During the National Day holiday in 2024, China's new energy vehicle market is destined to set off a bloody scramble.
In the past week or so, almost every day, a new car brand of a new domestic power car brand will be launched. At its craziest, there were 3 new car launches with no less than 500 people on the same night. Many new cars have been released before they even have time to invite the media to shoot videos introducing the models. Many automotive media practitioners said that they didn't have time just to attend the press conference, and many new cars were not familiar with them.
Some car executives also said that the timing of the launch of new cars has indeed been "adjusted". But the adjustment is not to avoid its edge, but to lead to a-for-tat situation.
The reason is not complicated: every company must rush to put the latest test drive into offline stores before the National Day holiday.
Automobiles are a large consumer product with a long decision-making cycle, and offline stores are crucial to the sales process. In recent years, most of the stores of new power brands have gathered in the core supermarkets of first- and second-tier cities.
The-for-tat is also reflected in the product itself.
Most of the new models launched in late September are mid-size five-seater NEV SUVs, which are in direct competition with each other. What's more, they will have to face one of the biggest rivals in this segment: the 2023 sales champion in China and the world, the Tesla Model Y.
What does it mean for a domestic new energy SUV to "besiege Guangmingding" in 2024? And they, will they succeed this time?
"Old" sales crown, new opportunities
The Model Y can definitely be regarded as a "wonderful flower" in today's era of smart electric vehicles.
Since global deliveries began in March 2020, Tesla has barely made a major upgrade to it, aside from its regular annual facelift.
But it is such an old car, which many people consider to be "sold for 4 years", but it has always maintained a super high market growth rate: data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that since the delivery of the domestically produced Model Y in 2021, the annual sales of the Model Y in the domestic market have been 169,800, 315,300, and 646,800 respectively in the past three years - almost doubling every year.
By the end of 2023, the Model Y has also surpassed Japan's two classic Toyota models, the RAV-4 and Corolla, to become the best-selling model of the year in the global market.
Model Y is the best-selling model in China in 2023 | Image source: Tesla Weibo
Compared with the new domestic competitors, the Model Y has a more mature system advantage on the production side. It is based on Tesla's Model 3, another Volkswagen model released in 2016, which can not only reuse about 75% of the parts, but also the experience accumulated by the former in model development and large-scale production, and the pitfalls that have been stepped on in the latter.
Specifically, in terms of products, the most prominent embodiment of R&D advantages is power consumption management. Previously, in order to achieve the same range as the Model Y, domestic products of the same level needed to use a battery pack at least 20 degrees larger - according to the calculation of the battery cell as low as 0.4 yuan/Wh in 2024, the BOM cost of the 20-degree battery pack is about 10,000 yuan, and it should be more expensive in previous years. So for a long time, Tesla is also the one with the highest gross profit margin among pure electric models. As a result, it can easily respond to or even initiate a price war.
But compared with the new domestic forces, Tesla's biggest problem is "not listening to persuasion". The vast majority of Chinese consumers prefer larger cars with more equipment, and for this reason, many joint venture brands have also launched "special models" with longer wheelbases and more space in recent years. But no matter how consumers complain about Tesla's "rough house" interior, Musk has never made any changes to it.
In addition, as a global technology company, Tesla's advantages in intelligence have never been fully realized into product strength in the Chinese market - the industry-unanimously recognized intelligent driving function FSD has not been able to land in China, and Tesla's intelligent voice is the same as Apple's Siri, and there has always been a lack of sufficient tacit understanding with Chinese users.
The "disadvantage" of the Model Y is the opportunity for new energy vehicles in China.
Li Bin and Ai Tiecheng personally delivered the new car to the first batch of users of Ledao L60 Image source: Ledao Automotive
Domestic competitors seem to know how to provide users with a more considerate intelligent experience. In addition to the smoother Chinese voice assistant, a series of subtle features have been dug out. For example, the recently launched Ledao L60 and ZEEKR 7X have launched smart child seats that can be connected to the car machine. The front passenger can directly turn on the ventilation function of the child seat through the car machine, or directly call the car camera to observe the situation of the baby in the rear seat. These features are subtle but a plus for home users.
