Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Original title: Why do Chinese people love battery cars?

Of all the vehicles, battery cars are the most suitable means of transportation for villages and towns.

In my opinion, battery cars, or electric bicycles, are the most embarrassing of all vehicles.

If divided by type, battery cars belong to "non-motor vehicles," but compared with pure human bicycles, battery cars are often more "wild."

It rides on non-motor vehicle lanes, occasionally appears on motor vehicle lanes in order to overtake, and even occasionally appears on sidewalks.

In addition to the spontaneous combustion in the elevator of the battery car and the safety problems brought by its branch electric balance car, no matter what kind of vehicle users, there are many complaints about the battery car.

Tracing back to the source, all this is related to the inherent genes of battery cars.

In this issue, let's review the development of battery cars in the past 20 or 30 years. My personal views on battery cars will be put at the end.

01 Early battery cars can fire up, the most direct stimulus factor is "limited friction."

In 1985, Beijing pioneered measures to limit motorcycles, including stopping license plates and preventing motorcycles from entering the Third Ring Road. However, as we all know, many restrictions will always have specific problems and specific restrictions when they are implemented, among which there is considerable flexibility.

It will not be until after 2000 that the tide of limiting motorcycles will really rise nationwide. In those years, major provincial capitals issued relevant measures for six consecutive years, either stopping issuing licenses or restricting travel by region. For example, Hangzhou and Wuhan have banned motorcycle since 2002.

Also at the end of 2002, the Ministry of Transportation issued a new regulation that requires a driver's license for motorcycles on the road, which undoubtedly limits motorcycle sales.

All kinds of changes in the external environment prompted the battery car market to usher in a big outbreak.

Moreover, battery cars are easier to use than motorcycles. As long as you can ride a bicycle, you can basically use battery cars.

On the other hand, although there is a "national standard" introduced in 1999, due to the rapid development of the battery car market, the relevant provisions of the national standard are not in line with reality and do not have mandatory legal effect. Therefore, for a long time, the management of battery cars in China was basically in a state of "laissez-faire" and "disorder."

In earlier years, you rode a battery bike and no one would check if you were wearing a helmet or speeding.

Therefore, over the years, the battery car industry has formed a lot of unwritten hidden rules in the development process. For example, in order to maintain battery life and speed up, many dealers will modify batteries for customers and provide decoding acceleration services. If I remember correctly, the highest speed a battery car could go in the past was 60.

From the perspective of urban management, this dangerous and wandering behavior in gray areas certainly needs to be severely punished, but these messy phenomena do exist until better solutions are introduced.

The price of a battery car was much cheaper than a 10,000 block motorcycle. There are less than 1,000 ultra-low prices, there are also common two or three thousand basic market prices. More than a decade ago, when most families did not have cars, battery cars were the best means of transportation.

A series of battery car brands that are now well known in China are mostly rising at that stage.

Interestingly, the explosion of the battery car market is actually unexpected, so many battery car manufacturers are switching.

They either used to do motorcycle business, or used to sell bicycles, get the moon first, resell battery cars can directly use the previous motorcycle or bicycle sales team and sales channels, greatly reducing the cost of starting a business.

As the core technologies related to electric vehicles such as motors and batteries tend to mature and stabilize, the threshold for manufacturing electric vehicles is further lowered, making more people join the market and want to share a piece of the pie.

That was the brutal growth period of the battery car market expansion. Most consumers, however, initially bought electric cars just for convenience and did not have much awareness of brands.

02 In the battery car industry, the first brand to start is Xinri.

Its founder is Wenzhou rich second generation Zhang Chongshun. Born in 1969, he took over the family business at the age of 16, gave full play to his business talent, and managed the hardware business of his family well. At the age of 20, he went to Hainan and opened a parts factory, which later became the largest supplier of motorcycle parts in New Continent.

Zhang Chongshun In 1995, Zhang Chongshun had earned tens of millions of dollars. Originally, he planned to start a motorcycle monopoly again, but various external factors prompted him to turn his attention to the emerging battery car.

In 1999, Zhang Chongshun established the brand of Xinri electric vehicle in Beijing, and 2000 battery cars were listed at the end of that year. In 2004, Xinri produced and sold 100,000 vehicles, entering the top ten in the industry. However, compared with the total production capacity of 6 million vehicles in that year, it can be seen that its market share is not much.

