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

From August to October in 2022, Li Bin, chairman of Lulai Motor, and Qin Lihong, president, came to ET7 and traveled 2500 kilometers through 10 countries in Europe to complete a "Journey around Europe".

This tour is a market research campaign to open up the European market. Also through this survey, Wei Lai believes that Europe is more suitable for the subscription model. Then in October, Xilai announced that it would "rent but not sell" to enter the markets of Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, offering three models: ET7, EL7 (ES7) and ET5, with a subscription period ranging from one month to 60 months.

But the price of Weilai's subscription is comparable to that of well-known car brands such as Porsche, which has sparked a heated debate in the market.

"it is reasonable for us to be close to the prices of some models of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, which is the level of production power and value of Xilai itself. in China, many people are used to thinking that Chinese brands should be tens of thousands cheaper than German brands, but we haven't thought about that in Europe." Li Bin, founder of Xilai, said confidently that to return to the stronghold of BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi) is to retake the market with a high-end posture, rather than winning with price.

In fact, Xilai has been in Europe for six years. But in the past six years, I have not done my best. Car building, listing and stock market crash have made Weilai too busy at home to take care of overseas.

Today, new opportunities have emerged in overseas markets. The first is the growth of overseas demand. At present, about 130 countries and regions around the world have put forward the goal of carbon neutralization. For example, the Netherlands and Norway will ban the sale of fuel vehicles in 2025, India and Germany will ban the sale of fuel vehicles in 2030, and France and Britain will ban the sale of fuel vehicles in 2040. There is a wide demand for new energy vehicles to replace fuel vehicles in the market.

Moreover, some overseas countries are also increasing subsidies for new energy vehicles. For example, Norway has introduced a number of policies to support the transformation of electrification, including the exemption of 25 per cent value-added tax, import duties and road maintenance taxes, while German consumers of new energy vehicles can enjoy subsidies of up to 9000 euros, further activating the new energy vehicle market.

Therefore, although the sales volume of "Wei Xiaoli" (Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal car) in the domestic market is no longer absolutely dominant in the new power of car building, Weilai and so on have opened the pace of going out to sea on a large scale. And not only in Europe, the new domestic car-building forces are also setting up the Asia-Pacific region.

In February 2022, BYD took the lead in listing Yuan PLUS EV in Australia, and currently orders have exceeded 4500 units. In August, BYD announced its entry into the Thai passenger car market and the construction of its first overseas passenger car factory in Thailand. And the new power of car-building another company, Nahu car, has even launched a unique model in Southeast Asia, and has opened a hot sale in Thailand, Nepal and other places.

In this wave of going out to sea, the new forces of car building have sold their products all over the world. According to the China Automobile Association, China has surpassed Germany in cumulative car exports in the first eight months of this year, making it the world's second largest car exporter after Japan. Among them, the export of new energy vehicles was 389000, more than double that of the same period last year, and the growth rate was much higher than that of the automobile industry as a whole.

After the competition in the Red Sea at home, the new force of car building has grown over the past 8 years, and it has become a natural choice to roll overseas. But in the face of former enemies, can the new forces of car-building win?

For a long time, the domestic auto market has been occupied by European car companies such as Volkswagen and Peugeot, as well as Japanese companies such as Toyota and Honda.

In fact, in the fuel era, domestic cars such as Geely and the Great Wall also set off a wave of going out to sea in an attempt to counter-attack overseas markets. However, due to the lack of core technology, it does not subvert the foreign market pattern.

But in the electric age, Europe does lag behind.

Take the core battery resources as an example, only 3% of global battery production is in Europe, and 85% in Asia (69% in China). There is no cost advantage in producing batteries in Europe. While trams are mainly intelligent, overseas traditional car companies are also lagging behind at home.

More importantly, the pace and determination of the transformation of these traditional car companies are not so strong. For example, the BMW i3 that BMW is selling is based on CLAR architecture. This architecture platform is not a professional pure electric vehicle model, but belongs to the "oil-electricity symbiosis platform". Compared with many domestic pure electric architecture platforms, such as Xiaopeng and Weilai, have evolved to 800V ultra-fast charging platform, by contrast, BMW CLAR architecture can not help but "make do". BMW, which is based on a new electric version of the Neue Klasse platform, will not launch many models until after 2024.

It can be said that at the present stage, the new forces of domestic car building still have a lead for some time. Seizing this rare opportunity has become a collective choice for everyone at present.

At the Paris Motor Show held in October 2022, the new domestic car-building forces successfully won a lot of attention.

Chinese brands such as Great Wall, BYD, Zero Race and Cyrus participated in the exhibition. Among them, BYD unveiled three models at the Paris Motor Show: Tang, Han and Yuan PLUS (local model is called BYD ATTO 3), with the first two pre-priced at 72000 euros (510000 yuan) and yuan PLUS at 38000 euros (270000 yuan).

