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

After Tesla and Xiaopeng, BBA also joined the tide of "price reduction army".

On the evening of November 15, Mercedes-Benz officially issued a notice officially announcing a price adjustment for its EQ series models, of which EQE fell by about 50,000 yuan, while EQS and AMG EQS 53 models fell by about 200000 yuan.

This price reduction, the Mercedes-Benz E-Series, known as the "luxury threshold"-the price of EQE has fallen to the range of 400000 yuan. It is similar to the models of new power brands such as ES7 and ideal L9, and slightly higher than Tesla Model Y.

Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the passenger Association, said: "in the past, the pricing strategies of luxury brands were based on their own costs and brand positioning. Mercedes-Benz electric cars are expensive, high pricing, consumers do not buy, this price reduction shows that luxury brands are also more concerned about users and market acceptance."

In fact, this is not the first time Mercedes-Benz has compromised on price. At the end of last year, EQC fell by more than 180000 yuan, with prices starting from 310000 yuan.

Not only Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi also bowed their heads. According to media reports, the BMW i3 has begun a "big sale" in the first half of the year, with a terminal drop of more than 70,000 yuan. Audi e-tron, which once sold 700000 yuan, has dropped 123000 yuan since it was made in China. Even so, the market performance of BBA new energy vehicles is not satisfactory.

Recently, an Audi 4S store even hung the banner "Audi also has pure electricity and new energy" on the outer wall, which is sad and funny. Some netizens commented, "this slogan gives people the impression that 'Nokia also has a smart big screen machine'."

Looking back at that time, Wei Xiaoli was still struggling with the line of life and death, Tesla's localization process was still in a difficult stage of capacity climbing, and BYD had not yet presented the two sharp blades of DM-i and blade battery, and there was always a voice in the industry: "when foreign car companies led by Volkswagen, BBA and Toyota make efforts, all the newcomers will be vulnerable."

But in the past few years, the wave of electric transformation is surging, and BBA, which once held the high-end market of fuel vehicles, has been pulled back to a new starting point. What exactly happened to BBA during this period? Why can't BBA make a decent new energy car? Does it still have a chance to turn things around?

The above are all the questions that this article tries to answer.

In 2014, it was generally regarded as the first year of the development of China's new energy vehicle industry, when Tesla Model S landed strongly, and domestic new energy vehicle companies such as Lailai, Xiaopeng and ideal took advantage of the situation.

At first, BBA was disdainful of the frenzied attack of new energy. Previously, BMW's R & D director Klaus Flaurich has publicly said: "No consumer has a real demand for pure trams." At the 24th Chengdu Auto Show last year, BBA's new car lineup was almost full of fuel cars.

This has also led to BBA, which knew the needs of the Chinese market like the back of its hand in the era of fuel cars, almost speechless in the electric car market.

What few people know, however, is that BBA has been moving into new energy for many years.

In 2007, when Tesla was still a toddler, BMW released a plan called "Project I", which it said was mainly launched for its transition to new energy, making BMW one of the few fuel companies to expand its new energy vehicle business.

Then, two years later, Mercedes-Benz and Audi also began to lay out new energy vehicles one after another.

In 2009, Mercedes-Benz partnered with Tesla to provide power systems for Mercedes-Benz first-generation electric cars Smart and B-Class Mercedes-Benz, and Audi unveiled its first all-electric sedan e-tron at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany.

Although BBA sensed the potential and trend of new energy a long time ago, BBA acted slowly when the future of the new energy market was uncertain.

BMW only launched its first pure streetcar i3 in 2013, with global sales of only 311 vehicles, while the Model S has reached 22000.

Audi and Mercedes-Benz move more slowly. In 2019, with the localization of Model 3, Tesla insured 45372 vehicles in China, of which 33903 were Model 3. It was only in the face of the dust-free Tesla Mercedes-Benz that it launched the domestic version of the pure electric car EQC in the same year, Audi's pure electric product e-tron was also listed in China, and BMW only opened the pre-sale of the iX3 in China in September 2020.

The first battle of BBA electrification can be said to get up early in the morning and catch up with the late collection, losing the first-mover advantage and the best opportunity for development.

