BYD is not the source of the "volume", just because BYD is alive and well in the current "volume", it is unfair to criticize it - the college entrance examination is also very "volume", is it the child who took the first exam?
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Recently, China's auto market has been very volatile, and we have had many discussions about "volume".
Some people say that China's auto market is too "volume", the original order of the auto market has been disrupted, the market competition between traditional car companies and new car companies is "white-hot", new energy vehicles continue to squeeze the market share of fuel vehicles, and the profits of single vehicles are continuing to decline. What's more, the importance of "traffic" has been excessively magnified, and the "volume" of hiring water armies and smearing opponents seems a bit smoky.
On the other hand, it is also in the "volume" that has given birth to cost-effective products and accelerated the rapid iteration of technology, so that China's new energy vehicle industry has become "outstanding" in the world and has the strong competitiveness of Chinese car companies in the world.
In the great debate on the "volume", it is normal for everyone to hold different views and express their own opinions. After all, the truth becomes clearer the more it is argued. However, there is a recent article that directly pointed the focus of the discussion to a certain new energy brand, which has turned the discussion into a critical one.
The article is titled "Where are Chinese cars going?", and it is aimed at the most popular and popular brand in China today: BYD.
Although BYD's name is not mentioned anywhere in the whole article, BYD is revealed everywhere between the lines. For example, "I call for a ban on fuel vehicles every day, and I end up building a plug-in car with a bigger fuel tank than a fuel car." Indeed, when the fuel tank of a new energy vehicle is larger than the fuel tank of a pure fuel vehicle of the same level, and its fuel consumption is similar to that of a pure fuel vehicle, we should think about whether it must not only subsidize more than 20,000 yuan because of the plug-in mix with 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity, but also enjoy the purchase tax reduction? This is obviously aimed at the newly launched Qin L and Seal 06 equipped with the fifth-generation DM hybrid.
In fact, BYD is not the initiator of the "volume", let alone the maker of these chaos. Just because BYD has made a big fuel tank for plug-in hybrid models, or because BYD has cut prices for its models many times, it is not rational, neutral and objective to think that BYD is the root of "volume" and roast BYD on the fire.
In the wave of electrification and intelligence, the current Chinese auto market is at the forefront of the world, and the total sales of automobiles are basically flat, showing a trend of stock competition, "involution" is a natural birth, and it can even be said that it is inevitable. Without BYD, there is also another brand that occupies the first place in the sales of new energy vehicles, and there are also other brands that have launched actions on price. If you change the brand, do you have to bear the same kind of verbal criticism?
In fact, BYD is not the first brand to launch a price offensive, nor is it a brand that has to reduce prices to the minimum and even lose money to "make money". At the beginning of last year, the first to launch a "price war" was DPCA, and Tesla also cut prices many times. Now, the most powerful price of "volume" is BMW, Cadillac, and even Volkswagen and Toyota, whose price reductions are not inferior to BYD. There is no doubt that it is not BYD that has set off the trend of "volume". In the past two years, BYD has indeed sold very well, and its market share has grown rapidly. happened to encounter a critical period of new energy transformation, and BYD was saddled with the "original sin"? Outrageous?
It is worth mentioning that the author found that the author of the article "Where is China's Automobile Going" formed a bond with BYD as early as 8 years ago.
At that time, a taxi driver in Taiyuan died suddenly due to illness, and the author spread rumors that he was electrocuted, which was subsequently reprinted and fermented by online media. At that time, BYD specially issued a legal statement on this, and according to the test results, there was no leakage. Subsequently, BYD's legal department intervened to pursue legal responsibility against the author of the article, and the author of the article himself was forced to publicly apologize.
Eight years later, the author of the article once again distorted BYD's market competition behavior with an article "Where are Chinese cars going", and I believe everyone has their own judgment in their hearts.
In addition, "Where Are Chinese Cars Going" also made such a comment on Chinese brands going overseas. The article quoted the President of Bosch China as saying: "If foreign countries are a market with orderly competition, we should not break this order, but through technology and better cars, to occupy a place in it." "He (President of Bosch China) told me about his concern about the volume, and that our involution might block the road to globalization."
We cannot agree with this view. Competition is competition, China can sell its own new energy vehicles with higher battery life, better configuration and excellent quality to the world, isn't this normal market competition? The so-called "orderly competition market" in foreign countries, is it possible that Chinese brands have stolen part of the market share that originally belonged to European, American and Japanese brands, which is called "breaking the order", and will "block the road of their own globalization"? When a multinational brand entered the Chinese auto market and snatched away the home-grown Hongqi and Shanghai cars, did it break China's original "orderly" market?