The real change came at the end of 2006. Xinri invited Jackie Chan to become the brand image spokesperson of its electric vehicle. The signing ceremony was also held in the Information Hall of the Great Hall of the People. Its high-profile brand image is self-evident.

Jackie Chan then shot an advertisement for the new electric car, and the phrase "Where there is sunshine, there is a new electric car" highlights the sports, green and environmental concepts advocated by the new electric car. The girl who partnered with Jackie Chan in the advertisement was Yang Mi, who was still in high school at that time.

In 2007, Xinri's production and sales reached 1.1 million units, becoming the first in the industry. As a brand that hasn't gone bankrupt even with Jackie Chan's endorsement, Xinri can be said to be very tough.

Until 2009, Xinri met Emma, a rising star. Emma electric bike was founded in Tianjin in 1999 by Zhang Jian and Duan Hua, but they started out as a bicycle business and began reselling battery cars in 2004.

In the first two years, Emma's sales market was mainly concentrated in Tianjin, and it had not yet established brand awareness radiating the whole country, just like many other battery car brands.

In 2009, Emma changed her strategy and concentrated on signing Jay Chou at a high price of 30 million yuan.

I think everyone is familiar with the series of Emma commercials shot by Jay Chou. I have to say,"Love, act now" this homophonic advertising word does have a certain inflammatory.

Jay Chou has already spoken, don't you buy it yet?

Emma went from a regional brand to a national brand. An intuitive data change is that in 2006, Emma sold only 150,000 vehicles, but by 2010, sales reached 2.2 million vehicles, overtaking Xinri to become the industry's first, and has been in the leading position since then until 2016.

To some extent, it was not Emma who defeated Xinri, but Jay who defeated Jackie Chan. In the battery car market mixed, manufacturers once as many as 2000 years, who first let the country more consumers know, who can make consumers more impressed, who can get more market share.

Among them, there is also a brand worth mentioning, namely Yadi. Like Emma electric cars, Yadi is also a husband and wife start-up, founded by Dong Jinggui and his wife in 1997, began selling motorcycles and resold battery cars in 2001.

Unlike Emma and Xinri's spokesmen, Yadi's killer in the battery car industry is low prices.

The reason why Yadi has been able to play steadily for many years is to use low prices as a breakthrough. It takes the middle and low-end route, aiming at the third, fourth and fifth tier cities, and this is the gathering place of mainstream consumers of battery cars.

In comparison, Yadi's distribution points are also the most complete and most extensive among the brands. The consumption scene of battery car is often just because when you want to buy a battery car, you find that there is an Yadi near your home, and then you buy it.

However, several battery car brands at the head of the industry, their sales gap is not significant. In 2016, for example, Emma, which was still No.1, sold 4 million vehicles, while Yadi sold 3.2 million vehicles, a difference of only 800,000.

And these two, plus Xinri, and Taiwan Bell, the combined market share of the four brands is only 28%. It can be seen that although the battery car industry has developed rapidly for more than ten years, its market concentration is not high.

However, the entire electric vehicle industry has ushered in some new changes around 2016.

This is mainly due to the emergence of younger, higher-end and, of course, more expensive electric vehicles represented by Mavericks.

One of the Mavericks 'selling points is the use of a lighter lithium battery that claims to last up to 100 kilometers.

At that time, more than 90% of the electric vehicle market used lead-acid batteries, and the penetration rate of lithium batteries was only about 8%. The difference between lead-acid batteries and lithium batteries is that lead-acid batteries store energy from lead, lead dioxide and sulfuric acid, so they are heavier and store only 1/5 of the energy of lithium batteries of the same weight, with a life span of about two or three years. Lithium batteries are lighter, larger, and have a longer service life, about four or five years.

It turned out that the Mavericks had made the right move. The new national standard, which began to be officially implemented in April 2019, has made new regulations on the speed and weight of electric vehicles. Those old electric vehicles have a high probability that only lithium batteries can meet the requirements.

However, in terms of safety, lithium batteries are worse than lead-acid batteries.

Mavericks are clearly the product of the Internet wave, targeting younger target groups. Whether it was Yadi, Emma or Xinri before, in fact, there was not much effort in product design. A large number of battery cars were on the road, and you couldn't tell whose it was. At that time, many young people did not want to ride electric bikes to and from work because it was too ugly. And the emergence of the calf is to compensate for this market.

The traditional electric car brands, such as Yadi, also shouted the slogan of "high-end electric cars", changing the low-cost model that had been extended for many years.