According to Galaxy, BMW sold 1152 i3 vehicles in the first half of this year, and although iX3 has a cumulative sales volume of 10804, the two together are only 1/10 of Tesla Model Y sales in the same price range. As for Audi e-tron sales in the first half of the year, it is only 403 vehicles, while the "price reduction" Q2Le-tron is not on the list.

According to the latest data from the Federation of passengers, Mercedes-Benz EQA, EQB, EQC and EQE sold 94,133,6 and 678 vehicles respectively in October, adding up to less than 1,000 vehicles. In the first 10 months, its cumulative sales were less than 12000 vehicles, which could not even match the monthly sales level of some independent brands of single pure electric models.

Who would have thought that the once German high-end brand has now been forced into a corner by Tesla and other new energy car companies, dejected on the track of new energy vehicles.

According to common sense, with a hundred years of car-building experience and strong technology brands as support, the internal combustion engine "King" BBA will most likely crush Tesla and new forces in the electric car market. But the reality is that BBA hasn't even built a taxi-capable electric car yet. What's the problem?

The most obvious deficiency is the "conversion from oil to electricity", which has been criticized by the public.

Auto analyst Zhang Xiang once said: "the advantage of changing oil to electricity is low cost, but there is a big gap between the performance and intelligence of the electric vehicles produced and the pure electric vehicles produced on the pure electric platform."

In other words, the three electric SUV that BBA hit at the beginning can basically be regarded as the electric version of existing fuel models, which were rubbed on the ground by Tesla and Wei Xiaoli in terms of mileage, intelligence and acceleration performance. In terms of driving range, BBA's new energy models are not dominant. Nowadays, electric vehicles worth more than 200000 yuan generally have a range of more than 500km, and some even run for 600km. Intelligence has also failed to keep up with the pace of mainstream players' monthly OTA. BBA has gone to great lengths to build several electric cars similar to its own fuel cars, but they are priced much higher than the same fuel models in order to highlight their status as new energy vehicles.

Behind the "oil-to-electricity" electricity is the attitude of established car companies jumping repeatedly in the "new world" and "old order": they are not only worried about losing the benefits of fuel vehicles, but also afraid of being left behind in the new energy era.

Therefore, different from the fast-moving new forces, BBA simply chose to wait and see under the dual influence of the traditional fuel vehicle market profits and minimizing the risk of accidents. They think that when the first batch of new energy car companies have cultivated the market almost, and then reap profits by virtue of the strong brand appeal in the field of fuel vehicles, they will be able to easily achieve latecomers to catch up.

The scene is reminiscent of the arrogance of mobile phones in the transition from Nokia's functional phone era to Apple's smartphone era. Nokia's defeat is not technical at all, but because users do not become leaders when they migrate to smartphones. When users get used to Apple phones, even if Nokia launches smartphones, it is too late. It can be summed up in a game term: a generation of gods, but BBA didn't keep up with the version.

In addition, terminal sales is another important factor that makes it difficult for BBA to handle electric cars. Although the channels are all over the world, there are still many layers between brands and users. This is not just the dilemma of BBA, in fact, all traditional automakers are facing this problem.

From Tesla, to the new forces of car building, almost all the new forces have adopted the direct operation mode, and some car companies have also played the BOM pricing method in order to make a gimmick, and there are more car companies like Weilai, which make the customer service to the extreme.

In each Weilai car owner group, there are more than a dozen service personnel with different functions ready to respond. Even Tesla, who is "every day 315", also has product specialists who introduce vehicle-related matters to car owners, as well as user-specific self-built overcharge piles.

Therefore, no war broke out all of a sudden, and it was all ambushed by the enemy's heavy troops and forced from all sides. When BBA came to his senses, he found that he was already half a position behind the new power.

BBA's dilemma can be said to be a microcosm of many established car companies. When Tesla announced the construction of a factory in Shanghai in 2018, the traditional giants all had a wait-and-see mentality, emphasizing their irreplaceable advantages. Now that the new forces are coming fiercely, the urgency of the transformation of traditional car companies has become more prominent.

