"in the future, there may be only five major car companies left in the chinese market."

——zhu huarong

text/ba jiuling

during the national day, marketing posters for new energy vehicles filled major shopping malls.

delivery gifts, financial gifts, replacement gifts, recommendation gifts, traffic gifts, warranty gifts, compulsory traffic insurance gifts, after-sales gifts, replenishment gifts... all kinds of gimmick benefits are dazzling. car companies are engaging in price wars in various ways in order to get a better ranking on the national day sales list.

in order to compete for users' attention, major car companies have also planned in advance and held new product launches before the national day.

from september 9th to september 29th, in just three weeks, more than 60 new or revised models were launched. on september 10th,great wall harvard、ask the world、gac aian、extreme、saic volkswagen、chery、wuling、lincolneight major brands will launch new products at the same time.

new energy vehicles appear at the press conference

there are so many press conferences that there are not enough reporters. minibus knows a senior who has been doing car reporting for decades. he test-drove dozens of new cars last month, but only four of them could remember their names. he thinks this is related to changes in the new car development cycle.

in the era of fuel vehicles, it takes at least four or five years for a new vehicle to go from project establishment to design testing to mass production. for examplenissangroup classic modelssylphy, it took a total of 60 years from the advent of the first generation to the launch of the fourteenth generation. the average replacement time is 4.6 years.

but in recent years, the development cycle of a new model has been shortened to less than two years. zhu jiangming, founder of leapmotor, said frankly:"two years is the update cycle for smart electric vehicles. only by keeping up with this pace will you not fall behind."

executives from major global manufacturers such as volkswagen and toyota lament that the chinese auto market is changing too fast and the online efficiency of chinese manufacturers is horribly high. in 2023 alone, 126 new models will be released in the chinese market, not including annual facelifts.

after the release of a new model, car companies must keep a close eye on weekly sales. if they find that the market is going down, they will make mid-term revisions. the previous habit was to make minor revisions once a year (similar to the pace of apple mobile phone launches), but now some car companies have compressed the revision interval to half a year.

in a sense, the update and iteration cycle of chinese cars has surpassed that of smartphones. why is china's auto industry reeling like this? the pace of development is getting faster and faster, is that a good thing?

why is the development cycle shorter?

the shortening of the new car research and development cycle is the result of the joint action of the production end and the consumer end.

from the production side, compared with fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles have a more complete supply chain system, more advanced manufacturing processes, and more efficient production management.

when developing new vehicles, fuel vehicle companies often need to develop their own engines and gearboxes. but new energy vehicle companies can outsource the r&d, testing and production of core hardware such as batteries and motors to suppliers.

yang hanbing, managing director of catl (shanghai) intelligent technology co., ltd., once said: "we are confident that the oem will produce a new car within 18 months."

in addition to the progress of the supply chain, the continuous optimization of automobile manufacturing processes also saves time for the introduction of new models to the market.

ding wenjiang, an academician of the chinese academy of engineering, believes that new energy vehicles, including large structural parts such as body and chassis, are integrated and integrated die-casting, which simplifies the complex process that originally required dozens of riveting, stamping, welding, and forging, and greatly speeds up the process. mass production progress.

new energy vehicle manufacturing

not only the production side, but also the consumer side's demand for cars has also changed.

compared with fuel vehicles, consumers of new energy vehicles are younger and prefer trendy, interesting and personalized products. changes in consumer demand have forced car companies to accelerate the launch of new products.

the mainstream consumer group of new energy vehicles is not those born in the 60s and 70s, but those born in the 80s and 90s. those born in the 1960s and 1970s are very loyal to brands. if they identify a brand, they will only buy products from that brand.

however, those born in the 1980s and 1990s do not have such high brand loyalty, and they are more willing to try new trendy products. in the perception of people born in the 1980s and 1990s, newer cars are always better than old ones.

those born in the 1980s and 1990s are still “surfing experts”. before purchasing high-priced products, they will compare every indicator of each product in detail, including battery capacity, charging rate, fast charging power, vehicle system, smart driving, smart cockpit, and interior accessories. and other parameters.

if they want to capture the hearts of those born in the 1980s and 1990s, new energy car companies must continue to improve various parameters. the best solution is to introduce new products with more advanced technology, smoother experience, and higher cost performance to impress young consumers. .

most car companies are working hard, frantically compressing the research and development cycle, trying to put new technologies into new cars as soon as possible to make consumers smile.

what chinese consumers love and hate

some people believe that when car companies compete, car owners benefit.

there is some truth to this statement. since hundreds of new cars are launched in the chinese market every year, chinese consumers have a wider range of choices; since chinese car companies are eager to install all "black technologies" into their cars, chinese consumers can buy newer and trendier models. interesting product.

on social platforms such as youtube and instagram, we can often see evaluation videos of chinese new energy vehicles. foreign bloggers were so shocked by the sense of technology in chinese cars that they were incoherent, exclaiming "dream car" and "future car" again and again.

source: internet

however, if it looks beautiful and feels pleasant to the touch, does it mean it will be easy to use when you bring it home?