In July, BYD announced its official entry into the Japanese passenger car market, announced its entry into markets such as Germany, Sweden and Denmark in August, and held an online press conference in Europe in September. However, BYD sold 200000 vehicles in September and sold a total of 7736 new energy passenger cars overseas, and overseas markets are not yet the main force.

Another player with a cost-effective positioning in China, Nahu car, is now also an important player in the battle for sea competition. In March 2022, the Thai subsidiary of Naha Automobile was officially established, and in August, the right rudder version of Nathan V was listed in Thailand and officially entered the Thai market. At present, five countries have gone to sea, including Thailand, Israel, Nepal, Laos and Myanmar. According to the data released by Nezha, as of mid-September, Naha has ordered more than 5200 cars overseas.

The aggressive sea scenes of BYD and Nahu have also made BYD and other auto companies attract a lot of attention at the Paris auto show. French media Viralpro said bluntly that at the Paris auto show, "either Chinese electric cars or not electric cars", Chinese car companies "launched a large-scale European offensive."

Norway is a country that cannot be bypassed if it wants to win the European market. Norway's favourable tax policy has resulted in four out of every five cars sold being purely electric. Therefore, not only cars, SUV and other new car-building forces of conventional models, choose Norway to enter the European market. Lantu and other players who currently focus on the MPV market have also begun to aim at this. On the afternoon of September 26, 500 Lantu FREE was officially shipped to Norway.

After all, among the corporate cars in Europe, D-Class, E-Class and F-Class cars all have a large market, so although it is a new brand of Dongfeng Group, Lantu also planned the pace of going out to sea from the very beginning.

Not only BYD and Lulai, which are well-known players in China, have gone out to sea on a large scale, but also some players with new forces in car building have set targets for going out to sea from the beginning of their establishment. For example, Skyworth Motor (formerly Timi) was founded in 2018, and the new car Skyworth EV6 just went on sale in July this year, and the car has now been sold to more than 40 countries.

"on the streets of countries like Germany and Denmark, and our street perception in China, the number of electric cars is still a little small, and we can judge that the period of great development has not yet come," said Qin Lihong, president of Lulai. Now there are broad market opportunities for new forces to go out to sea.

According to the latest data, Chinese brands accounted for nearly 1/20 of electric vehicle sales in western Europe in the first eight months of 2022, and sales climbing has just begun.

Going out to sea, the stronghold of Toyota and Volkswagen, also means that there is no national tide aura, and the new forces of domestic car-building also open comparison prices, products and services to compete in overseas markets through different dimensions.

First of all, from the advantage of performance-to-price ratio, Nezha and Zero cars, which have emerged as a new force in China, have also copied this style of play to overseas markets.

In August, pictures from the Internet showed that the shops in Naha were crowded and lively in Thailand. According to the analysis of bloggers, the main Nezhu U positioning "ultra-long range intelligent pure electric SUV" is the first tram with 8155 chips within 150000 yuan. The ultra-high performance-to-price ratio has made Nezha take the lead in domestic sales and smooth wind in the Southeast Asian market.

Another new power zero car is also exporting its most cost-effective minicar to the European market. At present, the T03 is the first export model of Zero run, which has been certified by the European Union, and the first batch has been shipped to Europe.

BYD, which has always had the advantage of performance-to-price ratio, has played a product power in the European market, which is also because BYD suffered losses in the early days.

BYD set up its European headquarters in the Netherlands as early as 1998, but its business at that time was not passenger cars, but new energy commercial vehicles, such as electric buses and taxis. In the early domestic market, BYD was also commented that its sales depended on online car-hailing.

Although there is no difference in the use of cars, it affects the choice of passenger cars for some consumers. After years of development, the new power of car building has begun to satisfy the picky vision of consumers.

Today, BYD ATTO3 is expected to become the main sales force in the European market. Data show that the car is equipped with 60.5kwh power, the WLTP has a range of 261 miles, and the maximum charge rate is 88KW, which is about 7000 euros lower than the Peugeot 208in the same segment, and the Renault Meganne is about 10,000 euros lower, but it is more prominent in interior decoration, intelligent driving, space and so on.

The price of BYD's Tang is close to that of Audi's e-Tron Premium Plus Quattro. It is worth mentioning that the price of BYD Tang and Han cars is more than 70,000 euros, twice as high as in China, directly against the BMW X5. This is also BYD to see the European market, for the time being to provide the same type of smart cars, so the product still has a certain degree of leadership.

The new power of car-building goes out to sea, and it is not the usual way to go to sea in the domestic market. This time, it also wants to take service as the main fight of going out to sea.

