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

In 2022, the epidemic and economic downturn made many industries go through a long winter. "cutting the budget", "reducing the business line" and "striving for progress in stability" have become the key words of the year in many industries. Many of the former vents began to burst, and capital left the market one after another. Even consumers are "clutching their money bags" and have begun the consumption downgrade journey of "one person has enough to eat, the whole family is not hungry".

But in the general environment is not as expected, there is an industry is strong, showing a steady growth trend, out of place under a "howl", that is, the new energy vehicle industry.

According to the data of the Federation of passengers, 6.498 million new energy passenger vehicles in China were wholesale in 2022, an increase of 96.3% over the same period last year, and the market penetration rate has reached 27.6%.

It is worth mentioning that when the era of new energy vehicles comes quietly, China's automobile industry is finally "elated", saying goodbye to the situation that has been left behind by developed countries for decades, and even has the trend of anti-surpassing, and is now in the forefront of the world. However, it can not be ignored that China should not be limited to the domestic market, but should look at the whole world and move towards the world.

The bell of 2023 has rung and the major car companies have announced their annual targets for 2023. At the time of gunfire in the new energy mid-end model market, some car companies began to look into the blue sea of the low-end new energy vehicle market, preparing to "emerge as a new force"; some car companies followed Tesla's footsteps and began to compete for "price advantage"; some car companies began to "volume" hardware configuration. In 2023, the "final battle" of new energy vehicles is coming, and there is smoke everywhere. What "killer mace" will each family use?

New energy car companies'"report card" and "small target" in 2022, Tesla, the leader of new energy vehicles, failed to meet the sales target of 1.5 million vehicles, with a total global delivery volume of 1.31 million vehicles. It was also reported that Tesla Shanghai Super Factory will continue to produce electric vehicles for 17 days from January 3 to January 19, 2023, and then suspend production of electric vehicles from January 20 to January 31, which is longer than the Lunar New year holiday (January 21-27). This means that the plant's production reduction plan, which began in December 2022, will be extended to 2023. Tesla then responded to the matter, saying that it was for the convenience of employees to celebrate the Chinese New year, so they were given more holidays.

On the other side of Tesla's rapid progress, domestic new energy is not to be outdone. Data show that BYD sold 235000 vehicles in December and 1.8685 million in the whole year. It was closely followed by Guangzhou Automobile Ean, whose cumulative sales reached 271000 in 2022; Naha, the new force of car building, ranked third, with a cumulative sales of 152000 in 2022; and the ideal car delivery volume ranked fourth, with a total delivery of 133000 new cars for the whole year, and the annual cumulative delivery volume of the middle-and high-end Xilai reached 122500. Xiaopeng ended up with 120700 cars in 2022.

At the beginning of 2023, Tesla started a price war again, ready to "make a comeback." Huawei began to cut prices, but many other new energy car companies could not bear the pressure of the expiration of the "state subsidy" and raised prices one after another. in the heat of the "price war", new energy car companies have also set themselves ambitious sales targets in 2023.

It is rumored that BYD aims to sell 4 million electric vehicles in 2023. But BYD responded to the media that due to the impact of the epidemic, there are many uncertainties in the market, consumer demand and supply chain system, so it is difficult for the company to judge the 2023 sales target. It is understood that BYD will launch more blockbuster models in 2023, including BYD Sea Lion, Qin PLUS and Dolphin targeting Tesla Model Y. Geely New Energy, on the other hand, has publicly expressed its hope that the sales of new energy vehicles in 2023 will be more than 100% higher than the total sales achieved in 2022.

Hardware homogenization of new energy vehicle companies is difficult to find the "moat" the ideal of new energy vehicle enterprises is very plump, but in the case of fierce market competition, how to achieve the ideal? The "inner volume" journey of new energy vehicles has never stopped.

From the point of view of the hardware configuration, it can effectively help drive the lidar has almost become a standard, but now the hybrid solid-state lidar through the scanning mode innovation, greatly reduced the cost of lidar. In addition, in the case of "lack of core" of car companies, new energy vehicles that need 2000 + chips are also more difficult. after all, traditional fuel vehicles only need 500,600 chips. According to IC Insights data, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic automotive chips in 2021 is only about 5%, and new energy vehicles are still facing a chip gap.

As the key hardware of the cabin, the display screen plays an important role in the information processing and entertainment of users. In addition to watching video, listening to music, navigation and other basic functions, but also expanded the voice interaction, automatic parking, intelligent assistant and other new functions, so large screen, multi-screen gradually evolved into a new trend. Take the ideal L9 as an example, multi-screen interconnection has become a reality. However, after the release of the ideal L9, some people in the industry believe that it is "overconfiguration" or "may affect driving safety".

