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more than 10 new cars are released in one day! car companies are crazy about "gold nine and silver ten", but are they in the wrong direction?

2024-09-28

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september 26th is just an ordinary day for most workers, but the teachers of major car media are extremely busy because there are too many new cars for pre-sale or launch on this day.

according to incomplete statistics, at least a dozen new cars were released on september 26. among them, zhiji automobile, a sub-brand of saic motor, launched the zhiji ls6, a high-end model owned by changan, which is said to be the only new car in its class with "digital chassis" and "four-wheel steering". new energy vehicle brand avita has launched the avita 07, its first model to offer an extended-range power version.

(source: internet)

gac aion rt, dongfeng xingxinghai s7, chery xingtu yaoguang c-dm electric four-wheel drive version, changan qiyuan a07, lynk & co 06 renew/em-p, faw pentium v70/t90 longyao version and other models are also on display. on this day, xpeng's popular g9 model has been added to the pre-sale or launch date, with a new 650 four-wheel drive high-performance pro version.

while independent brands are making efforts, joint venture brands are not idle either. honda and dongfeng motor jointly launched the lingxi l, and gac jointly launched the 2025 accord; ford and changan jointly launched the 2025 mondeo.

not only september 26, all major car companies were extremely busy throughout september. huawei held successive press conferences, first launching the five-seater version of the wenjie m9, and then launching the zhijie r7. car companies such as lantu, deep blue, qiyuan, byd, and great wall have also held new product launch conferences, with approximately 50 new car models launched throughout the month.

although car companies have launched many new products in the past few months, there has never been a large number of new cars launched together like in september, and even more than a dozen cars were launched on the same day. what is the reason for the explosive launch of new cars by car companies?

new cars are crowded, and cars are rolling in "gold nine and silver ten"

every september and october, when the hot summer turns to crisp autumn air, and it is not as cold as winter, consumers' consumption desire will increase significantly, so almost all walks of life have the saying "golden nine and silver ten". the first reason why car companies collectively launch new cars in september is to increase sales through new cars with upgraded configurations when the auto industry enters the peak sales season.

however, the time of entering the golden nine and silver ten is only the superficial reason why car companies collectively launch new cars. the internal reason is that competition in the industry has intensified. car companies have to launch new cars with hardware upgrades and unchanged or reduced prices to compete with their friends. it is not difficult to see from the models that were pre-sold and launched on september 26 that although there are still some fuel vehicles, they are mainly new energy vehicles. avita, which originally only deployed pure electric vehicles, also chose to accept extended-range technology. this will enhance product competitiveness.

(source: zhiji automobile)

around 2020, tesla and byd emerged, and other new energy vehicle companies made every effort to promote product mass production. the entire industry entered the "crazy involution era" from the "ppt era". tesla model 3/y has also been subject to multiple complaints and banners from consumers to defend their rights due to repeated price cuts. the champion edition and honor edition models launched by byd have increased the volume without increasing the price, which has also made countless old users regret buying cars too early, and attracted a large number of new users to buy cars.

since the second half of 2023, the auto industry’s opposition to involution has become increasingly louder. huawei smart car solutions bu ceo yu chengdong, geely chairman li shufu, gac chairman zeng qinghong and others have all spoken out against the industry's involution, believing that the price of a car is not as good as its value. relevant departments also issued notices calling for a halt to involutional competition.

(source: chinese government website)

in july last year, 16 car companies, including byd, tesla, and saic, signed the "automotive industry commitment to maintain fair competition market order" and promised not to disrupt the order of fair competition in the market with abnormal prices. this commitment letter was it's called a "no price reduction commitment". as a result, the day after the commitment letter was signed, a car company reduced the price of a certain model by up to 37,000 yuan for promotion.

volume value requires a large amount of resources to be invested in the research and development of new technologies and new functions. price reduction is undoubtedly the simplest and fastest solution to improve product competitiveness. after all, cars are still means of transportation in the final analysis, and transportation is the most important. functions such as smart cockpits and smart driving are just the icing on the cake.

(source: faw toyota)

car companies have not given up on technology research and development. technologies such as batteries, fast charging, and smart driving are advancing with each passing day. many new energy vehicles are updated every year. however, price reduction promotions are still the basis for car companies to ensure sales. not only new energy vehicles, but also fuel che was also forced to join the price war.

in the era of fuel vehicles, joint venture car companies did not pay attention to domestically produced cars at all. not only were they much more expensive than domestically produced cars of the same level, many models also required additional money to take delivery. nowadays, the domestic automobile market is no longer dominated by fuel vehicles. data from the china automobile dealers association shows that the penetration rate of domestic new energy vehicles was approximately 52.4% in august, achieving more than half of the penetration rate for two consecutive months.

due to the slow pace of electrification transformation of overseas car companies, and the constraints of their fuel vehicle business and many upstream supply chain companies, the competitiveness of new energy vehicles is generally lower than that of domestically produced vehicles. therefore, joint venture brands of fuel vehicles are forced to reduce prices to increase sales volume to avoid further losses. multiple shares. taking changan ford mondeo as an example, the starting price of the 2020 model is 192,800 yuan, and the starting price of the 2025 model is only 149,800 yuan.

