Summer is over and autumn is cool.

It's not about the weather, it's about the market for new energy cars.

Some people may say that new energy vehicles or the sea of stars, the future growth space is unlimited, the major car companies' year-on-year sales growth are blind, how can autumn be cool?

Year-on-year growth is true, but the month-on-month decline is also true.

The Federation released statistics on automobile retail sales in October 2022, in which retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 556000 in October, up 75.2 per cent from a year earlier and down 9.0 per cent from the previous month.

If the data can not be felt, then as Tesla, Inc. continues to reduce prices, electric cars may be facing an increasingly inward price war.

A leaf knows autumn, probably so.

01、Is the wave of price cuts coming?

The hottest thing in the car circle recently is the price reduction of Tesla, Inc..

Musk is also ruthless this time, both openly and covertly, and again and again, the purpose of using price cuts to promote sales is clear. Now, it is to shorten the delivery time of the model to a week. Considering that half a year ago, we had to wait a few months to order a car, but now we can get the car in a week. At this speed, we really want to spoil customers.

However, this cannot be blamed on Lao Ma. At the beginning of the year, he vowed to set up a flag to sell 1.4 million vehicles this year, but from January to September, the total sales volume was just over 900000, with an average of 100000 vehicles per month. Even if this number can be reached in the next three months, it will be 1.3 million vehicles for the whole year.

Moreover, given the current economic situation, spending power, and competitive environment, it is a bit close to completing 1.4 million vehicles for the whole year, depending on whether Musk can work miracles again.

However, the wave of price cuts for electric cars has been put on the agenda.

Recently, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Federation of passengers, also admitted that new energy vehicles, especially superstores of new power brands, are facing the challenge of declining passenger flow in shopping malls and are under great pressure in terms of sales, and Tesla, Inc. 's price reduction will trigger small-scale promotions in the industry. However, he added that he believes that there will not be a wide-ranging wave of price cuts, but that there may be a wave of price increases.

This logic can be said to have completely confused me, especially the last sentence.

What do you mean by a new round of price hikes?

In the current economic situation, coupled with the current competitive environment, do we still have to raise prices? Who are you going to buy? I don't know where the Secretary-General got his confidence.

At the beginning of the year, many car companies were very confident about this year's sales, including 300000 vehicles, simply because business was so hot last year that sales of new energy vehicles as a whole increased 1.6 times. Even so, the penetration rate is only 14.8%, with great potential for growth.

After eating the growth dividend of last year, the car factory is obviously how bold people are and how big the car is.

However, judging from the sales volume of various car companies from January to October, few have reached the target, especially some new forces, whose total sales are only about 100000. It is almost impossible to sell 200000 vehicles in the next two months. If they do not meet the small target this year, they will catch a lot. Of course, there are objective reasons for this, but the overinflated ambition of the car companies themselves is also an important reason.

Let's see who has the courage to follow Tesla, Inc. and make a sprint in the last two months. However, I don't think many people will take the initiative to reduce the price. There are still high prices of raw materials on the one hand and growing losses on the other, and few dare to play like Musk.

Suffering may be the only way, but there are other companies that do things differently.

02. High-end, the only way out?

As eye-catching as Tesla, Inc. 's price reduction is the high-end brand released by BYD.Look up.

This hardline off-road brand, priced as high as 80-1.5 million, is the first Chinese independent SUV car to be sold at this price. In the past, it was said that ES8 was a high-end brand, but now it seems that the price, the pattern, is really smaller.

It can only be said that there are people outside the people, and there are days outside the sky.

In fact, BYD gave the crazy internal electric car a chance to break the game, that is向An absolute advance at the high endThis march is not simply to talk, not to move to shout "the best SUV in tens of thousands of people", but really to do high-end.

Among them, is the design, technology, brand, capacity, etc., a collection of various capabilities, is the need for profound strength accumulation. If you have these strengths, marching to the high end, no matter for the promotion of brand strength, or the improvement of profitability, are of great help.

If BYD succeeds this time, it will undoubtedly be a milestone in the history of its automobile development.

However, another significance is greater than BYD's own achievements.

In the early days when electric cars were relatively hot, both the eyes of the market and the preference of capital were more willing to give applause to new forces, and some new brands from Internet marketing did show a different thinking from traditional car-building, especially in insight into user needs, in some places that are easy to please, such as appearance design, precision marketing, and due to the active launch of new models. Sales achievement is also quite good. On the other hand, the traditional forces are very clumsy, still like a full-fledged male technician, always half a beat behind them, so they are often ridiculed as "Nokia".

