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

In the era of new energy vehicles, the situation of BBA seems to be getting more and more difficult.

Once upon a time, there was such a discussion in the automobile market: who does the future belong to in the new energy era?

Some people say that it is Tesla who engages in "software-defined cars", while others say that it is an independent car company that accelerates the transformation, while others say that it is a new force in car building that is suddenly emerging as a new force. When it comes to "BBA", which is located in the front line of traditional luxury, people often scoff.

You know, earlier BBA did not attach importance to electrification, mostly using "oil to electricity" platform, sales have been slow to get up, so for a long time, netizens jokingly called "miscellaneous brand trams". The new forces are almost every car, want to pull the same price of the BBA to compare, in order to show their strength.

But just this year, that seems to have changed. According to the sales released by BMW, in the first half of 2023, BMW sold 44900 pure electric vehicles, an increase of 283% over the same period last year, surpassing not only its old rivals Mercedes-Benz and Audi, but even car companies such as Xiaopeng and Polar Krypton.

There are signs that BMW is about to tear off the label of "miscellaneous trams".

However, the matter is not so simple. After conducting terminal interviews and in-depth analysis, we find that the sudden rise of BMW's pure electricity sales is more like a carnival before the collapse of the building.

The sales of i3 and iX3 BMW pure electric vehicles counterattacked mainly because of the big sales of i3 and iX3 models.

According to the official website, the official guiding price of the BMW i3 starts from 353900 yuan, while the official guiding price of the BMW iX3 starts from 405000 yuan, but in the end market, the prices of the two models are very different from the guiding prices.

You know, since the beginning of 2023, the price war has been in full swing, even the luxury front line of BMW can not be avoided. At the beginning of the price war, BMW terminal stores gave a preferential policy of nearly 100000 yuan to BMW i3, and the preferential price was only about 250000 yuan.

According to BMW's sales consultant, "the BMW i3 2022 eDrive 35L sells best, which is cheaper than the online offer and can reach 245000 yuan." According to the sales statement, plus 11000 yuan of insurance, the price of the whole car is even less than 260000 yuan.

In the automobile market, the purchase price is often an important factor for many people to buy a car. When Citroen C6 cut prices before, it triggered a buying spree. It was called "200000 Citroen C6 is old and 120000 Citroen C6 is calm". When it comes to BMW, it has also become "350000 BMW i3 bored, 250000 BMW i3 with big eyes".

As for another sales force BMW iX3, the terminal also gives a great discount, and the reference price on a car website is as low as 299000 yuan.

In fact, in addition to BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz have also offered substantial discounts on their pure electric cars at the terminal.

For example, Audi Q4 e-tron has always insisted on price reduction, but in the face of depressed sales, it is still in the terminal to give nearly 60,000 yuan discount. The terminal discount of Mercedes-Benz EQC is more than 200000 yuan, but as the car currently has only 22 models and has a general reputation at the beginning of the market, sales are still slow to rise.

Although sales of BMW's i3 and iX3 models have increased significantly, other new energy products, such as the 5-Series New Energy, are still silent due to low terminal discounts.

Thus it can be seen that in the face of the downturn in sales, BMW has fallen into electric anxiety and embarked on a road of price for quantity.

Where does electrokinetic anxiety come from? Behind the price for volume highlights BMW's motorized anxiety, which is mainly because it does not attach importance to the "second curve".

Jan Morrison, dean of the American College for the Future, once put forward a "second curve" theory, that is, the first curve is the enterprise life cycle experienced by enterprises to carry out traditional business in the familiar environment, while the second curve is the new enterprise life cycle that enterprises develop in the face of future new technologies, new consumer groups and new markets.

For example:

Previously, New Oriental, which has sprung up in the education and training industry, suffered a heavy blow because of a "double reduction" document, but recently, it has once again become the darling of capital through the live broadcast of "Oriental selection." obviously, the live broadcast with goods is the second curve of New Oriental.

In the automotive field, fuel vehicles used to be the first curve of BYD, but many years ago, BYD made a layout in the field of "second curve" new energy vehicles, and finally completely stopped producing fuel vehicles in line with the trend of the times. the "second curve" new energy vehicle business development will rise. And also developed BYD semiconductors, Fudi batteries and other third curve, fourth curve.

In fact, the same is true for BMW, the fuel car market is BMW's first curve, and the electric car market is BMW's second curve. However, due to the extraordinary success of the fuel vehicle market and the cost of electric vehicle research and development, BMW did not attach importance to the arrival of electrification.