A normal and open market should not be afraid of competition from outsiders. On the contrary, the United States, the European Union and other countries have introduced special targeted policies for China's new energy vehicles and imposed high tariffs, which is against the normal competition order. Even multinational brands such as BMW and Volkswagen oppose such trade barriers, but China's auto media "reflect" in advance, believing that the Chinese auto brands represented by BYD are too "rolling", and it seems that China is at fault first, which is really incomprehensible.
This article is also aimed at BYD's hybrid technology. The article wrote: "In the first half of electrification, in the Chinese auto market, some car companies relied on electricity + oil, relying on extreme involution to gain the first opportunity, but if such involution continues, without waiting for intelligence to really blossom and bear fruit, the result of bad money driving out good money may lead to an embarrassing scale concentration in the market." The implication is that BYD has won the market just by relying on hybrid technology, and "bad money drives out good money".
Such an idea is not only unfair to BYD, but also despises the Chinese market and Chinese consumers.
BYD has no technical barriers in the field of hybrid technology, and it is by no means a monopoly on hybrid technology, why can BYD rely on hybrid technology to sell well? Among them, there are reasons why BYD is firmly optimistic about and continues to develop plug-in hybrid technology, and more importantly, BYD's plug-in hybrid technology can meet the needs of most Chinese consumers at the moment. Many years ago, when BYD's sales were not bright, BYD led by Wang Chuanfu was able to stick to new energy and plug-in hybrids, which was recognized by Chinese consumers today in 2024. It is because Chinese consumers need plug-in hybrids, so BYD, which has a certain advantage in plug-in hybrids, sells well. Imagine if BYD's vision was not good enough and it bet not on plug-in hybrids, but on large-displacement internal combustion engines, what would critics say? In fact, "Where Are Chinese Cars Going" reverses cause and effect here, and one-sidedly obliterates BYD's efforts and success in technology and strategy.
"Where Are Chinese Cars Going" ridiculed and opposed the fifth-generation DM hybrid's "fuel tank is larger than that of a gasoline car", arguing that such a model should not be entitled to purchase tax relief. However, the fifth-generation DM hybrid has only 2.9L/100km fuel consumption. The new energy vehicles encouraged by the state should be models with low emissions and low energy consumption, rather than one-sidedly looking at whether the fuel tank is big or small. In other words, if the fifth-generation DM hybrid "fuel tank is bigger than the gasoline car" is absurd and the energy consumption is not good enough, then Chinese consumers will also vote with their purchase behavior. It is unfair to criticize this with a subjective view.
"If the competition is fought through involution, car companies will quickly reshuffle their cards, the market will be rapidly concentrated, and oligopolies will be quickly produced, and such oligopolies will eventually damage the interests of consumers and lead to the decline of the industry." This is another corollary of "Where are Chinese cars going".
Such an inference is also inconsistent with the history of the development of the automotive industry and contrary to logic. Historically, there have been many more car brands in Europe and the United States than there are now, taking the United States as an example, hundreds of car companies have emerged in the past 100 years, and now the only ones with large sales are Ford, General Motors, FCA (which has merged with PSA to become Stellantis) and Tesla's "Big Four". The history of the automotive industry in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, which are Europe's automotive powers, is similar. The development process of the automobile industry is originally a process of survival of the fittest of brands, and it is normal that the number of mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy will decrease in a certain historical period. As long as it is through normal market competition, what remains is the "essence", not the oligarchs; Not to mention that it will inevitably "damage the interests of consumers" and "lead to the decline of the industry". Volkswagen has long accounted for a quarter of the market share in Europe, and Toyota's share in Japan is more than 30%, have the interests of local consumers been infringed? Is the automotive industry in Germany and Japan declining?
In a word, BYD did not invent new energy, let alone invent "volume". Just because BYD is alive and well in the current "volume", it is unfair to criticize it. For example, everyone knows that education in China is very volatile at present, and most children and even parents are miserable about it. But to educate less "volume", it is by no means a matter of pulling out the best children who learn the best and scolding them, which can be easily solved.
Not to mention, as we said before, "the flowers in the greenhouse can't withstand the wind and rain", for normal market competition, there is actually no need to worry too much. BYD currently occupies less than 20% of the market share, which is still very early from "monopoly". If this is called "volume", then this "volume" is the only way to accelerate the catalysis of world-class automobile brands and realize the take-off of Chinese automobiles.