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

In 2022, China exported 1.12 million new energy vehicles, an increase of 90 percent over the same period last year, mainly to Europe and Asia. Among them, ASEAN market sales continued to rise in the second half of the year.

At present, ASEAN has a total population of more than 660 million and enjoys 9 per cent of the world's demographic dividend. In 2021, car sales reached 2.79 million, accounting for less than 3.5 per cent, making it the seventh largest car consumer market in the world. ASEAN as a whole is the third largest economy in Asia and the sixth largest in the world.

For more than half a century, Japanese car companies have long occupied 80% of ASEAN's market share. Maybe it's time to pick a new car maker.

Looking horizontally and vertically, for many Chinese brands, this cake is not small enough to eat, but as the saying goes, "the meat on the leg of the fly is also meat", and ASEAN is undoubtedly the perfect springboard or transition for China to go to Europe and the United States.

Moreover, 34% of the population of ASEAN is composed of young people between the ages of 15 and 34, and the proportion of young people has reached the highest level in the history of ASEAN. The advantage of demographic dividend is outstanding, which can not only provide an adequate labor force for the export-oriented economy, but will continue to have more potential consumers.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, the handset in Southeast Asia was sold directly to Feifei. Countless young people are held back at home to play video games frantically, causing orders in local industries to soar, leaving chips and other parts completely out of supply.

Nowadays, many young consumers have turned their attention to new energy vehicles.

They often regard these electric cars with new concepts, new technology and oversized electronic screens as a big mobile phone or a giant game console. Car buyers are not necessarily the richest, but they must be young people who are open-minded and willing to embrace cutting-edge technology.

Today, let's talk a little bit about the current situation of electric cars in some ASEAN countries and what Chinese brands have become there.

The first thing to say must be Thailand. In fact, the established carmaker has always taken certain protective measures against new energy vehicles produced and exported in China, such as higher tariffs and few subsidies, to help local manufacturers gain a higher likelihood of competition.

Ke Rao is like this. According to the cumulative number of new energy vehicle exporters released by the FIFA in 2022, China exported a total of 79420 new energy vehicles to Thailand, ranking third in last year's cumulative list of new energy exporters, slightly less than the UK and Belgium. compared with 2021, the growth rate reached 96%.

In the 2023 outlook for China's auto industry released by UBS in January, Gong Jie, head of China's auto industry research, highlighted the current situation of China's new energy brands in Thailand. Qin Shihuang was really holding Chen Rui in the mirror-a win-win square.

Especially Chinese brands that have been integrated into locally made brands.

Chinese manufacturers accounted for about 80 per cent of the 13298 electric vehicles sold locally in the first nine months of 2022, according to the Thai Ministry of Energy and the Kasikorn Research Centre in Bangkok.

Especially the Great Wall and BYD.

As of November 2022, the former had sold 11796 electric vehicles in Thailand. According to local forecasts, about 63600 electric vehicles were sold in Thailand last year, which is self-evident in the local electric car market. Among them, the good cat series ranks first in Thailand's electric car sales list all the year round, accounting for 45% of local electric car sales in the first nine months of 2022.

It is understood that the Thai audiences of Chinese brand electric cars such as good cats are mostly urban young middle-class.

Wimonsiri Boonyopakorn, a female teacher based in the Thai province of Narat, said her husband recently went to work in Bangkok and decided to buy a car to make it easier to run nearly 300km to see her husband on weekends. Finally took a fancy to the good cat of the Great Wall for a simple reason: the mileage is enough and the price is cheap.

In Thailand, after excluding $4000 in government subsidies, the price of a good cat is still much higher than at home, reaching 763000 baht ($22000), but the price is much lower than that of most mainstream fuel cars on the local market. And it is also much cheaper than American and Japanese electric cars such as the Toyota bZ4X (which retails for about $53000) and the Tesla Model 3 (which retails for about $51000).

In order to maintain its leading position in the Thai market, Great Wall has not only built the brand's first overseas optical storage and charging supercharging station in Bangkok, but also plans to double its investment in Thailand. The Royong factory will be built into the brand's production center for electric vehicles in ASEAN, and four new electric vehicles will be launched locally in 2023, while the number of fast charging stations in Thailand will increase to 12000 by 2030.

Although the latter entered Thailand late, it was not until September last year that it announced that it had signed a contract with WHA, a Thai industrial property developer, to start building the brand's first electric car factory in Southeast Asia. It is understood that the factory, located in Luoyong House on the east coast of the Bay, covers an area of about 1 square kilometers. it is planned to start producing electric vehicles in 2024 with an annual production capacity of 150000 vehicles. Mainly sold to Southeast Asia and Europe.

