Wei Xiaoli, who is striding forward, is about to step into the "door of life and death"

If it was last July, we would never have imagined that at this moment a year later, Weilai, Ideality and Tucki would all become electric vehicle brands with a monthly sales of 8,000 vehicles, and it may take two or three months to break through the monthly sales of 10000 vehicles. However, can we be sure that Weilai, Ideality and Tucki have succeeded? This problem may not be so optimistic, not because of the fierce competition of new energy products, but more because the differentiated advantages of these first-movers may be filled soon.

The snowball in the new energy vehicle market is getting bigger and bigger.

In July, it can be said that the new forces of building cars won a great victory. In addition to Wei Xiaoli, the monthly sales of the three companies reached 8,000 vehicles, and the second-tier electric vehicle brands including Zero Run and Nezha also sang in unison. For example, the delivery volume of Nezha in July reached 60 1 1 vehicle, a year-on-year increase of nearly four times; Zero-running cars announced an order volume of 6,540 vehicles in July, with a delivery volume of 4,404 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of more than 6 times; No matter how bad Weimar cars are, 4,000 cars have been sold this month. Considering the price of bicycles, its revenue scale is also the second-line leader.

However, the new forces seem to have sprung up suddenly, but in fact they just broke out at the critical point.

People in the industry have always stressed that when the penetration rate of new energy vehicles exceeds 10%, the new energy vehicle market will experience explosive growth, and this snowball will get bigger and bigger. Coincidentally, since February this year, the monthly sales volume of new energy vehicles has stabilized at 200,000, and after May, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has exceeded the 10% mark. In recent years, the sales volume of the whole passenger car market is about 1.50- 1.8 million. If we only consider new energy passenger cars, the penetration rate will be even greater, and the market has given a clear signal that snowballs are starting to roll.

If we say that Tesla is the hero to promote the sales growth of new energy vehicles, it ranks first. At present, it seems that the monthly sales of 3 and Y models can be stabilized at around 20,000-25,000 (although Tesla's domestic sales in July were only 8,000, it was only the silence before the storm warning). The second echelon is Wei Xiaoli and BYD (Korea). Before that, it may have supplied about 25,000 cars in total. It seems that it is ready to hit the scale of 40,000 vehicles from July. The third echelon is those mini electric cars, Hong Guang MINIEV and so on. Although it accounts for a large proportion, their driving force is not as good as the first two echelons.

Of course, another key to the sales growth of new energy vehicles in July was that vehicles like Volkswagen ID began to increase in volume. Whether taking their own Mojie travel channels or giving policies to suppliers, traditional car companies have at least begun to increase their voices in the new energy market.

These factors together make China's new energy market, from the earliest confusion, to the later wandering, and then to the hope, to the brilliant sunshine.

Where does Wei Xiaoli win at present?

High-end new forces like Wei Xiaoli are close at hand to break through the monthly sales of 1 10,000 vehicles, especially relying on a single model to achieve the breakthrough of 1 10,000 vehicles. You have to say that the purchase restriction policy in first-tier cities has promoted the sales of these new forces, which is of course part of the reason, but after really analyzing "who bought these electric cars", you will feel that "people" is the most critical factor.

Maybe you will see "all kinds of people" buying these new electric cars, but in the end, a larger proportion are "greasy middle-aged people". Greasy is not a derogatory term here, but more like an adjective. These so-called middle classes have long been sophisticated and harmless-otherwise "fishing, motorcycles and recreation" are the three hobbies of middle-aged men-and their pursuit is generally inseparable from the word "circle".

Do you think Buick has a circle, Toyota has a circle and Honda has a circle? But if you change an electric car and a mini car, you will have a new circle.

Therefore, the victory of new forces such as Wei Xiaoli is not that their products surpass traditional car companies, nor that they have won a unique share in the market, but that they have given the middle class a reason to change cars. And because the middle class changed cars, Wei Xiaoli seized the mass market, Buick market, Nissan market and second-and third-line luxury brand markets.

It turns out that these brands are all upgraded users in the price range of 250,000-400,000 yuan, such as Tiguan L and Tuang of Sagitar, Angkewei and Angkewei Plus of Lang Wei, Highlander of Toyota Corolla, QX50 of Nissan and so on.

Now, these middle-aged people are turning into high-end electric vehicle users: Maiwei, who likes luxury SUVs, bought a Li for Highlander, and Passat Magotan chose P7. More people, who had the opportunity to buy 34C before, finalized Model 3, and BYD Han seems to have seized the original Camry Accord site.

Therefore, Tesla, Wei Xiaoli and BYD didn't actually create a market before, but more found the weakness of the joint venture brand, and then directly inserted it, and then found that this is such a lucrative market.

