As we all know, consumption is the biggest driving force in the troika of the national economy.

In 2021, consumption has accounted for 54.3% of the contribution of GDP, which continues to rise. On the other hand, cars account for more than 1/10 of the total retail sales of consumer goods and more than 4 per cent of GDP.

If it covers the upstream and downstream industries such as energy, chemical industry and semiconductors, its impetus will be even greater, even more than 10%. It can be said that the automobile industry has a great impact on the national economy.

Yangchun March, this is the grass growing Yingfei, when all things recover, it is also the peak season for car factory production. However, the sudden outbreak pressed the pause button.

At present, the automobile industry shrouded by the epidemic is facing the darkest moment, and the brittleness of new energy vehicles is fully revealed.

Automobile industry, the economic lifeline of Jilin

FAW, as the first automobile factory in New China, has the reputation of "the eldest son of the Republic".

Changchun, located in the center of the northeast, the direction of industrial development is more obvious. That is to build the whole industry cluster of complete vehicle parts and cars based on FAW.

From the perspective of the whole vehicle, there are five complete vehicle manufacturing enterprises of FAW, FAW Red Flag, FAW Liberation, FAW Pentium, FAW Volkswagen and FAW Fengyue.

In terms of parts and accessories, there are more than 1100 auto parts supporting enterprises in the city. Among them, there are 387 enterprises above scale, with a supporting output value of nearly 160 billion yuan.

Has the mainland, Weili and other world's top 100 multinational auto parts enterprises, Fuwei, Fuao and other local backbone supporting enterprises. The supporting capacity covers eight system modules, such as engine, transmission, driving, steering, braking, body, environment, automotive electronics and so on.

Changchun is not only an automobile city, but also a university city.

It has 27 undergraduate universities, including Jilin University and Northeast normal University, 14 junior colleges, and more than 500000 college students. Among them, Jilin University alone has 6 campuses and 7 campuses covering an area of 7.27 million square meters. It can be said that there are universities everywhere and college students everywhere.

At present, there are more than 100,000 skilled automobile industry personnel in the city, and 21 colleges and universities have set up automobile majors, which have a large number of automobile talents. In 2021, the GDP of Changchun is 710.312 billion yuan, accounting for 53.67% of the province's GDP.

In 2021, Changchun produced and sold a total of 2.421 million and 2.402 million vehicles, and the output value of Changchun's automobile industry reached 614.3 billion yuan, accounting for 70.3 percent of the city's total industrial output value.

It can be said that Changchun is the economic pillar of Jilin Province, and the automobile industry is the economic pillar of Jilin Province. However, the sudden epidemic has dealt a heavy blow to the automobile industry in Jilin Province.

On March 13, the Changchun Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology issued a document entitled "in order to tie in with the overall situation of epidemic prevention and control in provinces and cities, FAW Group decided to stop production with a plan from March 13," and FAW Group decided to arrange for all five major vehicle factories in Changchun to stop production.

According to the contents of the document, FAW Group's five major vehicle factories in Changchun City have all stopped production due to epidemic prevention and control, and originally planned to stop production until March 16 and resume production on March 17. According to annual production capacity projections, the original plan to stop production for four days will lead to the loss of about 48000 vehicles in FAW-Volkswagen Changchun plant.

However, under the continuing impact of the epidemic, FAW-Volkswagen Changchun plant is still unable to resume normal plant operations in April, and the longer shutdown time also means that the delivery time of vehicles produced by the plant will be delayed.

Undoubtedly, under the influence of the epidemic, the economy of Jilin Province and the automobile industry of the whole country will be greatly affected.

The spread of Shanghai is even wider.

Shanghai thousands of miles away.

Modu, Greater Shanghai, Shanghai, Paris in the East. The pillar industries of this prosperous international metropolis cover more than finance, electronics, steel and petrochemical.