This is also the feeling that Li Bin and Qin Lihong got during this trip to Europe. For example, in many European countries, highways and urban streets are still slow charging. Qin Lihong said that slow charging was very inconvenient. He had to go on his way when he got up in the morning. His assistant said that you would have breakfast, and the car was not full all night.

The particularity of the European market also allows Wei to see the opportunity to provide more complex BaaS services in the European market. And the BaaS service of Weilai is not just a power exchange service that is familiar to the domestic market. "you can simply understand that basically everything is included except electricity, insurance and maintenance, and everything is included at one price." So this is also mentioned earlier, Li Bin believes that one of the implicit reasons why Weilai's subscription fee is not cheaper than Porsche is that Weilai's service is more comprehensive.

Li Bin believes that the subscription model is more complex than simply selling cars, and the whole service has to be packaged into the service. How to set the price and how to provide long-term service is a difficult problem. In fact, in the early days, Weilai tried worry-free service packages in China, but the market recognition was not too high.

After all, the service is relatively complex, but Li Bin believes that Europe is quite receptive to it, and sales are needed to prove it in the long run.

The lesson of going out to sea is the most urgent one. In the boom of new power in building cars, the sales of new energy vehicles are also soaring.

According to the data of the Federation of passengers, the export of China's new energy vehicles is showing explosive growth. In August, passenger car exports (including complete vehicles and CKD) were 140000, an increase of 182 percent over the same period last year, and new energy vehicles accounted for 25.9 percent of the total exports, or about 36000.

Of course, what can't be ignored is that Tesla's Shanghai super factory has an annual production capacity of more than 750000 vehicles and supplies cars to markets outside North America. Therefore, Tesla Shanghai Super Factory exported more than 30,000 vehicles in August, contributing to the main force of domestic new energy exports.

Tesla, a catfish, has stirred the domestic new energy car market. Although it is very popular in China, in Europe, the new power of car building still respects the home of competitors very much.

"maybe their market capitalization is not much higher than ours, but their sales, service network, supply chain system and other aspects are much higher than ours, we absolutely need to learn and catch up with them." Indeed, as Li Bin said, localization is also a lesson that the new forces of car building are in urgent need of.

At present, the first replacement power station has been completed in the Lvlai energy plant, which is invested by Xilai in Hungary. This is not enough, service centers, voice interactions and car maps, and even localized operations such as cloud services and data centers, are also being docked with local suppliers.

In an interview with the European media, Li Bin also introduced the progress of intelligence in Europe. In April 2021, Weilai did auxiliary driving and related tests here, and now there is a large test team, as well as an innovation center in Berlin. "self-driving and assisted driving are still quite different in laws and regulations in many countries. We have to provide comprehensive docking here, and we can't do it without a local team."

Compared with Weilai's services and R & D projects, BYD is the first to solve the capacity problem. After all, BYD still has 700,000 bills in the domestic market, and there is no capacity allocated to overseas markets at all. Earlier, BYD announced the signing of a cooperation agreement with global car rental company SIXT. According to the agreement between the two sides, SIXT will purchase at least 100000 new energy vehicles from BYD in the next six years, and BYD chose to build a factory directly in the face of these deterministic production capacity.

In September, BYD signed a contract with Thailand's WHA Industrial Park to build its first overseas passenger car factory, and in October, BYD announced that it would invest about US $583 million to build three new factories in Brazil. BYD affiliates will order eight ro-ro ships with a capacity of 7700 cars at a shipyard in Yantai, Shandong province, at a total cost of nearly 5 billion yuan, to build a "sea fleet" for BYD, Caixin reported.

Nashi Automobile, which built a factory in Thailand earlier, will mainly enhance its sales channel capacity to go abroad in 2022. In September this year, Naha Automobile opened its first 3.0 image direct experience space in Thailand, becoming the first "Chinese car-making new power direct store" in Thailand. And after the launch of the right-hand version of the V, Nezha promised to launch cars, SUV and other electric models for overseas markets at the speed of "at least one model a year".

Of course, overseas auto giants are not reconciled to being seized by the market, and many traditional auto giants have even launched a counter-offensive at home.

Recently, it is reported that BMW intends to invest another 10 billion yuan to expand its high voltage battery production center in Shenyang and expand its battery project investment in China. At the same time, Volkswagen Group will invest in domestic self-driving chip Horizon, and its software company CARIAD will join hands with Horizon to set up a joint venture in China. To this end, Volkswagen Group plans to contribute about 2.4 billion euros, "this is Volkswagen's largest single investment in China in the past 40 years."

Overseas traditional auto giants are also coming fiercely, holding their strongholds, global competition, and one of the most challenging missions of the new power of car-building.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Tech (ID:tech618), by Yang Xiaohe

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