But now, the situation has changed, the most obvious is that we see the traditional power of electric car sales are rising, on the contrary, it is a new force, in retreat.

Although the market is used to putting BYD and new power together, I think BYD is more accurate as the leader of new energy in traditional car companies. As we all know, BYD officially entered the automobile industry through the acquisition of Qinchuan Automobile 20 years ago. For quite a long time, what BYD did was oil cars, and the real power of electric cars was later.

Because in terms of technology, production, sales, brand and other decisive factors, traditional forces actually have advantages, but in the past, they were not active enough in new energy vehicles, so they were often ignored.

But now, companies like Geely and Great Wall are making great efforts to develop new energy vehicles, and the trend of catching up from behind has emerged.

The rise of these traditional car-building forces may bring them opportunities for revaluation.

Car companies that are still in the wrong product thinking

However, not all of the traditional forces perform well, and differentiation is actually very important. What is really worth looking at is the private head company, not the large state-owned car company.

The reason is very simple, most of the performance of national brands are lukewarm, especially some large enterprises, take FAW as an example.

FAW is one of the car companies with the biggest changes in the appearance of models in recent years, especially the launch of the high-end H series models in Red Flag, we seem to see the shadow of Rolls-Royce, which is very domineering, because they have poached designers from Rolls-Royce. It is understandable that FAW wants to create a more domineering independent brand, and there is indeed a lack of Rolls-Royce brands in China.

But the question is, can FAW's brand support such a position?

The answer is no.

In fact, taking Rolls-Royce as the target cannot be said to be a good product strategy, because Rolls-Royce is a super luxury car brand, and its image has become so popular that it costs 5 million yuan to buy one, and everyone thinks there is nothing wrong with it, even if they may not be able to afford it. But many people may not be willing to buy a fake version of Rolls-Royce for $500000.

The logic here is like spending 1000 yuan to go to China.Qiangbei buys an iPhone copycat phone.I believe the idea of most people is that it is better to buy red rice 9.

See, this is the gap.

The result of counterfeiting is usually greatly discounted. What's more, the Red Flag car does look like Rolls-Royce, and none of the others, such as interior, powertrain, handling, comfort, and user experience, are the same as Rolls-Royce.

When BYD began to enter the car, because its strength was not strong enough, it also imitated the models of many famous car companies, the most typical one was to imitate Toyota, F3 imitated Toyota Corolla, F0 imitated Toyota Aygo,S8, imitated Toyota Camry, S6 imitated Lexus RX.

However, BYD, which has gradually gained a foothold, began to abandon the imitation route and launch the independently designed dynasty series, followed by the Ocean series. Now when it comes to BYD, no one will say that it is the king of copycat, only that it is a real independent brand.

In fact, shanzhai is really not the most important thing. In the initial period, there was nothing wrong with borrowlism, but you can't always "open your mouth and reach out your hand". You can always pin your hopes on it and always take the easiest way. In the end, there must be no way to go. The fall of Zhongtai Motor is the best example.

In fact, in the consciousness of Chinese consumers, after simply worshiping foreigners, national self-confidence and cultural confidence, what they want more is to integrate the world's advanced civilization, and then add products with Chinese characteristics and simply copy the outside world. even the best products will eventually end up imitating others and learning from Handan, and will not succeed.

It is a pity that there are still quite a lot of car companies stuck in this wrong thinking.

04、Conclusion

New energy vehicles are a market with huge growth potential, which is everyone's consensus, but on the other hand, new energy vehicles are also rolling in at a speed visible to the naked eye, which is also a consensus.

It can only be said that half the sea water, half the flame, opportunities and challenges are there, depending on which car company has the ability to seize it.

The success of an enterprise still depends on some core factors at the bottom, such as strategy, such as business philosophy.

As an automobile industry, I think product strategy is a very low-level factor. All successful car companies are great products, while those that are simply copied, piled up, and over-reliant on external supply of core components, even if they are doing well now, they won't go far after all.

Just like Zhongtai, it was a divine existence at that time, and it took more than 100,000 yuan to drive a "Land Rover" and "Porsche". It was all the rage and satisfied many Chinese people's dream of driving a luxury car at that time. Unfortunately, the Chinese have only given a window of time for ten years. If the transformation is not achieved in this window, only defeat will come head on.

Now, in fact, many car companies are still following the old path of Zhongtai, and in less than a few years, Zhongtai's ending will be repeated in some car companies.

And those car companies that really insist on making good products will eventually reap long-term success.