as we all know, if a product is designed and produced in a very short time, its safety, reliability and durability may be compromised.

in fact, consumers of domestic new energy vehicles have already felt this pain.

according to statistics from chezhi.com (a national automobile consumer complaint acceptance and handling service platform), in the second quarter of this year, the number of complaints about 2024 models exceeded 2,000 for the first time. pure electric vehicles were the main source of increased complaints, with a month-on-month increase of more than 2 times, concentrated on some domestic new energy models.

looking through more than 2,000 user complaints, we can find some spine-chilling stories: car owners become dizzy due to car body resonance problems; the vehicle suddenly crashes into a wall due to the failure of the assisted driving system; the vehicle suddenly triggers the aeb function and causes the vehicle to crash on the highway. emergency braking during operation...

these complaint information may not be true and reliable, but at least it reflects a phenomenon: in the process of compressing the development cycle, some car companies may have neglected product testing and safety verification, and used car owners as guinea pigs.

on june 7 this year, li shufu, the founder of geely automobile, once said bluntly: endless involution and simple and crude price wars will result in cutting corners, fabricating and selling fake products, and non-compliant and disorderly competition.

this disorderly competition also increases the economic costs for car owners, mainly including insurance costs and maintenance costs.

all major insurance companies know that new energy vehicles that are rushed to the shelves are more likely to cause accidents, so they will increase the corresponding premiums. according to statistics, the average vehicle premium for new energy commercial auto insurance in 2023 will be 1.72 times that of fuel vehicles.

compared with insurance premiums, high maintenance costs are more of a headache for car owners. some new energy models are withdrawn from the market within three years of being launched, and the vehicle maintenance system collapses.

after talking about the consumer side, let’s look at the attitudes of manufacturers and merchants.

one general succeeds and ten thousand bones wither?

from the perspective of the new energy vehicle industry, fierce competition around cost performance and development cycles is both a good thing and a bad thing.

in the world of martial arts, only quickness is unbreakable.domestic brands’ innovative and fast approach can wrest dominance in the chinese market from international brands.

in the era of fuel vehicles, domestic brands only have price advantages, and are inferior to international brands in other aspects (including design level, core technology, and product experience). their market share in china is only a pitiful 30%.

in june this year, the sales volume of chinese brand passenger cars was 1.432 million units, and the market share soared to 64.6%. the influence of international brands such as toyota, volkswagen, and tesla is getting weaker and weaker.

winning the local market is only the first step. chinese new energy vehicle companies have also launched overseas strategies to fight a tough battle in the international market.

my country will export 605,000 new energy vehicles in the first half of 2024

over time, china may give birth to world-class car brands like toyota, volkswagen, and tesla.

but the road to the top of the world is extremely dangerous. only a few strong people can succeed, and most companies will die on the way.

the endless involution of chinese car companies in terms of products, technology, configuration and experience has driven many practitioners crazy.

first of all, the faster the speed of new products, the lower the average sales volume of new products and the shorter the average life of a model.

in 2016, more than 90 new models (excluding facelifts) were released in the chinese market. the monthly sales volume of 24% of the new cars after release was always less than 1,000 units. there were 45 models with monthly sales of more than 5,000 units and 22 models with monthly sales of more than 10,000 units. vehicle.

by 2023, the number of new cars released has increased to 126, and 44% of the new cars have monthly sales of less than 1,000 units. only 23 models have monthly sales of more than 5,000 units, and 7 models have sold more than 10,000 units.

models with continued sluggish sales will soon be abandoned by oems. a typical case is gaohe hiphi y, which will be launched in july 2023 and will be discontinued in february 2024.

after production is discontinued, the research and development expenses and production expenses of this model will become irreparable sunk costs.

when a new energy vehicle company continues to "overturn" and many new models in a row come to an end, it will be under great financial pressure and may fall into a quagmire of losses.

according to the financial reports of listed companies,in the first half of this year, nio had a net loss of 10.384 billion yuan, xpeng motors had a net loss of 2.653 billion yuan, leapmotor had a net loss of 2.212 billion yuan, and jikrpton motors had a net profit of 2.190 billion yuan.

these listed companies can still hold on, at least they won't collapse in the short term. those new energy brands that are not listed on the market and have no capital support will have a hard time and may go bankrupt at any time.

in fact, china's new energy vehicle industry has already undergone a major reshuffle. according to media reports, there were more than 400 new energy vehicle companies in the chinese market in 2018. as of now, there are only a few dozen car companies left that can keep their production lines running normally.

the players who stayed at the card table did not dare to slack off at all. because of the industry elimination round, there is still a second half.

industry insiders such as lei jun, founder of xiaomi auto, yu chengdong, head of huawei auto bu, he xiaopeng, founder of xpeng motors, and zhu huarong, chairman of changan automobile, all believe that there may be less than 10 mainstream brands in the chinese auto market in the future.

most of china's new energy vehicle companies are destined to become stepping stones for a few winners.

author of this article | rao zufen | responsibilityedit | he mengfei

editor | he mengfei | source |VCG