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

In early 2021, headhunters were focused on one thing: Geely was setting up another new energy car company and making enough changes to bring in someone with an Internet background as CEO.

Later, the company became a joint venture with Baidu, which sent Xia Yiping, co-founder of mobike, to serve as CEO's Jidu Automobile Company. Originally Geely wanted to be a new power car-building company, but as a result, the majority shareholder became Baidu. But for Li Shufu, chairman of Geely, it is not a big problem. After the failure of "Blue Action 1.0" facing the transformation of the new energy era, Geely began the Blue Action 2.0 plan of "Uniting all Friends". Jidu and Ruilan are the products of this plan.

In fact, Geely also has various forms of new energy "bets", including independent brand Geometry, wholly-owned company Polar Krypton and so on. Among the traditional car companies, Geely is the one that is determined to transform itself, although many new brands are not successful.

Geely is a typical microcosm of the transformation of traditional domestic automobile enterprises. Central state-owned enterprises such as SAIC, FAW and Guangzhou Automobile, local enterprises such as Changan and Dongfeng, and private enterprises such as Great Wall and BYD have all actively started the pace of transformation facing the new energy era. This not only carries the traditional car companies to remove the brand of the era of joint venture brands, more importantly, the traditional car companies to win tickets to the future. At present, among the traditional car companies that have set up independent companies are polar krypton of Geely, Lantu of Dongfeng Group, Avita of Changan Automobile, and so on. These enterprises have taken a brave step. At present, sales have caught up with new car-building forces such as "Wei Xiaoli" (Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal Automobile). The independent brands established under the traditional car companies, such as BAIC's polar fox, SAIC's Feifan, Changan's deep blue, and so on, are currently facing some sales struggles. For car companies with deep cooperation with technology Internet companies, "whether to make friends with the soul" has a direct impact on sales. Typically, such as asking the world and Zhiji, the former has "Huawei deep empowerment", so sales have been in the first line, while the latter is jointly built by SAIC, Ali and Shanghai Zhangjiang Group, Zhiji can see the internal wrestling, product power can not be converted into sales. There is no doubt that traditional car companies have lagged behind in the process of new energy transformation. at present, the only brands with monthly sales of more than 10,000 are Ian, Wuling Hongguang Mini, Polar Krypton and other brands. However, at the end of 2022, everyone will have to face the "state subsidy" of the ebb tide, and new energy companies will have to face a wave of rising prices. In the case of subsidies, even if it is difficult to get consumers, can you still win users after the price increase? From the beginning of the national subsidy in March 2010, 12 years have passed in a flash, leaving little time for the transformation of traditional car companies.

Sales volume on December 5, the Federation of passengers released November sales estimates, the winners are still BYD and Tesla. And 3 to 7 are traditional domestic auto companies, respectively, Shanghai GM Wuling, Changan Automobile, Geely Automobile, GAC Ean and Shangqi passenger cars.

