5 kinds of plug-in hybrid technology, once Lexus is domestically produced, the range extension within 300,000 yuan will be eliminated?

Luka cars

2024-07-03 10:12Creators in the automotive field

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01 Lexus may be produced in Shanghai in China, further reducing the price to compete for the range extender model.

02Toyota is seeking a new round of cooperation in the Chinese market, such as wholly-owned factories and new joint ventures.

03The market outlook is worrisome due to the weak resistance of range-extender models in the face of plug-in hybrids with declining costs.

04At the same time, Toyota is introducing the intelligent cockpit to Huawei to improve the competitiveness of Lexus in the Chinese market.

05 If Lexus still adopts a confident price strategy after making it in China, its domestic production may not be successful.

Technical support is provided by Tencent Hybrid Model

Whether Lexus is making domestic production in Shanghai or building a wholly Chinese-owned factory, now only the news that Tsuneji Sato is on a plane to China is missing.

"Akio Toyoda has always come to China to participate in activities, and he has always done a lot of things together, so there will be big news every time." This is the consensus of the automotive media industry.

In fact, before the start of the Toyota GR Carnival at the end of June, there was speculation that he would come to China after a lapse of four years, although he stepped down from his previous role, but I believe that it was not as simple as coming to Shanghai to play a few drifts.

In 2010, Akio Toyoda, in his second year in power, apologized to Chinese users for the recall of 700,000 units in Beijing, followed by a deep embrace of the Chinese market;

In 2011, Akio Toyoda led Toyota's R&D center in China, followed by the introduction of a large number of new cars, and three years later, Japanese cars began to gain momentum in China.

In 2019, Akio Toyoda came to China to promote the landing and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the Chinese market;

After the end of the three-year epidemic, Akio Toyoda in 2023 stepped down as president of Toyota Motor Co., Ltd., became chairman of the board, and stepped down as chairman of the Japan Association of Automobile Manufacturers. As the boss of the world's largest automobile group, Akio Toyoda came to China, and the logic is actually the same as Musk's. As for what Musk promotes, now everyone knows that it is FSD's ice-breaking and landing in China.

Valuing China's industrial chain, Lexus's price reduction journey

"Tesla settled in Lingang District, and Lexus may settle in Jinshan District." Based on the 14th Five-Year Plan, the media has analyzed the location of the settlement. Everyone understands that Toyota wants to take deeper roots in China, not because of the high labor price, but because of the innovative application ability that is mature and throws off the first gear of other countries in the world, or the ability to roll up.

Bloomberg first reported the news, and key information included that Toyota was in contact with the Shanghai government to discuss the possibility of creating a new wholly-owned subsidiary. Toyota hopes to be 100% wholly-owned, avoiding the trade-off with FAW GAC, and hopes that the fire Tesla is 100% wholly-owned. In terms of the operation mode of the new plant/company, Toyota hopes to invest separately to avoid many bottlenecks of joint ventures in China, and also save the trade-off between the interests of FAW Toyota and GAC Toyota.

The most important thing is to follow Tesla's model and get special treatment in China, including low tax rates, support from Shanghai and land concessions. Tesla's $2 billion in China was backed by loans from Shanghai.

In short, it is only preliminary communication and negotiation now, and there will be higher approvals in the future, and before the official announcement, Lexus is still in the stage of doubts about the construction of a wholly-owned factory in China.

However, judging from Toyota's moves, more and more global car companies are seeking a new round of cooperation after 30 years of joint venture dividends in China. For example, in 2017, Volkswagen Anhui was established, with Volkswagen Group holding 75% of the shares, and the first car will be officially launched this year; In 2022, BMW completed a 75% stake in BMW Brilliance in China. In addition to the holdings, the new joint venture also includes a €1.5 billion acquisition of a 20% stake in Leapmotor by SPA's parent company, and a $700 million subscription by Volkswagen in 2023 for a 4.99% stake in Xpeng Motors.

In addition, it is also rumored that Mercedes-Benz wants to inject further capital, following the holding of BMW, and during the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, it is rumored that General Motors is facing fierce competition in China and feels weak, and wants to follow Tesla's example in the Chinese market to promote the Dougland brand, which is similar to Toyota's model this time.