On the one hand, Yadi has invited new spokesmen, from Lee Min Ho to Hu Ge to family hero Van Diesel. But think about it carefully, one of the paradoxes of battery cars looking for spokesmen is that none of these stars must ride battery cars.

On the other hand, since 2015, Yadi has sold a number of electric vehicles priced at more than 4000 yuan. In March 2016, the brand-new Z3 sold for 8588 yuan.

Whether it is a traditional battery car brand representative or a new generation of Internet battery car brands, all kinds of new ways of playing, it seems that there is a trend to package the battery car as an ordinary transportation tool into a high-end intelligent product. Especially after the new energy concept fire.

But the fact is, from the current battery car market, such as Mavericks, No.9, these so-called intelligent high-end electric vehicles account for very little market share.

Take last year as an example, Yadi's annual sales volume was 13.86 million, accounting for 33.7% of the market share; Emma sold 8 million vehicles annually, accounting for 19.5%; Mavericks sold 1.0379 million vehicles annually, while No.9 sold 420,000 vehicles.

As you can see, Yadi's sales are far ahead.

04 So, can Yadi now sit firmly in the top spot in the industry by changing to the high-end route?

Not really. In 2016, a year after Yadi implemented its high-end strategy, its revenue growth rate was only 3.6%. Admittedly, the high-end strategy has opened up new incremental markets for Yadi and enhanced the brand image, but this is not enough to make other brands such as Yadi and Emma open a clear gap.

What really makes its sales number one is its post-epidemic play. In 2020, Yadi's dealers will increase from 2155 to 2955, and its sales outlets will increase from 12000 to 17000, which is the largest expansion among all brands.

In short, to expand the base plate, you still have to sink. According to Wang Jiazhong, senior vice president of Yadi Technology, last year, second-and third-tier cities and rural markets accounted for about 70% of Yadi's sales share, while consumers in first-tier cities accounted for only 20%-30%.

Why does this happen, I just want to talk about my personal thoughts.

Compared with cars, motorcycles and bicycles, one of the biggest differences is that it is a pure means of transportation. Its functionality far exceeds its brand added value, which makes it difficult to expand its brand attributes.

Transportation is very interesting, whether cars, motorcycles or bicycles have been born to belong to their own culture, and battery cars do not. Some people like to drive, some people like to ride motorcycles and bicycles, but few people like to ride battery cars.

On the other hand, as I said at the beginning, its identity is too embarrassing. In our past road planning, no one has considered that one day battery cars will reach a terrifying 350 million.

I know that many people dislike battery cars and think that they are "road killers" and one of the most accident-prone drivers. But in fact, think carefully, as one of the most common means of transportation in China, it is too crowded for battery cars and bicycles to share a narrow non-motor vehicle lane. In addition, in actual circumstances, non-motor vehicle lanes are often occupied, and it is not surprising that battery cars ride on motor vehicle lanes.

Another reason why battery cars are easy to criticize is that they are almost highly bound to the takeaway and express delivery industries. When each platform compresses the rider's meal delivery time to the limit through algorithms, it also causes countless battery cars to shuttle through the city at high speed.

It is no exaggeration to say that the battery car is actually today's take-out, express delivery so developed invisible meritorious. It's hard to imagine what kind of transportation takeaways should choose if there were no battery cars.

This choice also illustrates a problem that many people ignore: rationally speaking, among all means of transportation, battery cars are actually the most suitable means of transportation for villages and towns. It is cheap, convenient and even environmentally friendly.

And this tool that most meets the needs of the masses is precisely the most neglected existence in the right of way.

Of course, I don't mean to raise the value of battery cars, but sometimes it seems simpler to drive them than to ride them for exercise-often for a living.

These problems are not solved by battery car brands engaging in high-end and intelligent gimmicks.

Perhaps it is only left to future urban planning to consider.

References:

"Electric bicycle governance dilemma_unidentified electric bicycle", Kui Yanzhang

"Two-wheeled electric car, ten years of dragon and tiger fight", there are several DataVision

Will battery cars become the next mobile phone market?

Yadi starts to slow down after the high end, Blueberry Finance

Emma Tech IPO: What has been lost in the past year? New Media

"Your freedom of travel has made this couple earn 23.5 billion," Daily People

"Ma Guilong: Electric vehicles are the saviors of urban traffic", Electric Vehicle Business Network

White Paper on China's Two-wheeled Electric Vehicle Industry in 2022, iResearch

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: IC Lab (ID: InsightPlusClub)

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