Ai Tiecheng, president of Ledao Automobile, once said that in order to understand the needs of users, he has personally surveyed more than 550 families in the past three years. In the era of mobile Internet, there have been a number of stories of enterprises that rely on accurate insight into user needs to win the market. Now, the same strategy seems to be continuing in the smart tram industry.
At the level of intelligent driving, with the investment in R&D and the end-to-end technological change, domestic new power car companies have also handed over excellent answers. At present, Huawei, Xpeng, and NIO have all pushed intelligent pilot assisted driving functions that can be used nationwide.
As for other features such as 800V fast charging and seat ventilation and massage that are not available on the Model Y, almost all of them are standard on the competition. This is the familiar "leapfrog play" of domestic new forces in recent years, that is, giving a better configuration at the same price, surrounding the Model Y, and domestic players have taken a step forward in terms of product software and hardware strength.
Revelation of the Xiaomi SU7
In fact, before the "six major factions besieged Guangming Ding", the new domestic forces had also launched some products that benchmarked against the Model Y.
The Xpeng G6 and Jiyue 01 released in 2023 are typical examples of this. In terms of product strength, whether it is space, energy consumption management, or intelligent driving experience, both have achieved the same level as Model Y. The former is also equipped with an 800V ultra-fast charging architecture, which is the first in its class in terms of energy replenishment speed.
However, in terms of actual sales, none of the previous competitors has actually shaken the Model Y's leading position in the electric SUV market.
Deliveries of the Model Y, which began in 2021, are sometimes simply described as "three years ahead," but the lead may be more than that. As the world's first wave of players to re-invest in electric vehicles, Musk and Tesla have a significant first-mover advantage.
As early as 2014, the imported Tesla Model S entered the Chinese market, and Lei Jun, Li Xiang, Li Bin and others were all early Tesla owners. It can be said that Tesla has created a high-end and innovative brand image with Musk's individual image of a super geek from the beginning, and it is still enjoying the dividends of a pioneer.
On the other hand, Tesla also has a clear advantage in timing in terms of product layout.
In January 2021, the Model Y produced by the Shanghai Gigafactory was delivered in China for the first time. At that time, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China was only 6.8% (now it has reached 53.6%), and NIO and Xpeng only had 3 and 2 models on sale, respectively, the former positioned as high-end, the latter did not yet have SUV models in the same class, and other players such as Zeekr, Zhiji, and Hongmeng Zhixing have not yet officially entered the market.
For a long time, the Model Y was almost the only EV SUV model in China's new energy market, and it has long established a strong brand image and recognition. Therefore, it is very difficult to win the Model Y just by comparing the parameters and configuration of the product itself.
The Xiaomi SU7 has become a fierce rival to the Tesla Model 3 in the current pure electric sedan market Image source: Lei Jun Weibo
On the contrary, instead of going head-to-head, Lei Jun and Xiaomi SU7 have come up with another competitive idea: bypass the SUV models preferred by Chinese consumers, and first make efforts in the more "niche" sedan field to build up enough recognition of the new brand.
Such a choice will naturally be questioned by many before the product is launched. Because from past market experience, Chinese consumers generally prefer SUVs with more space, and the sedan market is too small.
In the previous 10 years, Xiaomi was extremely adept at combining extensive product research to define its products. But as for how to choose the direction of the first model, Lei Jun this time focuses on one who does not listen to persuasion and resolutely does not make an SUV.
In his review, Lei described this strategy as a "diagonal tactic". He believes that if you follow the traditional way of thinking and start with a large-space SUV, you will not only have to face the Model Y, but also have a high probability of crashing headlong into the encirclement of Ideal and Huawei - although the two take range extension as the main form of power, they firmly occupy the forefront of the current sales of China's new energy market with large space, intelligence and comfortable configuration.
