effect of earth-shattering.

This also illustrates the fact that the whole industry is now highlighting the agitation we mentioned earlier. Car companies hope that their products will quickly get out of the circle, not only to create various topics in communication, but also to dig holes for competitors in the reverse operation, some media are afraid that the world will not be chaotic, out of context things happen from time to time, and sometimes deliberately sit on the ass crookedly, hype up one-sided views, and trigger traffic discussions.

This is also related to the fact that China's auto market has entered the new energy transformation. With the gradual subversion of new energy models on the product of traditional fuel vehicles, the original price system is also collapsing, from the previous electricity ratio is expensive, to the same price of oil and electricity, the future will inevitably appear electricity cheaper than oil; the original marketing channels have also undergone great changes, from the traditional dealers are the mainstream to the current direct sales, the sales link is more transparent; the change of brand communication is even more earth-shaking, the communication channels from the traditional paper media TV to the network new media, and then to the current social media has changed, and the communication content has also changed from the boring introduction of the previous product parameters to the current electric, intelligent experience scenario, emotional value substitution.

What's more prominent is that now executives are personally on the stage for their own products, binding brand communication to their individuals, and personalization and IP make the brand image fuller.

That's the problem. This is just like setting up a stall in the market, it is all Lao Wang selling melons, each with his own way of playing, each with his own routine, it is inevitable that dirty will happen.

The general logic of the competition in the auto market is basically the same, and you can take a closer look.

The people evaluate the car

The current problems in China's auto market are temporary in a sense. Because we are now in the process of new energy transformation. Since it is a transformation, it means that the previous rules are broken, and the new rules are being rebuilt. In such a crack, chaos is inevitable.

When the market competition stabilizes and the rebuilding of order is completed, there will naturally be fewer quarrels between executives and bosses. Only then, the wave of price reductions will be over. If consumers want to experience such a "prosperous consumption era", it is estimated that they will have to wait for the next round of auto market transformation.