Independent new energy vehicles: the joint venture has not really started

New energy vehicles are opportunities for independent brands to achieve overtaking in corners.

At present, China's new energy vehicle market is also becoming more and more lively. Recently, the new forces of the car, Weilai Automobile and Beiqi New Energy, which are under the FAW Group, have been listed one after another, and hope to accelerate the capital market.

Although the traditional fuel vehicle market is cold, the new energy vehicle market has maintained steady growth under the stimulation of multiple policies. China has become the world's largest new energy vehicle market, and domestic sales of new energy vehicles account for half of the world's total. According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's new energy vehicle production and sales from January to August this year were 607,000 and 601,000, respectively, an increase of 75.4% and 88% over the same period of the previous year. Moreover, the existing pattern in this market is significantly different from the traditional fuel vehicle market, and the top ten sales are occupied by independent brands.

However, behind the scenes, perhaps not so optimistic.

"Recently, two new energy auto companies are listed, but it does not mean that new energy vehicles have entered a new stage of development. This is not the same as product strength. Especially for car manufacturers, many are building momentum, such as The price of a press conference is as high as tens of millions. This is actually in the end, and the motivation for listing does not rule out the mentality of the money, or the needs of investors. From the perspective of product power, the requirements of these companies are good. There is still a distance." Zeng Zhiling, general manager of LMC Automotive Market Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., told the First Financial Journal recently.

When will new energy car companies really achieve profitability? This has received much attention.

The cumulative loss of Weilai Automobile reached 10.92 billion yuan, while BAIC New Energy started to make profits from 2016, but this is mainly because government subsidies have played a role. As the subsidies have fallen sharply, it is still unknown whether they can actually make money. Because of the uncertain future, Weilai Automobile and Beiqi New Energy are ups and downs in the capital market. After Weilai went public, the stock price rose first and then fell. Beiqi New Energy landed on the first day of A shares on September 27, as the North Auto Blue Valley (600733.SH), closing at 9.50 yuan, a drop of 36.88%, and an increase of 18.86 billion in market value. yuan. However, Beiqi Blue Valley rose to the next day, the third trading day (October 8) rose 3.35% against the market, closing at 10.80 yuan.

"If the capital market continues to be optimistic, the listing will give these companies the opportunity to develop. If the capital is more, they can develop better products, which also gives the independent brand the opportunity to enhance competitiveness." Zeng Zhiling said.

Real contest has not begun

At present, from the perspective of the overall environment, multiple policies support the development of new energy vehicles, including car-free tax, exemption from taxation, subsidies for car purchases, and loan ratios of 5% more than fuel vehicles. The promotion of “double points” is also new energy. One of the main factors that the car will develop rapidly in the next few years.

Many independent car companies are accelerating strategic adjustments and regard new energy vehicles as important sectors. After years of hard work, BYD's sales of new energy vehicles have become global sales champions for three consecutive years, and have surpassed the sales of its fuel vehicles for two consecutive months since July this year. BAIC and Changan are accelerating the new energy-enhancing strategy. Xu Heyi, chairman of BAIC Group, said at the 60th anniversary of BAIC that it is necessary to take full energy and new energy as the direction, enhance its independent innovation capability, and comprehensively deepen open cooperation. Achieve the goal of energy. Changan announced that it will completely ban fuel vehicles in 2025 and will invest 100 billion yuan in new energy fields in the future. Geely also launched the "Blue Geely Action", and it is planned that by 2020, 90% of Geely's cars will be new energy vehicles. Great Wall Motor, which is late in the field of new energy, has also accelerated its pace this year. Great Wall has launched a new energy vehicle brand, Euler. Before 2025, the Great Wall will also introduce pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles and fuel. The battery car has a total of 12 products.

Due to the influence of policies such as double points, the joint venture vehicles have also begun to accelerate the layout of new energy vehicles. Xuanyi·Pure Power, which was launched shortly before Dongfeng Nissan, is planning to introduce Nissan technology in the next three years, and strives to achieve 100% localization of electrified core components within three years. There is also a new energy vehicle that GAC Mitsubishi and GAC Toyota have introduced into the prototype of GAC Chuanqi GS4 PHEV, which is also a new style of new energy market. In addition, joint venture brands such as Changan Ford and SAIC GM Buick have also launched their own new energy models.

However, compared with the independent brands, the enthusiasm of the joint venture brand to push the new energy vehicles as a whole is still weak.