The list of traditional car companies does not seem to have lost. However, from the actual situation, there is a lack of high-end pricing, a high degree of intelligence, and more recognized products in the mainstream market in the transformation of new energy by traditional car companies. According to Shanghai GM Wuling, which ranks third, the main model currently on sale is the Wuling Hongguang MINI. Recently, Wuling announced a time-limited subsidy of 2 billion for car purchases in December 2022. Among them, the purchase of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV models, a maximum of 8888 yuan purchase subsidy, directly pull the starting price of this car to a low price of 29800 yuan. Seizing the opportunity of the last month of 2022 to cut prices to impact sales, the monthly sales of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV,12, which is already very cost-effective, may impact Tesla's second place. But there were earlier media reports that an expert and professor from Guya University had dismantled a top Hongguang MINI EV with a price of 38800 and estimated that its spare parts and assembly cost reached 27000 yuan. Research and development and sales costs have not yet been calculated, it can be said that at this stage of Shanghai GM Wuling, is completely at a loss to earn the market. Among the traditional car companies, another brand that sells well is Guangqi Eian. In November, Ian failed to continue the "myth" of selling 30,000 vehicles in the previous two months, selling 28765 new cars in November, down 4.32% from the previous month, but up 91% from the same period last year. "guarantee 200000 vehicles, challenge 250000", the price of just over 100,000 yuan of Ian, also rely on low prices to enter the market. Among the brands transformed by traditional car companies, there are still two that sell well. One is Geely's extreme Krypton, which again ranked in the top five with 11011 vehicles in November and sold more than 10,000 vehicles a month for two months in a row. By contrast, QQ experienced a month-on-month decline of 31.3% in November, with sales falling to 8260 vehicles and eventually dropping out of the ranks of 10,000. In the new energy market, more than 10,000 vehicles are sold every month, which is a measure of brand success. Wuling Hongguang MINI, Ean, extreme Krypton and Mengjie are the few brands that have crossed this line, while more traditional car companies are still "struggling" at the stage of 3000 vehicles and below. Hechuang, Jihu, Lantu and Zhiji are brands that have a certain volume in the market, but their sales are not satisfactory for many reasons. The lack of technology accumulation in traditional car companies is an important factor. From the point of view of BAIC Jihu, which is also produced by Huawei, the sales volume of either Jihu Alpha T or Polar Fox Alpha S is far lower than that of Huawei and Selis Group. Perhaps BAIC expects too much of the car. Huawei executive Yu Chengdong has a new HI version of Jihu Alpha S on the platform, saying its self-driving technology is the best in the world. This strongest refers to the hardware, but the software algorithm is not matched in time, so how can the market pay for a smart car with the strongest parameters? On the other hand, it has become a "testing ground" for traditional car companies to explore high-end brands, and it is also a stumbling block to new car sales. Among them, the highest price of Zhiji L7 is more than 400000, the price of Avita 11 is between 35 and 600000, and the highest price of the new model Tengli D9 is 660000 yuan. The idea of price impact on the high end is also easy to understand, in the joint venture era, BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) occupied the vast majority of the domestic middle and high-end market share. In the new energy era, an endless stream of new energy brands have disrupted the order of the old market. "gamble" has become a common mentality. After all, Wei Lai, as a successful case of high-end new forces, is right in front of us. But the market clearly did not accept it easily. Zhiji sold 860 units in October, which was not announced in November. Avita 11 officials announced that sales exceeded 5000 units in the first month, but there are many voices in the market questioning the authenticity of its data. It can be seen that in the transformation of traditional car companies, there are still a few who have won success. If it is not to take the cost-effective route, win sales, or stumble into the high end, success or failure should be exploration.

Intelligence is the key. Car building is a track with a very high threshold, and no one can always take the lead. Even in the polar krypton, which has just sorted out the product structure this year, its monthly sales are about to catch up with "Wei Xiaoli". In the automotive industry's transition to electrification and intelligence, many latecomers still have a chance to catch up.

According to the report of Soochow Securities, as of January 2022, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in the Chinese market has achieved 0-15% (to achieve the "0-1" stage) with the help of the continuous progress in electrification technology. 2022-2025 will usher in a permeability period from 15% to 50% + a leap (to achieve the "1-10" stage), and intelligent electrification will become the most important driver of this stage.

At present, the intelligent experience of traditional car companies does not seem to be rich, and they are more likely to cooperate with Internet companies or technology companies. BYD, which ranks first in sales in the world, chose Baidu as its smart driving supplier in February, which provides it with integrated ANP smart driving products and man-machine driving maps.

BYD's performance in power batteries and intelligent driving hardware is not inferior to the new power of car building, but its performance in intelligent driving software has obviously lagged behind people. As a result, Tesla, who is more mature in intelligent technology, has a market capitalization of $547.5 billion, while BYD has just 800 billion yuan.

With the help of Huawei, Cyrus, which formerly specializes in minivans and pick-up trucks, has created a miracle of more than 8000 orders in seven days, thanks to Huawei's brands and systems such as cars.

HarmonyOS can be regarded as one of the core competencies of the brand, and the whole UI interaction system is very smooth. For example, generally speaking, when you get on the bus and listen to music, you need a mobile phone to link to the car machine, and the car phone selects a media source before it can be played. In this process, users need to operate the mobile phone and the car phone for many times, while QQ can synchronize the boarding machine and the mobile phone instantly, including member information, music list being played, and so on.

The reason why polar krypton 001 can sell 50,000 cars this year is that polar krypton attaches great importance to its intelligence. Four OTA upgrades have been carried out in the first year, and at the end of this year, polar krypton will carry out two major OTA upgrades and several version iterations for smart cockpits and smart driving.

