Xiaopeng Motor 500,000 vehicles, Zero Run car 500,000 vehicles, NIO brand 600,000 vehicles, ideal car 1 million...... Recently, a number of new car manufacturers have announced that they have reached a sales milestone. The new forces of car building that have been racing on the new energy track are ushering in a wave of "hot and hot" outbreak. "This shows that the development of new energy vehicles is entering a new stage, marked by the rise of new car-making forces." Lang Xuehong, deputy secretary-general of the China Automobile Circulation Association, said in an interview with a reporter from China Automobile News that under the impetus of a series of policy supports, including the old for new, increasing consumer acceptance, increasingly rich products and constantly improving cost performance, the market penetration rate of new energy vehicles has continued to grow, bringing unprecedented development opportunities to the new forces of car manufacturing. It has also promoted the sales of new car manufacturers, especially the head brands, to a new level.

 

New powers have reached milestone moments

 

Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal and Zero Run, the first echelon of new car building forces, have reached the milestone of 500,000 cumulative sales. First, on September 20, Xpeng Automobile ushered in two important moments: the 500,000th production car and the 10,000th production car of MONA M03. It is worth mentioning that Xiaopang MONA M03 was listed only 22 days ago, and the number of mass production lines exceeded 10,000, creating the record of the fastest 10,000 units of the new force.

 

Entering October, more car companies came to the good news. On October 11, NIO brand high-end pure electric vehicles to achieve the global delivery of 600,000, in order to celebrate this moment, NIO launched 600 million yuan on the same day to purchase car subsidies.

 

After going through the "most difficult" moment, WEilai's recent business continued to improve. With the increasing improvement of the charging and replacement system, as well as the attraction of the BaaS model policy and other factors, the monthly delivery of the NIO brand has been stable at more than 20,000 vehicles for five consecutive months. The multi-brand strategy has gradually landed, and the new brand Ledao market for the mainstream family market has performed well, and it is also actively preparing to launch the third brand "Firefly". In terms of financing, investors are also firmly optimistic, and a new round of 3.3 billion yuan of capital increase was announced at the end of September.

 

On October 14, Ideal Car ushered in the milestone of one million cars off the production line, becoming the first and only one that has accumulated millions of new power brands in car manufacturing. From the delivery of the first car to the millionth car off the line, BYD took 13 years, Tesla took nearly 8 years, and the ideal car only took 58 months, less than five years, is the fastest car manufacturers in the new force of millions of cars. At the same time, it took nearly four years for the first 500,000 units of the ideal car to be delivered, and only one year and 17 days to go from 500,000 to 1 million.

 

The zero running car that has run out of acceleration this year ushered in the milestone moment of the 500,000th mass-produced car off the assembly line on October 17. Since reaching 400,000 units in early July, zero-run car sales have repeatedly hit new highs - sales in August and September have broken 30,000 units, setting a new record. As a new "dark horse" in 2024, Zero Run lasted more than 100 days from 400,000 to 500,000 vehicles, achieving an amazing rate.

 

It has to be mentioned that AITO asked the community, after the announcement of the completion of the 400,000th vehicle off the line on July 29, the sales volume of 34,242 and 35,560 in August and September, respectively, according to this calculation, the high probability will also reach a new achievement of cumulative sales of 500,000 vehicles in late October at the latest in early November, which will take about 31 months.

 

At the same time, there are a number of new domestic car making forces are constantly working towards their own sales milestone, which also makes the monthly sales of new forces "pass line" from 10,000 to 20,000.

 

02 What is driving the increase in sales

 

Recently, a number of new car-making forces have reached sales milestones, which has also caused attention and hot discussion in the industry.

 

"In the past two years, policy support for the new energy automobile industry and market has continued to increase from the state to the local level, providing strong support for new forces to continuously impact new sales." Zeng Xin, a professor at the University of Science and Technology Beijing, told reporters that in addition to the unprecedented car replacement since the beginning of this year, including supporting new energy vehicles to reduce vehicle purchase tax, multi-party efforts to build high-quality charging and replacing infrastructure system, phasing out purchase restrictions on new energy vehicles, supporting new energy vehicles to the countryside and promoting automobile consumption activities at all levels, etc. All of them have provided a market basis for the accelerated growth of sales of new energy products by new forces. On the basis of the superposition of various factors such as policy, technology and market, China's new energy vehicle market has entered a relatively rapid growth stage, which is also an important factor for the acceleration of sales growth of new forces.