You know, in the era of electric cars, the automobile industry has undergone earth-shaking changes.

First of all, technically, platform technology has always been regarded as the "foundation" of electric vehicles, but BMW still uses the "oil-to-electricity" platform because it does not attach importance to electrification. And in another focus of the industry-intelligence, BMW is in a weak position.

The second is performance. We should know that what BMW has become a luxury brand depends on performance and sports, and the zero speed of electric drive in the field of electric vehicles naturally reduces the dimension of fuel vehicles, and the zero hundred acceleration that fuel vehicle manufacturers are proud of is only the second-or third-rate level of new energy vehicles. In this case, BMW's advantage has been weakened again.

Finally, positioning, in the era of fuel vehicles, there is a strict classification of cars, from high-end to luxury, and then from luxury to ultra-luxury. However, in the era of new energy vehicles, this attribute has been greatly weakened. Let's take a look at the price of BMW new energy vehicles. The starting price is more than 400000 yuan and more than 500000 yuan, which is far higher than the new power. Everyone starts from scratch, do you have unparalleled technology? Or is there the intelligent function of the leading industry? Or is there an unparalleled performance? Why do you set yourself so high in the first place?

The lack of attention to the electric era has led to the backwardness of platform and intelligent technology, coupled with the new industry pattern, the weakening of luxury car attributes is in contrast to its ultra-high pricing, which leads BMW to move further and further away from the "second curve" of electric vehicles.

Finally, when the wave of electrification and intelligence swept in, BYD and other car companies who early regarded new energy vehicles as the "second curve" have already accelerated their transformation and entered a new industrial life cycle. BMW, on the other hand, fell into endless anxiety in wave after wave of shocks, and ended up clinging to the traditional fuel car business like driftwood, helpless and confused.

This is not only the pain of BMW, but also that of many traditional fuel brands.

BMW's bullet hit itself. In fact, BMW has also explored the field of electrification.

As early as the 1970s, BMW launched an electric car called 1602e. It is understood that the car uses 12 12V lead-acid batteries with a battery capacity of 12.6kWh, a power of 32kW, and a range of up to 60 kilometers. Although there is a large gap compared with today's electric cars, it has been commendable in that era.

Unfortunately, only one car was built for display at the Munich Olympic Games that year.

In the 1980s and 1990s, BMW successively launched BMW 325iX electric vehicles, BMW E1 and other models, but there was no market for new energy vehicles at that time, and BMW only regarded them as "testing the water".

Thus it can be seen that although BMW is a "forerunner" in the field of new energy, most of them are concept cars and water test cars, and BMW really began to enter the new energy market back to 2011.

In 2011, BMW launched the "I" series and launched the first generation of BMW i3, which is indeed an all-electric model using the BMW LifeDrive platform.

However, due to the lack of product power and other reasons, the market response is not optimistic. It is understood that when it first went public, it had a range of only 150km, a far cry from Tesla Model 3, which was popular in the market at that time. Eventually, the first generation of BMW i3 was officially discontinued, and BMW's LifeDrive platform became a thing of the past.

BMW, which failed in this exploration, did not insist on the exploration of the "second curve" new energy vehicles, but launched the CLAR platform, which is known as the "oil-to-electricity" platform, and launched a series of follow-up models, which met wild complaints in the industry, followed by the label of "backward", "deal with" and "miscellaneous brand tram", and electric car sales fell into a state of collapse.

There is such a saying on the Internet, "A man picked up a real gun in the summer when he was 13 or 14 years old. Because he was not afraid of heaven and earth, he pulled the trigger, and no one was killed or hurt. He thought he fired an empty gun. Later, when he was 30 or older, he heard a faint wind behind him. He stopped and turned around, the bullet right in the middle of the eyebrow."

For BMW, the lack of emphasis on electrification, the abandonment of the research and development of pure electric platforms and the adoption of a series of measures to convert oil to electricity are like a bullet fired many years ago, pushing BMW's sales of pure electric vehicles to rock bottom. Although BMW made a breakthrough in the first half of this year by trading price for volume, it is clearly not in the long run.

BMW has previously said that it will not launch the pure electric platform "Neue Klasse" until 2025, and that nearly half of its products will continue to use fuel vehicles in 2023.

Obviously, BMW is not fully All in electrified, but is still obsessed with the "first curve" fuel vehicle business.

Thus it can be seen that when the era of electrification and intelligence comes in an all-round way, this decision seems to have a significant impact on the current development of BMW like a bullet through time and space.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: automobile News Agency (ID:automobile-news), by Cheng Yu.

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