having tasted the sweetness of positive market feedback, chinese automakers are more eager to compete in r&d
2024-09-14
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the shenzhen municipal planning and natural resources bureau recently announced the planning permit and master plan for byd's global r&d center project located in baolong street, longgang district. the total project land area is approximately 650,000 square meters, with an estimated total investment of 20 billion yuan and a construction area of over 3.3 million square meters.
judging from the automobile production and sales data in the first eight months of this year, the market share of chinese brands has continued to rise, while foreign brands have generally seen a decline in performance. the continued price war and the new energy penetration rate have exceeded 50% for two consecutive months. these are the market's appearances, and from the financial reports of listed automakers, it can also be found that chinese automakers have high r&d investment intensity and high efficiency. although the total r&d investment of overseas automakers is high, the feedback on products and the market is not very effective.
among the more than 5,300 a-share listed companies released by wind this year, byd ranked first in r&d expenses. in fact, in the first half of 2024, the r&d investment of most chinese automakers exceeded the net profit in the same period. after rounds of internal competition, everyone gradually realized that the essence of price wars is cost wars and technology wars. automakers must leave enough room for survival on the cost side. chinese automakers have stepped up their efforts to develop core components, hoping to keep cost control and the right to speak in the industrial chain firmly in their own hands.
as the business scale grows, byd's r&d expenses will reach 20.2 billion yuan in the first half of 2024, exceeding tesla and approaching stellantis. it ranks first in r&d investment among chinese automakers. in terms of r&d intensity (the proportion of r&d expenses to receivables), byd's r&d intensity has exceeded that of overseas giants such as mercedes-benz, bmw, stellantis, and tesla.
the r&d intensity of traditional car companies is generally around 5%, while new forces basically maintain 10%-20% in the early stages. nio has the highest investment ratio, reaching 22%.
+------------+--------------+------------+-----------------+
| company name | operating income (rmb 100 million) | r&d investment (rmb 100 million) | proportion of revenue (%) |
+----------+----------------+----------------+-------------+
|byd| 3011.27 | 201.77 | 6.70 |
|saic group | 2846.86 | 76.74 | 2.70 |
|geely auto| 1073.05 | 45.53 | 4.24 |
|beijing automotive| 943.23 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
|great wall motors| 914.29 | 41.85 | 4.58 |
| changan automobile | 767.22 | 29.12 | 3.80 |
| seres | 650.44 | 28.27 | 4.35 |
| ideal auto | 573.12 | 60.76 | 10.60 |
|dongfeng motor group | 511.45 | 24.99 | 4.89 |
|gac group | 458.08 | 32.51 | 7.10 |
|zekr auto| 347.77 | 45.49 | 13.08 |
|nio| 273.54 | 60.83 | 22.24 |
|xpeng motors| 146.60 | 28.17 | 19.22 |
|leapmotor| 88.45 | 12.21 | 13.80 |
+---------+----------------+----------------+-------------+
in general, the r&d achievements of chinese automakers and upstream supply chain companies in the past decade have surpassed those of their overseas counterparts. as long as this r&d lead can be maintained, it will have more and more positive impacts on production and sales in the terminal market.
xu fanghua, reporter of nanfang.com and yuexuexue