The seller WHA said it was the company's largest deal in 25 years and the largest investment project for Thailand's get in 2022. The move even made JETRO Osaka, Japan's trade promotion agency, shudder, saying that BYD had replaced any Japanese car company as Thailand's largest foreign direct investor.

The long-lasting version and the standard extended version of the ATTO 3 (yuan PLUS) were launched immediately on November 1. As of December 12 last year, ATTO 3 had received 10305 orders.

What impressed Gong most directly and deeply was BYD's tireless publicity campaign in Thailand. In particular, the huge outdoor advertising of ATTO 3 can not be said to be a spark in the streets of many cities, it can also be said to be everywhere.

In addition to Great Wall and BYD, SAIC MG, which entered Thailand in 2017, has also made a big difference. At that time, the new factory in Chonburi, Thailand, invested by SAIC Group, had a total investment of more than 1 billion US dollars and an annual production capacity of 100000 vehicles. In the past two years, it has also become an important manufacturing base for the brand's global younger market.

In 2021, MG's market share in Thailand reached 8.2%, ranking fourth among local car brands, surpassing some Japanese brands that have been operating in Thailand for more than half a century. MG ZS won the top spot in Thailand's small SUV market segment the year before last.

By 2022, sales of MG new energy vehicles will also account for 24% of Thailand's total new energy vehicle sales.

In terms of the new power of car building, the first brand to launch in Thailand is Nezha, which launched the right rudder version of its V electric car last year, with a local price equivalent to about 150000 yuan. Then there is Foxconn, which wants to contract everything. In June last year, Foxconn set up a joint venture with Thailand's national oil group (PTT) to produce pure electric vehicles, Horizon Plus, which plans to invest about 37 billion baht ($1 billion). It has broken ground and is expected to be completed in 2024.

All in all, Thailand has been hungry for the electric car industry in recent years. On the one hand, it promulgates a number of preferential measures to encourage the consumption of electric vehicles, on the other hand, it attracts a large number of new energy vehicle companies to invest in factories through preferential policies such as tariff relief and government incentives.

The reason for such preferential treatment for Chinese brands-after all, the Thai government's goal is to become "the largest manufacturing and export center of electric vehicles in Southeast Asia", attracting 400 billion baht of investment in the next few years, and the annual domestic production of electric vehicles will reach 750000 by 2030. accounting for 30 per cent of Thailand's total car production.

In order to achieve the set goals, quickly complete the industrial upgrading and transformation, and continue to rely on conservative Japanese brands, it is obviously impossible.

And then the Philippines. I can't believe it.

Last year, the Philippines ranked fourth on the Federation's cumulative list of new energy shipments, reaching 68666 vehicles, next to Thailand. However, its year-on-year increase reached 471%, which can be called the second highest in the world in the ASEAN race, and even the eldest Thailand has to stand aside.

The main reason for such a remarkable achievement is that the market for motor vehicles and electric vehicles in the Philippines is already small: 315337 vehicles were sold from January to November last year.

Last year, Thailand and Indonesia sold 1.88 million and 1.01 million vehicles, respectively. The Philippines is only 1/5 and 1/3 of the latter two. According to earlier government data, of the more than 5 million cars registered there, only 9000 are electric vehicles, barely 2/1000, and most of them are passenger cars, and most of them are owned by the country's super-rich.

Therefore, its new energy vehicle industry obviously belongs to the initial stage, which can be described as a typical example of "a small boat is good to turn around, a big boat is good …" the typical example of "top wave".

Since the end of November last year, an inter-departmental group directly led by the new Philippine President Marcos Jr. has approved the abolition of tariffs on electric vehicles, stipulating that MFN tariffs on electric vehicles and electric vehicle parts such as passenger cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles will be reduced to zero in the next five years.

Prior to this, the import duty on the above-mentioned vehicles in the Philippines was between 5% and 30%. Consumers need to buy an electric car for $21000 to $49000, which is much higher than traditional cars.

Little Marcos's move has directly earned a lot of money for the new energy car market in the Philippines, and many Chinese new energy brands have flocked to it.

The first is BYD.

In 2021, some local Chinese said that there are basically no new cars in BYD 4S stores in the Philippines, especially new cars such as Tang and Han, which need to be booked in advance. And S6, which belongs to proper out-of-season selling in China, has a lot of people.

In addition, in January this year, the country's Investment Committee reported that BYD also plans to find plant sites in the Philippines to assemble electric cars.

At the end of last year, Great Wall chose to cooperate with Huihong Motor, a subsidiary of the local SQ Group, to jointly develop the Philippine market, and made it clear that the main products in the future are SUV and pickup models.

