Lexus copied Tesla, can it save Japanese luxury brands?

虎嗅APP

2024-07-01 08:52Tiger Sniff APP official account

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01Japanese luxury brand Lexus plans to build a wholly-owned plant in Shanghai to produce electric vehicles under its luxury brand.

02However, Lexus's performance in the Chinese market has fallen into recession, and the competitiveness of new energy vehicle products is insufficient.

03China's electric vehicle supply chain is expected to help Lexus improve product competitiveness and open up new markets.

04On the other hand, there is a problem with the basic plate of Lexus fuel vehicles, and the ES model has a large discount.

05If Lexus builds a wholly-owned plant in Shanghai, it will contribute to the realization of its global electrification strategy.

Technical support is provided by Tencent Hybrid Model

Header picture丨Visual China

Produced by丨Tiger Sniff Automobile Group

The author is thoughtful

In the face of the wave of electrification in full swing on the land of China, Japanese luxury can't help it.

According to Bloomberg, Toyota is pursuing plans to build a wholly-owned plant in Shanghai and is working with the local government for tax breaks. The plant is said to be used to produce electric vehicles under the company's luxury brands.

In other words, Lexus, which has always insisted on not building factories in China, is finally going to open its mouth on electric vehicles.

In this regard, many people in the public opinion field analyzed that even if domestic production is realized, Lexus electric vehicles will still not sell well. However, in the view of Tiger Sniff Automobile, this Japanese luxury brand that has entered the stage of market decline in China, has a high probability that its "domestic" electric vehicles are not designed for Chinese consumers.

The reason why the author came to this conclusion is mainly based on three judgments: first, Lexus is facing great pressure from the price war, and its new energy vehicle products on sale lack sufficient competitiveness; Second, China's EV supply chain empowers Lexus, which helps its products open up new horizons in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Whether it's petrol or electric, Lexus can't quite play

First of all, Lexus's current performance in the Chinese market can be described as "recession", and its products launched in the new energy vehicle track can be described as "out of date". According to the brand's official website, there are only one pure electric vehicle for Lexus on sale in China, RZ, and two plug-in hybrid models, RX 450h+ and NX 400h+.

Among them, the RZ, as a "sister car" on the same platform as Toyota's BZ4X, sold only 1,608 units from January to May this year, which is one-fifth of the monthly sales of its similar-priced model NIO ES6 in May. The latter two sold 786 and 266 units respectively from January to May.

What is the concept? In the first five months of this year, the sales of all new energy vehicles in China have just surpassed the sales of NIO ES6 in the latest week this year. Li Bin said at the end of 2022 that he would surpass Lexus in total sales, although the goal has not yet been achieved, but it is indeed far ahead of the latter on the track of new energy vehicles.

Behind the poor sales is the product power of the twister. The RX 450h+ and NX 400h+ are also very different from the needs of the Chinese automotive market in terms of product definition. At present, Chinese consumers often want plug-in hybrid vehicles to have a higher pure electric range, so that they can use as much electricity as possible in their daily driving, so as to obtain lower cost of use without being bothered by range anxiety.

However, the Lexus RX 450h+, which has a guide price of 549,000 yuan, has a CLTC range of only 83 kilometers, and the slightly lower NX 400h+ has a CLTC range of less than 100 kilometers. In contrast, the Ideal L9, which has a lower guide price and a larger size, has a pure electric range of 280 kilometers under CLTC conditions, which can basically meet the needs of users for a week's commuting.

Not to mention, a series of domestic brands represented by Ideal and Wenjie have accumulated technical and product advantages in the field of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit. Compared with the former, these three new energy vehicles of Lexus don't even look like products of the same era.

What's worse is that while the new energy products lack competitiveness, Lexus's fuel vehicle fundamentals are also in trouble. Its flagship model in China, the ES medium and large sedan, had 45,934 units from January to May this year. Although it increased by 58.2% year-on-year, this is the result of the model's price-for-volume strategy. According to the dealer quotation displayed on the model page of the Chedi model, the Lexus ES has a terminal discount of 50,000 yuan, which is equivalent to an eighty-three discount on the cheapest 2022 200 Excellence Edition.