In recent years, Shanghai has made great efforts to develop the new energy vehicle industry, relying on its own excellent automobile industry foundation and perfect new energy vehicle industry chain. At present, Shanghai's new energy vehicle industry is mainly concentrated in Jiading Anting, Pudong Jinqiao and Pudong Lingang.

It is reported that by the end of 2021, Shanghai has gathered 13293 new energy vehicle-related enterprises, and formed a complete new energy vehicle industry chain, from raw materials to vehicle manufacturing, and then to market sales, closed-loop ecology has been completed.

Taking the chip as an example, Shanghai has built the largest chip industry cluster in China. Shanghai's chip industry accounts for 1x4 of the country and gathers more than 700 key enterprises in the industry.

From the perspective of chip design, more than half of the domestic chip design companies are from Shanghai.

From the perspective of chip manufacturers, Pudong has gathered most of the chip manufacturing companies in Shanghai, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, Hua Hong Semiconductor and other top chip manufacturers, and most of the domestic chip production capacity will fall on these companies.

Therefore, the suspension of production in Shanghai, the local supply of chips is out of the question, making the original lack of core problem further worsened.

Tesla, Inc. 's Shanghai factory announced two consecutive stops of production in March this year, the first from March 16 to 17, and the second from March 28 to the present.

SAIC-Volkswagen from April 1, Anting production base shut down, according to the plan to carry out equipment maintenance, factory renovation and other projects.

On April 9th, Li Bin couldn't handle it.$NIO Inc. (NIO.US) $Announce the suspension of production. In fact, since March, due to the epidemic, the company's supply chain partners in Jilin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places have stopped production one after another, and have not yet recovered.

April thirteenth$Great Wall Motor (02333.HK) $The tanks were also forced to stop production and the delivery of the tank 300 was delayed again.

April fourteenth$XPeng Inc. (XPEV.US) $Auto chairman he Xiaopeng also wrote on moments that if supply chain companies in and around Shanghai cannot find a way to dynamically resume work and production, all vehicle factories in China may have to stop production in May.

Yu Chengdong, Huawei's consumer business CEO and smart car BU CEO, wrote on WeChat moments on April 15 that if Shanghai cannot resume work and production, all technology and industrial industries related to Shanghai's supply chain will stop production after May, especially the automobile industry.

He also said that since mid-April, some companies have begun to shut down their supply chains due to closures such as Shanghai.

not a single one can be omitted

Automobile production involves iron and steel, metallurgy, plastics, ceramics and other raw materials industries, as well as electronics, electrical appliances and other industrial sectors, these industries are closely related to the automobile industry. In general, the total number of auto parts will exceed 10,000, and the cost of spare parts accounts for 70% to 80% of the total cost of a car.

The automobile industry chain is huge and complex, and there is a strong dependence relationship between upstream and downstream. Generally speaking, a car has hundreds of suppliers, and if something goes wrong in a certain link, it will cause great interference to the production of the whole vehicle.

Not only the chip, every link in the automobile industry chain is indispensable.

Even if the production of some parts and components is not disturbed by the epidemic, the raw materials can not be supplied normally, and the whole industrial chain is disconnected.

Although enterprises have secondary, tertiary or standby suppliers for parts, they can only sigh when there are systemic problems in the overall supply.

This kind of influence also spreads to the upper reaches of the industrial chain, and the crazy rise of lithium carbonate also has to bow its head. According to the Shanghai Nonferrous offer, lithium carbonate has continuously fallen back to break through the 50000 mark after hitting 502500 on April 7, with a quotation of 495000 on April 14.

The reason behind it is not difficult to understand. The car factory stopped production, the decline in the demand for lithium batteries led to weak demand for materials such as cathode, the wait-and-see atmosphere of the material factory was strong, and the price of lithium carbonate was at a high level, which led to a decline.

The remarks made by he Xiaopeng and Yu Chengdong are by no means alarmist.

"it should not go so far as to (completely stop production). Let's see how to save ourselves. On April 15, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the all-China Federation of passengers, said in an interview with the 21st Century Economic report that there was really great pressure on automobile production and sales across the country in April.