"At present, foreign car companies have not really promoted new energy vehicles, but it does not mean that they are not technical. We have technical gaps with them. Joint venture brand planning is basically introduced after 2020. This is also a decision based on the stability of the policy. I hope that the dust will be settled after planning." Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Passenger Car Market Information Association, told reporters.

In Zeng Zhiling's view, the bulk of China's new energy vehicles is mainly subsidized policy guidance, and the product layout of enterprises is also centered around policies. “There is no business logic. The company only focuses on short-term interests for product research and development. Most of the products are products that meet the minimum standards. In June this year, the new subsidy policy was officially implemented, and some models with low cruising range were quickly eliminated. This has also led to a decline in new energy vehicles in June and July.” Zeng Zhiling said that some companies even set up their own car rental companies, which are self-produced and sold for subsidies.

At this stage, self-owned brand new energy vehicles are mainly concentrated in low-end products. The electric vehicles made by traditional Chinese vehicles are basically modified by traditional fuel vehicles. “Our products have a large output, but our understanding of the system's capabilities in automotive production and our ability to re-innovate are not strong. We can retrofit electric vehicles, but it is difficult to achieve a new production system for electric vehicles, so many of our companies and Tesla The gap is extremely huge." Cui Dongshu said that the concept of luxury cars in Tesla is fully recognized in the US industry, and China's independent high-end electric vehicles are not recognized enough.

However, some independent car companies also chose to re-develop the platform to do electric vehicles, such as the Euler brand launched by Great Wall Motor. “The cost of new development platforms for new energy vehicles is relatively high. The independence of the brand to develop new energy sources also demonstrates the determination of the Great Wall to become a new energy vehicle. This is a big investment. However, a new platform is developed to make new energy vehicles. The risk is relatively large, because the sales of new energy vehicles are limited. How to distribute the cost is a problem that the Great Wall needs to solve in the future. It is certainly good to develop products in the future, but this does not mean that the products that are newly opened by a platform must have Competitive, such as the platform developed by BYD and Daimler, the sales of the products produced are not high.” Zeng Zhiling analyzed.

Commercial bottleneck

In the context of the subsidy back slope, the profits of some firms have begun to decline. "From the perspective of the entire industry, the commercialization of new energy vehicles is still worrying, mainly because of the limited scale. The prospect depends on the promotion degree of the double-point policy." Zeng Zhiling said that the current better way is to use the profit of fuel vehicles. Subsidizing electric vehicles, for those companies that independently develop new energy vehicles, the competition they face is even more cruel because they are not supported by fuel vehicles.

In Cui Dongshu's view, in the future competition, whether auto manufacturers can master more upstream superior resources is a key factor. Now mainly because the upstream cost is too high, the cost of batteries and raw materials is relatively high. These upstream enterprises are also speculating by subsidies, and the state should take measures to curb such behavior and conduct effective supervision.

"Some large group companies, especially multinational car companies, such as Volkswagen, Toyota, etc., have large scale of production and sales, and their ability to purchase bargaining is relatively strong, which makes it easy to reduce costs." Zeng Zhiling said that Toyota is using global hybrids to maintain thousands of The scale of 10,000 cars is the same as that of traditional cars. Although the overall market for electric vehicles in China is large, sales are too fragmented, and it is difficult for car companies and single products to be scaled up. In addition, due to the lack of high-quality battery capacity, small companies can only be controlled by people. Only car companies can control suppliers and prices by using huge sales volumes. At present, it is very difficult for independent brands to do so. After the joint venture products entered the new energy vehicle market on a large scale in 2020, the real competition began.

At present, the cost of electric vehicles is still high, and multinational auto companies such as BMW have begun to build their own battery factories in China to reduce costs, which is to some extent follow the example of Tesla. In 2014, Tesla began construction of a super-battery plant in the United States. It is expected to be completed in 2018. It will be 35 GWh after completion. Tesla expects to reduce battery costs by 30% in the future due to economies of scale. If you don't have a battery factory built by yourself, once the battery supplier is out of stock, it will affect the company's production of new energy cars.

Xu Changming, deputy director of the National Information Center, believes that new energy vehicles will show relative advantages over traditional vehicles after 2025, and it is estimated that by 2020, they will reach 1.8 million. "From 2021 to 2025, we judged that there may be short-term fluctuations and then develop steadily. The future license road rights concessions will continue, and the direct allocation of resources in specific areas will continue, and the intensity may be even greater."