You must know that after the replacement in 2018, the ES 200, which has a guide price of more than 260,000 yuan, was once increased to 300,000 yuan. Nowadays, everything is changing. The main reason for this phenomenon is, on the one hand, the product power of this car, especially the parameters of the 2.0-liter naturally aspirated engine with 173 horsepower, which is too weak, which is not as good as the lower-priced BMW 3 Series 325i, and on the other hand, the squeeze effect brought about by the collective price reduction of the first-line luxury brands BBA.

At present, the Audi A6L, which is larger in size and harder in brand, has reached the level of 338,000 yuan at a terminal preferential price. How can Lexus, the "leader" of a second-tier luxury brand, compete with the former? Not to mention, there is also a BMW 5 Series with a preferential price of 339,900 yuan.

Of course, all this does not mean that Lexus has completely lost its future in the Chinese market. At the Beijing Motor Show in April this year, Lexus unveiled the LF-ZC (Lexus Future Zero-emission Catalyst) concept model. In this car, two large-size central control and passenger screens are finally installed in the car, which can be regarded as aligned with the needs of the current era.

The problem is that the car is planned to be launched in 2026. So the question is, by that time, what kind of products will be in China's auto market? Can the product power of the Lexus LF-ZC keep up with the pace of competing products?

Toyota is interested in China's electric vehicle industry chain

According to the current Bloomberg revelations, Toyota wants to re-follow Tesla's successful path in Shanghai and build a wholly-owned factory in China. Combined with the above analysis, if Toyota's management can also realize the weak performance of Lexus products in China, relying on China's mature electric vehicle supply chain, it is a rational choice for the company to export products to the world at a lower cost.

You know, Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai exported more than 344,000 new cars in 2023, which helped it make huge profits. According to a report by Nikkei Asia on June 25 this year, Tesla's average net profit per car from January to March this year was about 51,000 yuan, and even after deducting the net profit of more than $5 billion brought by tax incentives, its profit per car was still about 29,000 yuan.

Obviously, Tesla's 95% localization rate at its Shanghai factory has played an important role in its profitability. More importantly, the mainland's good industrial supporting policies have helped Tesla go through the entire process from cooperation signing to mass production of the first new car off the assembly line in only one and a half years. In September last year, the Shanghai Gigafactory, which had only been in operation for more than three years, ushered in the ceremony of the 2 million new cars off the assembly line.

It can be speculated that Lexus also covets Tesla's situation and treatment, and longs for the same path to success. After all, as long as the Chinese market is removed, the brand can be considered "alive" in the rest of the world. According to the official announcement in 2023, the Lexus brand has ushered in a year-on-year growth of more than 20% in markets outside China. Especially in the Middle East, Japan and other parts of East Asia, the year-on-year growth rate has even exceeded 60% or even 100%.

Especially in emerging new energy markets such as the Middle East, Lexus's growth rate has reached the level of 60%, which shows that the region has a strong market identity with this Japanese luxury brand. Combined with the good relations between Japan and Middle Eastern countries and the long-term layout in the past, Lexus is expected to achieve product iterations that are more suitable for its own development rhythm by relying on the new electric vehicles produced by the new factory in China in the next few years.

At the same time, Japan and the European Union signed a free trade agreement in July 2017, under which the two sides agreed to eliminate tariffs on Japanese automobiles within eight years, and by 2025, that is exactly the eight-year period. Although the EU has recently increased its tariffs on car imports from China, Japan is likely to reach similar terms with the EU, given that the region will impose "special tariffs" on Tesla.

Therefore, if Lexus can build a wholly-owned factory in Shanghai, it will be a powerful addition to its global new energy strategy. According to Toyota's plan, by 2030, 3.5 million units of its global car market will be sold from pure electric vehicles. The Lexus brand will also be fully electrified by 2035. Obviously, in Toyota's vision, there is absolutely no need for help from the Chinese auto industry.

It's just that this help is probably at the level of industry rather than sales.

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