In addition, Chen Shihua, deputy secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and director of the China Automotive Industry Economic and technological Information Research Institute, said in an interview, "it is not so absolute, it can only be said that there may be a large-scale shutdown."

Although the general automobile enterprises have limited time to rely on inventory to maintain normal production under the interruption of spare parts replenishment, the specific conditions of each production enterprise's supply chain are different, and it is also possible to find alternative channels, supplement spare parts and other production resources to achieve normal production.

However, if Shanghai, Jilin and other places can not resume work and production for a long time, it will certainly have a negative impact on China's automobile industry.

Data on Chinese car production and sales in March have shown some pressure. On April 11, the Federation of passengers announced the sales of the domestic passenger car market in March. The data showed that the passenger car market sold 1.579 million new cars in March, down 10.5% from the same period last year and up 25.6% from the previous month.

Sales in the automobile industry are expected to complete 2.249 million vehicles in March 2022, up 29.5% from the previous month and down 11% from the same period last year.

Due to the impact of the Spring Festival holiday in February, the reference significance of month-on-month data is limited. March used to be the time when car sales were booming, and handing over such a report card cannot be said to be optimistic.

Predict the latest data from the company AutoForecast Solutions (hereinafter referred to as AFS) based on auto industry data. As of April 10, the global car market has lost about 1.4378 million vehicles this year due to a shortage of chips. Among them, the cumulative production reduction in the Chinese automobile market continues to remain unchanged at 70900 vehicles, accounting for 4.9 per cent of the cumulative production reduction in the global automobile market.

The tight supply of chips still affects the production of car companies, and the epidemic has forced some auto parts and vehicle factories to stop work. Under the double impact of the two, it is expected that the performance of most domestic car companies in the past two months will be affected to varying degrees.

Last year, China produced 26.082 million cars. Jilin and Shanghai, as major car cities in China, account for about 20% of the country's car production, that is, about 400000 vehicles per month.

The factory capacity of FAW Group as a whole has been restricted by production capacity, accounting for 46%.$SAIC (600104.SH) $Its factories have also been affected to some extent. Relevant professionals estimate that the loss of sales in April could reach more than 250000 vehicles.

Among them, the first to bear the brunt is the new energy vehicle.

Brittle new energy vehicles

In the new energy vehicle industry chain, there is a more interesting phenomenon. In such a hot market, spare parts make a lot of money, but car companies lose a lot of money.

BAIC new energy$Beijing Automobile (01958.HK) $With a loss of 11.7 billion in two years, the domestic pure electric car company, which has been elected as the top seller for seven consecutive years, is now facing the risk of delisting.

It is not an isolated case, but all the new energy vehicle factories are facing the same problem.

XPeng Inc. 's total income in 2021 was 20.988 billion yuan, an increase of 259.1% compared with 5.844 billion yuan in the same period in 2020.

However, the net loss in 2021 was 4.863 billion yuan, compared with 2.732 billion yuan in 2020. The net loss increased by 78% compared with the same period in 2020.

According to the 2021 results released by NIO Inc. Automobile on March 25, NIO Inc. delivered 91400 new cars for the whole year, an increase of 109.1% over the same period last year. During the period, the company's operating income was 36.136 billion yuan, up 122.27% from the same period last year, and the net loss was 4.02 billion yuan, down 24.3% from the same period last year.

Be as strong as$Byd Company Limited (01211.HK) $And unable to escape. BYD's net profit fell 28.43% to 2.443 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2021, while revenue increased by nearly 40%.

If a new energy car factory sells a car, it will lose as little as 10,000 yuan and more than 50,000 yuan.

The new energy car snows heavily in the cold winter, but the spare parts are like spring all the year round in the bright sun.

According to$Ningde era (300750.SZ) $According to the announcement issued on January 27th, its net profit in 2021 is expected to be 14 billion yuan to 16.5 billion yuan, an increase of 150.75% 195.52% over the same period last year. As the world's largest power battery maker, its profits have exceeded that of most domestic car companies.