BBA may usher in a "Nokia moment"? will the case of "Apple subverting Nokia" be repeated on BBA? Such questions have always revolved around BBA.

In the face of the defeat of the new energy vehicle market, BBA certainly will not watch the enemy capture the mountain again. With the continuous introduction of stringent carbon emission standards by the European Union and the increasing acceptance of new energy vehicles in the market, BBA has started a mode of accelerated catch-up. In the product strategy that BBA has released, all three say that 2030 will be the node to completely bid farewell to the fuel truck era.

Che Bai think Tank believes that the Nokia moment of BBA has not completely arrived under the three major barriers of "manufacturing discussion, product iteration and brand market penetration".

One of the characteristics of new energy vehicles is to burn money. Tesla, Weilai and other new energy car companies have been almost bankrupt because of lack of money. Having sufficient capital reserves is the most important material basis for the transformation of traditional car companies to new energy. In this respect, the cash reserves of traditional car companies such as BBA are more than one order of magnitude higher than those of new car-building forces such as Tesla. This means that traditional automakers such as BBA have no worries about capital reserves in terms of electric transformation.

But there is not much time left for BBA to catch his breath. First, BBA's opponent is not as weak as before, and second, BBA still has a lot of lessons to make up.

In the past, luxury brands built class barriers in many ways: Mercedes-Benz with magic carpet suspension, BMW with Valvetronic, Audi with ancestral quattro four-wheel drive. The electric age has not only changed the driving mode, but also stripped many of the characteristics of the vehicle itself. For example, the NVH is no longer determined by the engine, and the champagne cup of Lexus failed in an instant; for example, the champagne cup of Lexus failed in an instant; for example, more than a hundred times in 6 seconds, strong horsepower is now readily available; the big weight and "electronic smell" of electric cars have smoothed out the gap in drivability, but the attractiveness of drivability to the new generation of consumers is decreasing little by little.

From this point of view, electrification actually shifts the difficulty of the car to the process of charging. So we saw Tesla's overcharging system and Weilai's power exchange system. Take Tesla, for example, the charging network has spread all over the country's large and small cities. Official figures show that Tesla currently has more than 900supercharging stations and more than 7000 super charging piles in use on Chinese mainland, with more than 700plus destination charging stations and 1730 + destination charging piles, covering more than 330cities in China. But BBA used to sell fuel cars, never need to consider to build gas stations, now sell electric cars, if you do not consider this, may lose some market competitiveness.

In addition, the differences between consumers in the old and new times and the changes in product evaluation standards are all traditional car companies like BBA that need to learn. It is not easy for an elephant to turn around, but if it does not turn around, it will be finished. The real test if they are to maintain their position in the next decade is whether they have the courage to revolutionize themselves and whether they are willing to invest heavily at the expense of profit margins.

In the end, the electrified wheels rolled forward, some took the lead, and some were mercilessly crushed.

The historical position of BBA in the oil tanker era is almost unshakable. But with the advent of the new energy revolution, China's electric cars took the lead and were lucky to get a ticket.

As Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric vehicle Association of 100, said: the lane change of new energy vehicles has given Chinese enterprises a very valuable time window of 6-7 years and won a rare first-mover effect.

Now is the time when the heroes are competing for supremacy and the smoke is rising everywhere, and the market is not yet at a decisive moment. Will the BBA who seek transformation to retake the market take back a place in the high-end market of new energy vehicles, or will they follow in the footsteps of Nokia? It will take time to test.

Full-text reference

[1] "Price reduction of 230000, Mercedes-Benz to face the trend of price reduction of high-end electric cars", the city boundary

[2] "the key to the intelligent transformation of BBA lies in China", China Automobile News, Zhang Yiwen

[3] "BBA: under decency, anxiety spreads", the Tale of the car Market, du Junyi

[4] "domestic new energy is stepping into the river of smartphones".

[5] "with a lot of noise and low achievements, BBA electrification is still" in no hurry "? ", China Automobile News, Shi Yunyun

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: che Bai think Tank (ID:EV100_Plus), author: Zhou Shuangjiang, Editor: a Feng, typesetting: fat Tiger

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