In fact, if we look at the entire market of 250,000-400,000 yuan, that is, the annual sales volume of B/C class cars and B/C class SUVs was about 4.4 million last year, with an average of about 360,000 vehicles per month. This shows how much room these new forces have for growth. At present, the monthly sales of several head electric vehicles may be around 70,000, and the next step may be around 65,438+10,000, which is close to 30%.

Yan 'an, Li Shen also mentioned a similar view: "When we planned Li ONE on 20 16, the market sales volume in this range was about 3 million units per year, and it should exceed 5 million units this year. By 2025, this market is expected to exceed 8 million units per year. "

Although the size of the 8 million vehicles is open to question-in fact, it is also possible to consider inflation-on the whole, the whole electric vehicle is a substitute, not an increment, which is certain.

Is success smart and failure smart?

Wei Xiaoli can replace the joint venture and high-profile models, and it is not just electric drive. This is not the key to establishing "circle consciousness". The cards played by these new forces are intelligent experience and autonomous driving, plus a little "positioning theory."

As for the advantages of intelligent experience and autonomous driving, I have done analysis before. In that article, I probably put forward a core point: Intelligentization can help China brand counterattack, and it can also establish the advantage of automatic driving at a price of 200,000 yuan. But all the advantages gained by China brand are the same, and the difference between the first and the second may be erased. Wei Xiaoli's success shows for the first time that intelligence helps new brands counterattack.

But at the same time, we should also see that the information established by Wei Xiaoli is not a moat.

For example, the intelligent experience given by Wei Xiaoli is far from the intelligent systems of traditional car companies, especially independent brands, including GAC and Geely. At the same time, the smart cockpit of each family is mostly limited to the chipset provided by the supplier. For example, now everyone uses 8 155, so everyone's functions are relatively close; Qualcomm's next-generation intelligent cockpit will land in two or three years, so we have to wait.

Unlike mechanical parts, there are "good or bad" points. At present, it seems that everyone is closer to the intelligent hardware part. Perhaps the only difference is the difference in UI aesthetics, which is usually stronger, but the UI gap does not determine the experience-just as the aesthetic gap between Huawei and iPhone does not mean that Huawei can't.

Next is the automatic driving part, more accurately, it should be the "high-order assisted driving function". The high-order assisted driving function developed by the whole stack can be regarded as a factor to attract consumers to buy new forces, but it is not the main factor that remains to be discussed.

Now a clear signal is that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will strictly supervise the "autopilot function" of OTA, which means that upgrading OTA to autopilot is likely to become a "distant future". This may not have the motivation for new forces to build their own moat at the level of autonomous driving. With the help of suppliers such as Mobileye, traditional car companies can quickly equalize the new forces in the field of advanced assisted driving functions, and everyone's technology generation difference and cost tend to be consistent.

With the tightening of intelligence and autonomous driving, the new forces may soon lose the biggest advantage of "brand segmentation", that is, there is no intelligent product positioning. Without the advantage of "smart experience", Slogan of Weilai is a luxury smart electric vehicle enterprise, and it is also a smart car that understands China consumers better. Li is committed to developing smart electric vehicles that are better than fuel vehicles.

Wei Xiaoli's future.

In fact, from now on, several leading new brands, represented by Wei Xiaoli, have begun to show signs of loosening their product positioning advantages in the market.

Let's take a look at Wei Lai first. Weilai said in the latest financial report that she will launch a brand-new sub-brand, and the relationship with the existing NIO brand is probably equivalent to Volkswagen and Audi, Toyota and Lexus. Behind this strategy, it probably shows that the existing Weilai product line is not enough to support the expected scale. Personally, even if ES6, ES8 and ET7 add up, the scale limit may be 200,000 vehicles/year. After all, Lexus, Cadillac and Volvo, as mature second-tier luxury brands, have annual sales of around 200,000 vehicles in China.

Once Weilai launches a new brand, Weilai's brand base will undergo some changes. For example, whether the brand strategy of putting users first can keep up with the sharp increase of users; Another example is whether the experience difference between the two brands will lead to the weakening of NIO brand perception; For example, whether NIO brand users and new brand users can "play" together, and whether the two brands will have internal friction ... The dual-brand strategy is more challenging than opportunities for a brand with 65,438+10,000 vehicles, especially for luxury car companies whose brands are sinking.