Not long ago, a Chinese electric car company registered three projects worth 25 billion pesos (about 3.11 billion yuan) with the Philippine Financial incentive Review Board, according to the Philippine Investment Committee. It involves the rental of electric vehicles, the construction of charging stations and the launch of all-electric vehicle transportation network vehicle services.

The company plans to export 20000 electric vehicles to the Philippines, including 10000 each for leasing and online car-hailing, plus 1000 charging stations. To "create an electric vehicle ecosystem".

At present, the company is qualified to receive secondary financial incentives under the Philippine Strategic Investment priority Plan, and there will be corresponding tax incentives for related infrastructure and operations in the future.

Indonesia, another important car-building mountain in ASEAN. The current focus is on electric subsidies, which aim to triple local electric vehicle sales by 2030, and are aggressively introducing electric car manufacturers to invest locally to achieve enough end-to-end localized electric vehicle supply chains.

As a big ship, Indonesia currently has the same attitude towards new energy vehicles coming in from overseas, and there is still considerable room for the Indonesian market as long as it is authentic enough for overseas brands to build factories there.

For example, we are most familiar with SAIC GM Wuling.

It is understood that Wuling entered Indonesia's West Java Province in 2015, with an investment of 700 million US dollars. After more than 20 months, it built the Indonesian Wuling mainframe factory and supplier park, which now covers an area of 600000 hectares and has an annual production capacity of 150000 vehicles. In July 2017, it produced the first Indonesian Wuling car.

Since then, the people's car brand that the Chinese are most familiar with has successfully brought "Wuling Soul" to Indonesia and become "the Wuling of the Indonesian people"-for example, when Indonesian consumers are used to buying cars through credit, they opened a Wuling pluralistic financial company in 2019; for example, Almaz RS, the first SUV model in the overseas market of Silver Standard, is equipped with the Indonesian voice interaction system "WIND" and so on.

Data show that in 2021, due to the successful release of the Almaz RS, Wuling, Indonesia, sold 25564 vehicles, ranking sixth in the Indonesian automobile market, with a market share of about 2.9%, while Almaz RS also topped the Indonesian market segment that year. In August 2022, the Air ev, the first global car of Wuling New Energy, went on sale in Indonesia. It took 2500 orders in one month, and the queue time for picking up the car was more than 2 months.

Thus it can be seen that as the fourth most populous country in the world and one of the founders of ASEAN, Indonesia's new energy vehicle market has great room for development, especially for local electric vehicle manufacturers. At present, the Indonesian government plans to provide a subsidy of up to 80 million Indonesian rupees (US $5130) for each locally produced electric vehicle and about 40 million Indonesian rupees for each hybrid electric vehicle.

Let's talk about Malaysia, which is low-key and can not be ignored in ASEAN. In fact, it is not only the seventh largest exporter of semiconductor products in the world, but also the "chip closed testing center" in the hearts of global industrial suppliers, accounting for half of the entire ASEAN chip closed testing business, but also the only country in Southeast Asia with a completely independent domestic car brand, or two, respectively Proton and Perodua-- until the establishment of VinFast Vietnam in 2017, its uniqueness was not broken.

Moreover, Proton Automotive has developed eight new energy vehicles in 2011, including three pure electric vehicles and five add-on models, which were officially launched in 2013. Perodua's new energy vehicle manufacturing chain is very complete, and has long been able to achieve more than 90% of the local production of parts and components.

For a long time, Proton and Perodua represented the higher level of new energy vehicles in ASEAN. It is a pity that the car has been built, and the supporting facilities have not kept up, such as the outdated power supply system, the scarcity of charging stations, the high loss of car batteries, and other factors, which have led to numerous discussions and reports on the popularization of electric vehicles by the local media over the past decade, but there are still few live electric vehicles on the road.

Until 2017, Geely acquired a 49.9% stake in Proton with 270 million yuan in cash and 463 million yuan worth of Geely brand use rights, and then joined hands with Proton's parent company DRB to build an integrated production and research base in Malaysia.

Geely's move seems to be very clever, because it has not only won the policy concessions offered by the Malaysian government to local companies, and Lutes has a 51% controlling stake. It also cleverly circumvented the import tariff of up to 30%, which has been the biggest obstacle to Chinese brands from entering the Southeast Asian market.

After the acquisition of Proton, Geely officially based in Malaysia, slowly pried open the door of ASEAN, which has a population of 600 million. For example, the first electric car, the Proton X70, was launched in 2018, and the market response was excellent: orders exceeded 10, 000 in 49 days and monthly sales exceeded 3000. According to the official Wechat account of Geely Holdings Group, Proton's cumulative sales in 2022 were 141432 vehicles, an increase of 23.3% over the same period last year, making it the best market performance since 2013.