Yang Bocheng, editor-in-chief of Donews, who has almost tried driving a mainstream new energy car, told Tech that from his experience, Lantu's car system is OK, but the sensitivity is average, and the driving assistance of extreme krypton and Ian is about the same as that of Lantu. Compared with the new car-building forces such as Weilai and Xiaopeng, there is a certain gap.

"in addition to the brands that use Huawei's solution, such as Mengjie, extreme Fox and Avita, the car machine system and self-driving are good, the new energy brands of other traditional car companies are intelligent, which is estimated to be five years away from Tesla." In the past, the accumulation of intelligence is less, traditional car companies want to catch up with the head is not easy.

However, we can not all adopt the solutions of Huawei, Baidu and other technology enterprises. after all, a core issue involved in the intelligent system of cars is who works for whom in the future. The market capitalization gap between Tesla and BYD seems to have given the answer.

How to survive before the rise in prices at a time when the transformation of traditional car companies has not been successful, the two mountains are approaching.

One is that the growth rate of the new energy vehicle market slows down, and the inventory pressure begins to increase. In September 2022, 670000 new energy passenger cars were sold in China, with a penetration rate of 30%, which means that the early dividend in the market has disappeared. At the same time, data from the China Automobile Circulation Association also showed that in November, the inventory warning index of Chinese car dealers was 65.3%, up 9.9% from a year earlier and 6.3% from a month earlier, and new cars were not so easy to sell.

Another mountain is that 2022 is coming to an end, and the 10-year subsidy policy for the purchase of new energy vehicles will end on December 31, 2022, after which licensed vehicles will no longer be subsidized.

According to the current policy, models with a range of less than 300000 yuan and plug-in hybrid models can enjoy a subsidy of 4800 yuan, while pure electric vehicles with a range of 300,000km and more than 400km can receive subsidies of 9100 yuan and 12600 yuan respectively. When the tide of subsidies recedes, these price differences will be passed on to consumers, and whether consumers are willing to accept them is another question. At present, new energy car brands, including BYD and GAC EANYI, have announced that prices will start to rise next year, while Geely, Changan Deep Blue, AITO and other car companies have launched time-limited price protection policies. The price increase is not terrible, but the terrible thing is that the most powerful competitor is still cutting prices. After two rounds of price cuts, Tesla's sales in November broke through the 100000 mark for the first time, despite public opinion. In 2023, with the cost advantage brought by the advantage of scale, Tesla's mainstream Model 3 and Model Y still have room to reduce prices, and once the legendary more than 100,000 Tesla new models appear on the market, they will further seize the domestic new energy market. For the highly competitive market, some brands with a shaky foundation will face worrying living conditions. Among them, the Feifan R7 under the flag of Shangqi delivered 1501 units in the first month. There are a lot of gimmicks in this car, which claims to be rechargeable, changeable electricity, intelligent driving, and a 43-inch wide true color triple screen. When SAIC launched the model in November, it promised users an extra two months of subsidy of 12600 yuan per vehicle. With so many measures, Feifan R7's first-month sales figures are not outstanding. Of course, with the above annual auto sales of nearly 5 million, Feifan's success or failure does not seem to matter. However, under the background of poor sales of brands such as Feifan and Zhiji, the future of SAIC is also full of uncertainty. For Changan Automobile, the real market feedback of Avita 11 still needs to go through a few months of market test. In Changan Automobile, as the production capacity is gradually alleviated, the sales volume of Deep Blue SL03 will be worthy of attention. As for Geely, after some exploration, polar krypton, which sells more than 10,000 yuan a month, has finally gained a firm foothold in the market, and polar krypton is also exploring the possibility of listing independently. The extreme stars who go out to sea can also be regarded as some achievements, while other brands still need to be tested in the market. perhaps restructuring other brands is also an option for Geely. In the context of the active transformation of traditional car companies, there are still some remarkable achievements. According to the FIFA data, the domestic retail share of independent brands reached 51.5% in October. Relying on the strong realization of the new energy market, independent brands finally beat the joint venture brands, and the domestic passenger car market has been historically reversed. From the sales data of individual enterprises, the transformation of new energy is also a good medicine for growth. Among them, GAC GROUP announced that the company's car sales in November were 190300, down 15.09% from the same period last year. But November sales of new energy vehicles were 33700, up 89.99% from a year earlier. New energy is not only the defeat of joint venture brands, but also the foundation of whether traditional car companies can win the future.

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

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