(source: changan ford)

competition between car companies does allow consumers to buy models with higher configurations at lower prices, but for the development of the entire industry, it is not entirely a good thing, and even has many disadvantages. with the new energy vehicle industry making rapid progress, these shortcomings have been temporarily covered up. once the share of new energy vehicles reaches a critical point, the shortcomings accumulated in years of price wars may explode.

automobile competition is fierce: the price of a roll is not as good as the value of a roll

at the taizhou international automobile industry expo on september 20, geely chairman li shufu said: "the price war gets cheaper, the quality gets worse, and the service experience gets worse. if this goes on, the company will be doomed. because some companies don't talk about it. be moral and act recklessly. you won’t get far without being ethical and disorderly, so geely cannot follow suit.”

li shufu is not the first person to put forward this view. chery automobile chairman yin tongyue said in an interview with the media during the launch of star era: "i have always disapproved of price wars. there is always a limit to going down. price wars are to reduce costs, when the supplier’s price drops to a certain limit, quality will be sacrificed.”

in fact, the price war has entered a fierce stage, and the first unlucky ones are not leading car companies such as geely and chery, but 4s stores and second-hand car dealers. data from the china automobile dealers association points out that in the four years from 2020 to 2023, more than 8,000 domestic 4s stores have closed down. in the past two years, dealer groups such as yongao group, senfeng group, and baolide have experienced thunderstorms one after another. bmw also exposed there is news that dealers are uniting to fight against car companies and demand to stop price reduction promotions.

(source: bmw brilliance)

for car companies, dealers are not only a part of selling cars, but also the key to sharing the pressure. cars are relatively expensive. every additional car in stock puts considerable pressure on car companies. dealers are required to purchase and transfer inventory, which can greatly alleviate their own financial pressure.

however, in the internet era, car prices are relatively open and transparent. car companies continue to lower prices, leaving dealers with too little profit margin. coupled with the fierce price war, it has become increasingly difficult to sell cars, and many dealers have to mortgage their cars. to the bank in exchange for funds to purchase the car. under the vicious cycle, dealers are accumulating more and more vehicles in inventory, and some dealers with weak financial resources are experiencing severe financial problems due to the break in their capital chain. in the next five years, tens of thousands of dealers may go bankrupt in china.

the same is true for the second-hand car market. the prices of new cars have been continuously reduced, and the price after the price reduction may be lower than that of second-hand cars, which has caused a devastating blow to the second-hand car market. xiao zhengsan, vice president and secretary-general of the china automobile dealers association, said bluntly that 92% of domestic second-hand car dealers have suffered losses in recent years. the consequence of the losses of 4s stores and second-hand car dealers is that the quality of service has dropped significantly. they are already unable to make ends meet, so they can naturally save on services.

(photo source: photographed by danshatong)

for the car companies themselves, as li shufu, yin tongyue and others said, in order to reduce prices and costs, it is inevitable to sacrifice a certain amount of quality. quality and service are the two lifebloods of car companies. once they are lost at the same time, the consequences can be imagined. car companies with a strong foundation can still sustain themselves at the expense of some profits, while car companies with a weak foundation may not only kill their peers, but also themselves.

at the second future automobile pioneer conference, yu chengdong said frankly that byd has strong cost control capabilities, so it can increase prices. hongmeng zhixing is not good at increasing prices, but it can increase value, especially in the direction of smart driving, and can increase prices. great value.

"the first half of the new energy vehicle industry is electrification, and the second half is intelligence." this sentence is almost always mentioned in the press conferences of car companies. however, there are no companies like huawei that are capable of making achievements in the field of intelligence. so many. fortunately, value is not limited to intelligence. nio's service and battery replacement, volvo's safety, etc. are well-known, which are all manifestations of its value and influence.

while increasing value, car companies can also consider appropriately reducing model releases, abandoning the car-overwhelming strategy, and taking the premium route, focusing on product experience and value. only when value is recognized by consumers can "less is more" be realized. what is less is the number of models and costs, and what is more is sales volume, revenue and profits.

on september 26, when more than a dozen cars are pre-sold and launched on the same day, perhaps the fewer the better.

the "post-new energy era" is coming: who will stay at the poker table?

at the xpeng mona m03 launch conference on august 27, xpeng motors ceo he xiaopeng said that in the next ten years, among all chinese car companies, including independent brands and joint venture brands, perhaps only seven can be called mainstream brands. yu chengdong , yin tongyue, leapmotor chairman zhu jiangming, gaohe automobile chairman ding lei and other industry insiders have also expressed similar views.

(photo source: photographed by danshatong)

by 2030, at least dozens of domestic car companies will fail, and fierce price wars will accelerate the elimination of weaker car companies. however, xiaotong is optimistic about the development of the entire domestic new energy vehicle industry. although competition among car companies is extremely fierce, "life" will find its own way.

in addition to glass and tires, byd auto can produce almost all other hardware by itself, and it has strong financial resources and technical foundation, so it can be assured of lower prices. although brands such as hongmeng zhixing, weilai, and ideal have slightly lower price capabilities, they position themselves in the high-end market, and their target consumer groups are relatively less sensitive to price. in addition, these car companies also have smart driving, extended-range technology, battery replacement, core competitiveness and value such as service also have the opportunity to grow into industry giants.

(source: weilai)

leap motors, which has a lower product positioning, has on the one hand reduced costs through self-research and production of product hardware and technology. on the other hand, it has reached a cooperation with overseas automobile giant stellantis. the two have jointly developed products for overseas markets, which has also pointed out to other car companies. a direction.

volume price is only one of the necessary means for car companies to improve product competitiveness in an environment where new energy vehicle sales are gradually rising. leading new energy vehicles have never forgotten the importance of volume value. while increasing prices, we have also seen car companies exploring the limits of technologies such as smart driving, fast charging, and intelligent control, and accelerating the penetration of technologies into the market to simultaneously increase value.

as long as competition remains, price wars will not disappear. after the industry gradually stabilizes, if car companies want to move forward, price and value must be developed simultaneously. therefore, consumers do not need to be too pessimistic about the involution among car companies. this is just the only way for the development of the industry.

perhaps some car companies will fall due to fierce price wars, but there will always be car companies that stand out and grow into global automotive giants after going through both price wars and value wars.