Look at Li. Li revealed more information after listing in Hong Kong stock market, mainly planning to launch a new generation of extended-range electric vehicles in 2022, pure electric vehicles in 2023, increase the research and development of 400kW charging technology, and high-order assisted driving. In terms of product positioning, the ideal is to say for sure that I am "building a car for the family", and the products launched are all around China family consumers. In terms of perceptual goals, I don't emphasize products, but sketch usage scenarios.

Of course, this formulation is in line with the marketing theory, and it has a unique understanding of the positioning of family cars. If the ideal is just to be a niche brand with 6.5438+10,000 vehicles, this positioning can fully support its demand. For example, Highlander and GL8 have similar demand in the whole market. Li's differentiation began with "intelligent experience", which was more in line with the spiritual cognition of the post-80s than the seven products of traditional car companies, accurately grasped the needs of the post-80s, and achieved the success of 10,000 vehicles on the premise that Volkswagen and Buick could not launch differentiated products.

However, whether Li Can can maintain such success after two years really needs to be questioned. As mentioned earlier, the competitiveness of intelligent experience and autonomous driving may fail in the future, so at the pure product level, Li ONE has not fully established the moat.

This is like comparing the ideal. At present, Li ONE has achieved "65,438+0,000 kilometers of oil per box", but with the listing of Highlander with similar price, it is also 65,438+0,000 kilometers of oil per box, so ONE continues to maintain its advantage? There are a large number of independent brands of DHT hybrid system loading behind, which can achieve such results, so where is Li ONE's selling point?

Of course, we can say that Li can has created a product with competitive differentiation with an excellent product manager, but whether this product can easily reach the level of monthly sales 10000 vehicles like this year is actually extremely risky. Moreover, Li doesn't have a relatively complete product line like Weilai's, and the brand image drawn by Li is more mature, and it will also face the problem of whether consumers after 90 s and 90 s can accept such a mature product image in a few years.

And Xpeng automobile company. Xpeng Motors may be closer to other new forces in the second and third lines, such as Weimar and Aichi. Although it is positioned as a "luxury smart electric vehicle", it is actually a "mainstream brand smart electric vehicle" at most. 10-300,000 yuan products, coupled with relatively independent product consistency, almost all of these products are following the footsteps of Tesla, and the substantive difference is not big.

But the strength of Tesla is that it can continue to cut prices without a bottom line, and then the new car will brush this process again. The Tesla brand is enough to support this. Whether it is Tucki or other new forces in the second and third lines, it is difficult to keep up.

It should also be noted that the technological accumulation of new forces is in the early stage of the current expansion of such electric vehicles, and it is actually difficult to form a cost advantage. At present, it seems that electric vehicle technology is basically the evolution speed of two or three years. The scale of the 400V platform planned five years ago has not been completed, and the competition next year may be 800V, which means that all technologies have to be reinvented.

It's like Volkswagen has just launched MEB platform. Three years later, PPE platform has been defined, but what's even more frightening is that Volkswagen has now made it clear that SSP platform will be launched five years later. The iteration and investment of this platform architecture is really too fast, which means that consumers who buy MEB have fallen behind two generations when they change cars this year. In the era of traditional fuel vehicles, it is only the difference between down payment and final payment.

If there is no scale advantage, all R&D costs are brand-new investments again and again. Even if the new forces hold tens of billions of cash reserves, how many rounds can they last?

Finally, there are some new brands, such as Gaohe and Faraday Future. In fact, in the long run, the chances of high-end luxury electric vehicles are not great, and they may become extremely niche brands and find a small number of buyers, but these brands have no real future and are just waiting for an opportunity to be acquired.

Of course, I don't mean to be pessimistic about Wei Xiaoli's future, nor to sing them down. It is common for entrepreneurs to save one or two out of ten, and it is already very valuable to save two or three. However, please believe that those traditional car companies with a hundred years of accumulation are not sitting still. The advantage of traditional car companies is that the cash flow in at least two generations of models is stable. Even if the new forces have money now, it will actually take one or two generations to achieve stable cash flow.

At present, there are so many new forces and traditional automobile enterprises in China automobile market, but the total automobile consumption is only 20 million. How can all car companies have a future? It can only be said that Wei Xiaoli's chances of survival may be greater, but it is limited to five or six years.

Perhaps we will soon see the merger and reorganization of existing new power brands. These stories have been repeatedly interpreted in the early stage of the development of Internet companies.

I don't know if you still remember the video website war that year, and Youku bought potatoes in one fell swoop; During the Hundred Regiments War, various group buying websites merged, and then the Meituan ran out with the help of the takeaway business; Later, after the cycling war, mobike became a green orange, and ofo no longer existed.

The trend of electric vehicles will not change, but in the evolution of this megatrend, new forces will not become "century-old factories".

Text JackieLXX

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