Not to be outdone, Weilai and Xiaopeng joined the battle of the "inner volume" of the intelligent cockpit screen, but they "found another way".

For example, the Weilai ET5 is the first native design model on the market with the VR / AR experience, and the Xiaopeng P5 even moved a 47-inch projection into the car, giving a new definition of "in-car cinema."

In this regard, Jiang Han, a senior researcher at the Pangu think tank and a senior researcher at the Beijing Institute of understanding, analyzed in an interview with NetEase: "unless self-driving is fully popular, it will have little significance for the volume of the digital screen. What we urgently need to solve is the problem of car smart chips." At the same time, he also said that in the future, carmakers and smart cockpit service providers may be separated, just as computer manufacturers' software and hardware providers are separated. In the future, some enterprises, such as Baidu, which have strong advantages in the field of intelligent driving, will use software services to upgrade the entire industry.

In addition to the "in-volume" configuration, new energy car companies do not forget to compete in charging speed. GAC Aian claimed in 2020 that a car with graphene-based super fast-charging batteries could charge 80% of NEDC in 8 minutes with a range of 1000 km. But he was soon slapped in the face, said Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the China Electric Automobile 100 Forum. "if someone tells you that this car can run 1000 kilometers, can be fully charged in a few minutes, it is safe and the cost is very low." in terms of current technology, he must be a liar. "

The charging speed is difficult to improve, so how about changing the battery directly? Up to now, Xilai has built a total of 1307 exchange power stations in the Chinese market, including 346 expressway exchange power stations, and completed the layout of high-speed power exchange network of 5 vertical, 3 horizontal and 8 major urban agglomerations. But changing power is not suitable for all scenarios. Jiang Han told NetEase Technology, for example, "for online car-hailing, buses, taxis and other urban traffic scenes, long-distance travel, long-time charging is actually very difficult to achieve, power exchange has become the easiest thing." From the point of view of most office workers and urban commuters, the cost of the power exchange mode is undoubtedly higher than that of the charging mode. For example, you drive an average of 30 to 40 kilometers a day when you go to work, and you stop as soon as you arrive at the office. I will drive home after work in the evening. In this case, charging is undoubtedly the most cost-saving way to play. "

At the same time, Jianghan also stressed that according to previous estimates by the China Energy News, if private cars are not enthusiastic about the power exchange mode and the users of the power exchange do not reach a certain scale, it is difficult to recover the operating costs of the replacement power station. It is understood that only when the load rate of a single exchange power station reaches 50% can the breakeven be achieved. In other words, a power station that can change electricity more than 400 times a day must complete at least 200 times a day in order not to lose money. At present, the biggest problem of power exchange is that high frequency can alleviate the cost, but at present, the exchange power stations of most enterprises are actually in a state of loss, and it is difficult to balance the cost of power exchange effectively.

In terms of R & D investment, in the third quarter of 2022, the R & D expenditure of new energy vehicle enterprises remained at about 3 billion yuan in a single quarter, of which Xiaopeng automobile R & D expenditure was 1.5 billion yuan, an increase of 18.5% over the same period last year. The increase was mainly due to an increase in R & D personnel, resulting in an increase in employee pay. Ideal car R & D investment reached 1.8 billion yuan, an increase of 103.1% over the same period last year, mainly for future R & D of new vehicles. The R & D expenditure of Weilai has increased to 2.945 billion yuan, which is used in the research of chips, batteries, self-driving and other fields. BYD has spent more than 10 billion yuan on research and development for two consecutive years.

Behind the high R & D investment is the tragedy of "the more you sell, the more you lose." According to the company's third quarterly report data, Xiaopeng posted a net loss of 2.38 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2022, an increase of 49 percent over the same period last year; Weilai posted a net loss of 4.1108 billion yuan in the third quarter, an increase of 392.1 percent over the same period last year; and ideal posted a net loss of 1.646 billion yuan in the third quarter, compared with 21.5 million yuan in the same period last year. Zero run, Nezha, Cyrus and other new car-building forces are also not immune, all in large-scale and sustained losses.

Looking to the future, the new forces of car building may face a more difficult situation, the market seems to have been "immune" to the gimmicks of smart driving, and only Wei has come out of a "power change" differentiation route. The way of spending a lot of money and occupying the market continues, but only by building our own moat can we survive in the new energy market.

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