However, most of the above sales results still belong to fuel vehicles.

This really worries the Malaysian government. At present, they have the best tax relief for electric vehicles in ASEAN-by December 31, 2023, they will be exempt from 100% electric vehicle import tax and consumption tax, as well as electric vehicle import (CBU) road tax exemption. Until December 31, 2025, 100% sales tax on assembling imported electric vehicles (CKD) will be exempted.

Today, on the streets of Malaysia, the most commonly seen electric cars are still mainly commercial. Also in 2017, for example, BYD exported the all-electric bus K9 to Malaysia and put it into operation in the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

And SAIC Chase. Quietly set up a manufacturing base in Malaysia, producing V80, G10 and other series, covering wide-body and narrow-body light buses, light trucks, special modified vehicles and other fields, quite popular with local residents.

In terms of electric passenger cars, BYD launched the Atto 3, which followed Thailand in December last year. And by 2023, BYD will join forces with Senami in Malaysia to build 20 car showrooms there, and 40 by 2024-no tax anyway.

On the other hand, Changan Automobile is hard with both hands.

First, in 2019, it began to contact Fieldman EV, a subsidiary of Fieldman Sdn Bhd, and signed a car export agreement to bring Changan integrated electric vehicles to the Malaysian market. Two years later, the Eado (Escape) EV460 electric model was successfully exported to Malaysia and Southeast Asia. While the Eado EV460 electric car entered the horse, Changan Motor decided to invest 1 billion ringgit (about 1.528 billion yuan) to authorize Fieldman EV to set up the first electric vehicle assembly plant in Malacca, Malaysia.

Of course, the Chinese winner in Malaysia last year was the Great Wall Euler cat. In early December, good Cat, which has been on the market in Malaysia for less than a month, won the "most anticipated New car of 2022" award at Malaysia's 2022 Automobile Awards ceremony.

Finally, let's talk a little bit about Vietnam and Laos. Although everyone can see the take-off of Vietnam, especially the rise of VinFast. But in fact, the degree of modernization and industrialization of Vietnam is still not in the same level as the above ASEAN brothers.

What we know so far is that BYD seems ready to rush.

According to Reuters on January 13, BYD plans to invest US $250 million in northern Vietnam to build a plant to produce auto parts to facilitate future exports to assembly plants built in Thailand to deepen its supply chain in Southeast Asia. It is still in the stage of site negotiation and requires about 80 hectares of industrial land. If fast, it may start in mid-2023.

Some of the new car-building forces are going to Laos to fight against electricity.

In particular, the new ankle force Aichi, which is basically silent in China, went to Laos to launch a right rudder version of the new electric car, and began to build a local charging network.

And Aichi also found that Laotians are most concerned about air conditioning and cooling capacity. Through the background data, their technicians found that many Laotian users often lower the air conditioning temperature continuously and frequently during test driving. For this reason, Aichi has specially designed the air conditioning system for the right rudder electric vehicle entering ASEAN, which strengthens the cooling effect.

Nashi also has electric car products listed there and entered the Burmese market.

Finally, some parts companies are also constantly joining the "ASEAN family bucket". For example, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Ningde era, Blue Lithium Core, and so on, have all announced the construction of factories in Southeast Asia.

It is understood that Guoxuan Tech not only established Thailand New Guoxuan Co., Ltd., a joint venture with Nuovo Plus of Thailand's PTT Group, and plans to build a Pack production line for lithium-ion power batteries in the eastern economic corridor of Thailand, which is expected to be put into production in the fourth quarter of 2023; it is also cooperation with VinES of Vietnam to build a battery factory in Hejing Province, which is expected to have an annual production capacity of 5GWh and is expected to be put into production by the end of 2023.

The movement continues to have the Ningde era. In May last year, a memorandum of strategic cooperation was signed with Thailand Arun Plus Co., Ltd., which aims to carry out cooperation in battery-related business in ASEAN and further enhance the competitive advantage of both sides in the battery industry. Puqin Times, a subsidiary of Guangdong Bangpu, signed a tripartite agreement with Indonesia's PT AnekaTambang (ANTAM) and PT Industri Baterai Indonesia (IBI) to jointly build a power battery industry chain project, including nickel mining and smelting, battery materials, battery manufacturing and battery recycling.

Yiwei Lithium Energy has invested in a cylindrical lithium battery manufacturing project in Malaysia, the "chip closed testing hub", with a value of about US $422 million to produce cylindrical lithium-ion power tools, two-wheeled vehicles and cleaning tool battery products.

Yes, in any case, the future is promising.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: autocarweekly (ID:autocarweekly)

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.