Obviously, this is the trend of the moment, and there will be more in the future. Because, starting from 2019, the sales share of joint venture brands has declined from 60.8% to 55.6%, and then to 44% in 2023, which has been overtaken by Chinese brands. So far in 2024, the share of joint venture vehicle sales in May has further declined to 28.8%.

If you can't keep up with or choose not to follow the involution of domestic cars, if you can't make some substantial new behavior, the answer left to the multinational giants is very clear, that is, they are highly marginalized in the Chinese market, or leave. And the price of leaving behind is to sell hundreds of thousands or even millions fewer cars every year. In 2023, Honda sold 1,234,200 units in China, Toyota 1,907,000 units, Nissan 793,800 units, General Motors 2.1 million units, and Ford 467,000 units.

In short, it is not easy to cut such a market, and the price paid is also visible to the naked eye. As for what kind of cars Lexus wants to build in China, this is obviously a more valuable topic. The news given in the leak is that it is pure electric and plug-in hybrid. The purpose is also very clear, focusing on China's mature and sufficiently volatile upstream and downstream supply chain of new energy vehicles.

In fact, the approach is also simple, and there are two magic weapons in the automobile business model, cost and capital. The cost is the ability to control the cost with exclusive technology, and the capital is money, which can be continuously injected with blood. Obviously, Lexus will not leave the word "price reduction" in the cloud of domestic production in China.

Of course, this is not just to keep Lexus alive in the Chinese market, but to learn from Tesla's operation and let Lexus's new energy harvest the world. Relying on a mature industrial chain, the Shanghai factory will build 950,000 Teslas in 2023, more than half of its global production capacity, and according to Nikkei Asia's analysis, in the first three months of 2024, the profit of a single car will be about 30,000 yuan after tax deduction.

In addition to exporting 344,000 new vehicles in 2023, the Shanghai plant sold more than 600,000 vehicles in China. This, naturally, is what Lexus wants to do.

Let's take a look at what Lexus or Toyota Group has to offer exclusive or leading technologies right now. First, the all-solid-state battery, which will not spontaneously combust and has a range of more than 1,000 kilometers, is shattering its myth, and the laboratory data of a full charge of 5 minutes before was now changed to 10 minutes at Toyota's press conference. And, 2027-2028 will be close to or small-scale mass production. As a comparison, in 2021, some car companies are already starting to try 6C batteries, and the final test result is 16 minutes of full charge. Moreover, Chinese consumers have found that this legendary technology is not good in ordinary charging piles, and if you want the highest efficiency, you have to use dedicated charging piles.

Second, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Toyota is the first car company in the world to mass-produce this technology, and the pain point of mass production is that the cost of polymer material separators is too high to be commercialized. Hyundai-Kia followed suit, but so far, the technology has been delayed due to the fact that the cost of supporting facilities and hydrogen fuel itself is more expensive than fuel.

The ultimate victim, will it be the extended range?

In short, if Lexus is made in China, with the current technology, it is difficult for it to take the lead in the Chinese market with its technical reserves in pure electric vehicles. Therefore, the focus of its efforts in the Chinese market is naturally plug-in hybrids.

The price will be lowered, then the question is how much. For reference, at the end of June, GAC Toyota put out a set of official data on its own science and technology day, through which the core technology and parts were completed in local production, Toyota reduced the cost of the motor, electronic control and battery of the gasoline-electric hybrid by 30%, and the price of some models was reduced by 40,000 yuan.

Correspondingly, if only the localization of gasoline-electric hybrid can reduce the cost by 30%, bringing about a price drop of 40,000 yuan. Then, the proportion of plug-in hybrids that are completely domestically produced will only be larger, because the low cost of batteries in China is indeed a greater advantage.

At the GAC Toyota Technology Day, it was announced that the new plug-in hybrid SUV will be launched in October, and subsequently, the media found that this is most likely a plug-in hybrid version of the Toyota Crown Signia. Currently, the MSRP price for this model in the U.S. market starts at $44,000, and the highest price is $51,000 after the option. If it is directly converted into RMB, the range is about 320,000-370,000 yuan. However, from the horizontal comparison of its competitors in the U.S. market, the models in the same price range are Hyundai Shengda (202,800-269,800 yuan for the Chinese version) and Nissan Loulan (238,800-488,800 yuan for the Chinese version).