Another advantage of "diagonal tactics" is that they can jam a good product. When the Xiaomi SU7 was launched, there were not many products of the same level (i.e., pure electric sedans) on the market, except for the Model 3, only a few competing products such as the NIO ET5 and Xpeng P7.
This point is very close to the idea of the ideal release of the ideal ONE in 2019, when there was no new energy SUV on the market, and no one was optimistic about the range extension technology.
After determining the direction, we will slowly release Xiaomi's marketing ability to gain insight into users. Since the space can't compare to the SUV, the Xiaomi SU7 focuses on appearance; Ordinary users can't understand the complex terms in battery technology, and the Xiaomi SU7 talks about sun protection. These seemingly deviant ways of playing actually capture the core pain points of target users. In many subsequent models, the keynote speakers of each press conference also followed the essence of "Lei Xue", dismantling every small function of the vehicle as much as possible, in order to win more goodwill and recognition from users.
In July 2024, data from the Passenger Association showed that the Xiaomi SU7 surpassed the Tesla Model 3 in a single month in terms of monthly deliveries, becoming the sales champion of pure electric cars with more than 200,000 yuan. Xiaomi relied on the "diagonal tactic" to make a good start to the showdown between domestic brands and Tesla.
Trams beat each other, and it was the oil car that died?
At the end of this round, each company released the latest sales data:
- The Zhijie R7 and AVATR 07 equipped with Huawei's Hongmeng Intelligent Driving Intelligent Cabin System both exceeded 11,000 units within a week of their launch
- Although the Ledao L60 and Zeekr 7X, which were released a week earlier, did not announce specific figures, their respective executives have expressed "explosive orders" and "exceeded expectations" on different occasions
It seems that each family has made a satisfactory start.
It is worth mentioning that the increase in orders from various companies did not directly affect Tesla's sales. According to the third-party organization "Che FANS", Tesla's orders rose instead of falling last week, and it is expected to continue to maintain sales of about 45,000 units this month; What's even more interesting is that the Xpeng G6, the "old model" that benchmarked against the Model Y in the last round, also saw a rapid increase in orders last week, exceeding 4,000 units, close to 60% of the model's sales in the entire month of August.
Therefore, in the huge market of automobiles, the entry of new players may not necessarily bring short-term rapid and direct competition. On the contrary, the attention and traffic they bring can often affect some new users who are on the fence about smart trams.
The same story happened before and after the launch of the M7 last year and the Xiaomi SU7 this year, and the huge traffic of Huawei and Xiaomi has also driven more users to enter the store offline to learn about the product.
At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, the popular Xiaomi Auto booth | Image source: Visual China
And offline traffic is exactly what these new brands need most.
Because in terms of product power, the new forces believe that at least compared with the same price of oil vehicles, they can achieve "far ahead". I'm not afraid that consumers will have prejudices about trams, but I'm afraid that you won't give you the opportunity to "flex your muscles".
On the second day of the release of the L60, Li Bin, chairman of NIO, once again mentioned the advantages of the BaSS solution (i.e., the car purchase plan with the separation of vehicle and electricity) for NIO and Ledao to compete for fuel car swap users. Buying Ledao with the BaSS scheme is equivalent to buying a 149,900 yuan oil truck, and the monthly battery rental cost of 480 yuan is relative to a tank of fuel money, while in the traditional oil truck of 149,900 yuan, Li Bin has absolute confidence in the space of his products in terms of intelligence and large space.
Therefore, the merging of the Model Y is just an open conspiracy, and the real competition has been launched in the market with traditional joint venture fuel vehicles. In August 2024, for every 100 units sold in China, there were more than 53 NEV models. In today's market, there is no longer a discussion of "the same price of gasoline and electricity", and smart electric vehicles are impacting the price system of traditional fuel vehicles with new product capabilities.
This is very similar to the competition between the domestic Android camp and the iPhone for more than 10 years. At that time, the first to fall was Nokia, which fell behind in the era of intelligence.