$Ganfeng Lithium (01772.HK) $In 2021, the volume reached 5.284 billion, up 410.25% from the same period last year.$Huayou Cobalt (603799.SH) $The net profit attributed to shareholders of listed companies is expected to be between 3.7 billion and 4.2 billion in 2021, an increase of 217.64% 260.56% over the same period last year.

Negative faucet$Pudailai (603659.SH) $Electrolyte$Divine material (002709.SZ) $The profits of lithium battery parts and components have all increased greatly.

If you look at Wei Xiaoli's financial report, you can find that it is not without making money. NIO Inc., for example, has a gross profit margin of 18.9% in 2021, up from 11.5% the year before, and the dividend from manufacturing economies of scale is becoming prominent.

However, the period cost of new energy vehicles is huge, like floodgates, profits can not be retained naturally.

For the whole of 2021, NIO Inc. spent 4.592 billion yuan on automobile research and development, an increase of 84.6 percent over the previous year. XPeng Inc. 's R & D expenditure in 2021 is also as high as 4.114 billion yuan.

NIO Inc. 's investment in power exchange technology alone has exceeded 15.5 billion yuan in four years.

NIO Inc. spends a lot of money on the expense side. For the whole of 2021, NIO Inc. 's sales, general and administrative expenses were 6.878 billion yuan, an increase of 74.9 percent over the same period last year.

Under the large-scale investment and cost of R & D, the income has been unable to make ends meet, and the result is an increase in debt.

In the past year, NIO Inc. 's automobile asset-liability ratio increased by nearly 8 percentage points to 58.03%.

As the automobile industry speeds up the pace of electrification, intelligence and networking, the open and secret struggle between new energy vehicle factories has become white-hot.

In the competition of new energy vehicles, the pursuit of technology is the biggest main line. The major manufacturers do not hesitate to invest in research and development, opening and closing, with the intention of being the first to drive into the high-speed track brought about by technological change and get rid of their competitors.

Research and development is so expensive that it is becoming more and more intense like an arms race, and tens of billions of dollars have been thrown into it quietly for several years. If the direction of technology research and development is biased with the actual demand, it will undoubtedly cause a heavy blow to the car companies.

The dividends of the new energy vehicle market have been snatched by power batteries, chips and other parts companies, while few new energy vehicle companies have made money, and some mainframe factories have even suffered huge losses.

The brittleness of the new energy car factory is fully exposed.

Don't be pessimistic.

After 45 days of hard work, all cities and states in Jilin Province have achieved the goal of social clearance of epidemic prevention and control, and are promoting the resumption of work and production in an orderly manner.

The third line of final assembly of China FAW Hongqi Ulsan plant has recently resumed production in a single shift, marking the official start of the resumption of production of China FAW. Next, FAW-Volkswagen, FAW Liberation, FAW Toyota and other factories laid out by FAW in Changchun, Jilin Province, will also resume work and production one after another.

It is reported that at present, many factories of SAIC are still in production operation. For example, there are still 4000 employees in the SAIC passenger car port base in the factory closed-loop management, maintaining the production operation.

According to the relevant person in charge of the port base, priority has been given to rush the parts to the port base to ensure the normal operation of production.

At present, SAIC production enterprises arrange and feel the preparation for resumption of work and production, and the results will be fed back to the quality and Economics Department of the Group before April 17 (Sunday). According to the situation, all production enterprises will start the stress test of resumption of work and production on Monday, April 18. Once the stress test is successful, the company will arrange the production of complete vehicles and parts as soon as possible.

New energy vehicles in the epidemic under control will usher in a wave of repair, the industry is still in a high demeanor.

However, on the other hand, the competition between car factories is becoming more and more fierce, and the slightest carelessness will lead to the loss of the whole market. New energy car companies are walking on thin ice on the road ahead.