 

It is worth noting that the market demand for new energy vehicles is changing. "The reason why the new forces, especially the leading enterprises, can continue to rise in sales is related to their more attention to user demand, consumption upgrading, and changes in the market competition pattern." Yao Chunde, a professor at Tianjin University, believes that today's mainstream consumers of new energy vehicles are basically young people known as "Generation Z", who usually have a high demand for new technologies and intelligent functions. They not only pay attention to the basic functions of the vehicle, but also pay more attention to the high-tech configuration of the vehicle such as intelligent network connection and automatic driving. In response to these needs, the large-size center control screen and intelligent vehicle machine system, intelligent driving system, and voice interaction commonly configured in new force brand models are important factors to attract consumers. At the same time, younger consumers tend to be more attracted by brand concepts and user experiences. Moreover, today's consumers are more inclined to choose cost-effective, feature-rich independent brands. Therefore, although the pricing of some new force car products is not low, even more than many joint venture brand models, but consumers are still willing to pay for it, because the new force brand provides additional value in terms of intelligence, service experience, etc., to meet the pursuit of high-quality life of consumers in the new era.

 

"The rise of new car-making forces and the rapid increase in sales are also external manifestations of their redefinition of channel forms and business models." Lang Xuehong believes that the new force has adopted a large number of direct and agent based, online and offline combination of the new retail model, not only through the online purchase of the car to pay the deposit, the end payment, etc., but also to provide offline experience services such as test driving, increase the user touch point, improve the user experience, but also ensure the price transparency and national unified price, more acceptable to young mainstream consumer groups. At the same time, the new forces of car manufacturing pay more attention to innovation and user experience in marketing strategies, usually dividing sales into experience centers, delivery centers and service centers, providing more personalized services, and even some brands also provide functional areas such as cafes and libraries to enhance user experience. These models are obviously different from the traditional 4S stores, which refreshes consumers, enhances user stickiness, makes it easier for the brand of the new force to penetrate into the hearts of young users, and undoubtedly becomes a booster for the sales growth of the new force to a large extent.

 

03 The future still faces multiple challenges

 

"At present, the policy dividend of new energy vehicles is still good, and the new forces of car manufacturing will take this opportunity to obtain more development opportunities." Lang Xuehong said that on the one hand, in terms of technical routes and market strategies, each new force is different and has its own focus, and the new force of the head pays special attention to the research and development of intelligent, electrification and other aspects of technology, and is gradually increasing its own technology accumulation. On the other hand, from the development trend, the market competition of the new forces of car manufacturing will be more intense, and the competition for market segments will become the key. Those who can continue to innovate, accurately grasp the market demand, and constantly optimize the user experience of the new force car companies will be more likely to continue to increase sales in the fierce competition, so as to become bigger and stronger.

 

"Overall, the camp of new car makers is becoming more divided." Yao Chunde believes that from the current sales, the new forces of car making in the first echelon are forming a new pattern of "Liwei small zero". Specifically, the leading margin of ideal car sales is large, NiO and Xiaopeng are facing relatively large market competition pressure, and zero run, ask the world and millet are showing a trend of accelerating sales growth.

 

"The new forces of car making has always been a competitive 'circle', from the development trend, the new forces with faster sales growth such as the industry and zero running will also appear you chase me, and there will be a situation that there will be a new 'dark horse' to stand out." Therefore, for a long period of time in the future, the competition between the new forces of car manufacturing in terms of sales will still remain high. Of course, it is not excluded that there will be 'stragglers' in the market competition." Yao Chunde analysis.

 

"But some problems unique to the new forces still need to be paid close attention to." Zeng Xin said that in addition to a very small number of head enterprises, the main problem of the new forces in car making is that it is difficult to determine the profit time point and face increasingly fierce market competition. Although sales have reached a new milestone, the pressure on new power car companies to lose money has not been reduced. Even the ideal car, which has achieved profit last year, reported net profit in the first half of this year nearly halved year-on-year, showing that the profit base is not robust enough. At the same time, the price war in the new energy vehicle market is still fierce, and how to deal with the price war is also a new topic for new power car companies due to continued losses and cost increases. The main risks faced by the new forces of car manufacturing also include the lack of core technology, excessive reliance on foundry, production capacity and delivery difficulties, and continuous quality improvement.

 

"At present, the sales of new energy vehicles will still maintain a high growth rate, which will provide opportunities for new forces to move up." Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Passenger Car Market Information Joint Branch of the China Automobile Circulation Association, believes that from the situation of this year, before the end of the year, the domestic retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles will maintain a one-month penetration rate over fuel vehicles, and the single-month market penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles will break through 50% in August, or it will further break through 55%. This also means that the goal of accounting for more than 50% of the new energy new car market by 2035 is expected to be achieved 10 years ahead of schedule. "At the beginning of the year, we expected the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles to reach 11 million units, but based on the current situation, we are considering significantly increasing the sales forecast of new energy passenger vehicles this year." Cui Dongshu said.

 

In the face of the development of new forces and the challenges from the market, how to respond is crucial. "New forces are playing an increasingly important role in the industry, but they still face multiple challenges." Lang Xuehong believes that in response to the challenges of the domestic and foreign markets, the new forces of car manufacturing also need to seriously study the market demand, truly improve the level of core technology innovation, and take the road of high-quality development.

 

China Automotive News, October 24, 2024