In the process of selling the two models in the Chinese market, the actual entry price of the naked car is less than 200,000 yuan, in other words, in the face of today's sales pressure, GAC Toyota directly introduced it in the form of plug-in hybrid, in fact, it is also aimed at the corresponding market of 20-250,000 yuan.

The plug-in hybrid version of RAV4 currently has an entry price of less than 200,000 yuan, but the market is not hot enough. Although the Toyota Crown Signia is slightly larger than the RAV4, Toyota itself actually understands that if it enters the game with a high premium of the previous brand, whether it is against the ideal L6 or the M7, it is actually in vain. These two explosive models in the Chinese market prove that the demand and perception of Chinese consumers today is that the price of a new energy hybrid SUV with a length of about 5 meters and a wheelbase of about 2.9 meters and above is between 25-280,000 yuan.

Also, if you look at Toyota's hybrid technology library, there are actually more possibilities. The transverse engines are THS and Hybrid MAX, as well as the four-wheel drive variant of the THS, the E-Four, and the longitudinal multi-stage hybrid, i-FORCE MAX. In other words, it can use at least 5 technical reserves to do plug-in mixing, with different costs and prices.

Which market will Lexus target? The answer, in fact, is self-evident. At least it will be a segment with good market capacity and high profits. Moreover, from the establishment of the brand to the present, the rule of Lexus is that it is a little better than Toyota's high-end everywhere.

As a result, it can be seen that if its wholly-owned domestic production comes true, and logically, Lexus's plug-in gangsters will have the power to fight in China. Then, the follow-up expectation will be that the extended range will hurt the most.

From the innate technical point of view, as long as the price and configuration can be basically the same, the range extension is only disadvantaged and has no advantages. This is also the main reason why range extension has long been called a transitional technology and has been ignored by German and Japanese car companies.

Because it can only be connected in series, and the range extender cannot break through the limit of thermal efficiency, the current market has a better performance of the question and ideal, and there is a situation that the fuel consumption is not low in hybrid mode. The fuel consumption of the M7 pure feed (pure electric range exhausted) tested by the owner is basically above 10L/100km. For ordinary high-speed use, the fuel consumption is about 8L/100km.

After the facelift, the performance of the ideal car is slightly better than that of the M7, the fuel consumption of the Li L7 is kept within 10L/100 km, and the fuel consumption is further 0.5L or more lower than that of the Wenjie in hybrid mode. However, these pairs of plug-in mixers are not very good enough at present.

For example, after GAC Toyota's Technology Day, there are more and more discussions about fuel consumption and technology, and Toyota's gasoline-electric hybrid energy can deliver a performance within 3L/100 km, which is an area that cannot be achieved by range extension. Therefore, when BYD's fifth-generation DM technology was launched, there was a new point of view in the industry that "the range extension within 300,000 is not a big way out".

In addition, from the Lexus NX plug-in hybrid model, the 16-degree battery capacity provides 76 kilometers of WLTC pure electric range, the curb weight is 1.94 tons, and the minimum fuel consumption is 5.21L/100 kilometers. In order to prepare a long battery life, the battery capacity of the M7 and the ideal L6 is above 36 degrees, and the curb weight has also rushed to more than 2.3 tons.

and research and development in the field of internal combustion engine technology. For example, after Deep Blue Automobile shouted "completely independent and in-depth mastery of the core technology of the engine" and created a variety of first-class super range extensions, there was almost no opposition in the industry, which is true. And if you hand over this issue to Toyota's plug-in hybrid, the answer is the same.

Write at the end

Therefore, things are still back to the original point, and the resistance of the extended-range model is actually weak in the face of the plug-in hybrid of the cost drop. As for topics such as intelligence, Toyota's current approach, as well as Lexus domestic rumors, clearly point out one point, Huawei. GAC Toyota has introduced the intelligent cockpit of the new car to Huawei, and the intelligent driving hardware has introduced the same lidar as the M9. And the rumored statement of Lexus is that Huawei is being considered.

Then, when the cost of Toyota + Huawei + plug-in hybrid + China lands, the injured ones will naturally bear the brunt of the range increase. Of course, everything depends on the final price, if it is still the confidence of the previous fan, or holding the crown against BBA, then such a domestic production, it is okay not to come.

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