Original title: Some Thoughts on Tesla, NIO, Ideal Auto, and the “New Car” Track Source: 36

Editor's note: This article is from the WeChat account “owen_hyc” (ID: owen_hyc), author: Huang Youcan, published with permission by 36Krypton.

The other day before yesterday, I wrote a tweet, “Some Suggestions for Low-Level Melon Eaters,” so that everyone can try to think about the current hot new energy car building market to see what particularly interesting or valuable perspectives you can think of, and what kind of thoughts you can think of in response to yourself.

I mentioned it, and I'll also share some of my own thoughts on this issue.

It was supposed to happen yesterday, but as a result, there was a temporary delay; let's finish it today.

Let me just briefly review the background of a few major visible events over the past month, focusing on the new energy car building market. Anyway, the media has paid a lot of attention to new car construction tracks in the past 1-2 months. We know this is fine, so I won't give you a link to the news one by one --

As a result of Tesla's price cuts, orders from specialty stores soared. The domestic NEV market in 2021 showed a situation where the three major new car builders, NIO, Ideal, and Xiaopeng Motor, will join forces to resist Tesla's attacks;

BYDThe stock prices of NEV companies such as NIO and NIO continue to soar, creating a “myth of getting rich”;

Since 2020, almost all domestic and foreign traditional car companies have announced their entry into the new energy market;

Recently, Baidu and Geely officially announced that they have reached a strategic cooperation and will join forces to build cars.

...

Below are my personal thoughts and observations on some of the many phenomena I can think of in my capacity as a “non-auto industry employee.” I need to state that I don't have a deep understanding of the automotive industry, and many of my judgments are not necessarily accurate. They are for reference only. I also welcome exchanges and guidance.

Also, I suggest that instead of focusing on the “conclusion of thought,” it is better to pay more attention to “how this guy thinks”; perhaps it would be more valuable.

Getting down to the point below, I'll talk about some immature observations from 3 thinking perspectives in order.

Thinking perspective 1: From an industry and industry perspective, what is the current development stage and pattern of the entire automobile industry? What might change in the next few years?

Answer 1: New energy vehicles, judging from the technological development curve, are about to take off steadily. See the chart below.

Behind this, there are actually several very obvious signs in 2020 --

1) Tesla's factory in China begins mass production - this means that Tesla, which first appeared as a high-end car, will be able to produce and deliver to mass users at significantly lower costs and higher production capacity;

2) Battery technology has been innovated, and new batteries have also been mass-produced. New energy vehicles that can achieve a range of 500-600 km when fully charged will be extremely popular and gradually become popular models;

3) Domestic NEV manufacturers have made significant progress in their ability to build cars. From body design to quality to power to driving experience, you can gradually discover that the gap between domestic cars and European, American, and Japanese cars is getting smaller and smaller. In 2020, iconic models like BYD Song and Han, which received much attention and did not sell well, also appeared among domestic cars. This made many families begin to seriously consider domestic cars when purchasing new cars.

4) The number and coverage area of charging stations spread across the country has also begun to increase significantly, making it easier and easier for electric vehicles to travel. Take me personally. In 2020, I drove an electric car with a full range of 300 km and wandered nearly 1,000 kilometers in the suburbs of Beijing, and it has become more and more convenient and easier to find charging stations along the way. Basically, I haven't had a situation where I was so anxious to die of not being able to find a charging station for a long time.

Overall, it can be expected that new energy vehicles will surely begin to replace traditional gasoline models at an accelerated pace.

Answer 2: The global automotive industry is likely to face a new major change and a major reshuffle. And many Chinese car companies may also be facing unprecedented opportunities.

As mentioned before, in the automotive sector, it will be an irreversible trend for new energy vehicles to replace traditional gasoline models at an accelerated pace. Also, the upgrade of new energy vehicles to traditional gasoline vehicles may have started with the underlying operating system — if you have experienced the Tesla, Ideal, and NIO car driving experiences with internet genes, you should be deeply moved by this — what we are exposed to may no longer be a transportation tool, but a brand new Internet terminal.

This means that not every traditional car company can quickly enter this battlefield and survive.

In China, the market size of the automobile industry is probably in the order of tens of trillions of dollars. Take SAIC Volkswagen as an example; its annual revenue is also around 300-400 billion dollars.

Imagine that as a new energy vehicle brand, if it can take a head start in the market, even if it only steals almost 10-20% of the market share from SAIC Volkswagen, this is enough for you to be a company with an annual turnover of tens of billions of dollars. This is something that has never been more exciting for many new energy vehicle companies.

Also, what we are just talking about is the domestic market. If we look at the global market, after 2020, Chinese car companies will also face unprecedented opportunities — on a global scale, changes in new energy vehicles to traditional models are bound to occur, yet in this wave of updates, traditional car companies in Europe, America, and Japan have been affected by the pandemic, and their own layout and accumulation in the fields of new energy and internet car building are not necessarily much better than domestic car companies.

This means that starting in 2021, some domestic car companies may have an opportunity to truly challenge the world's top car companies such as BBA (i.e. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) and Japanese. If anyone can actually rise to prominence from China, it will mean that some automobile manufacturers with global influence may be born in the Chinese automobile industry.

And this huge imagination, I guess, will be accompanied by more families buying new energy models over the next 5 years, and will continue to lead countless domestic car builders and forces to fight and fight for them.

Thinking 2: From the perspective of the capital market, how do you view the sharp rise in stock prices of new car builders? Also for electric cars, why haven't traditional car companies seen such an exaggerated increase in stock prices?

Answer: This is simple. Leaving aside the factors of monetary easing and the general rise in the market, stock prices reflect expectations for the future. The NEV market is still in its early stages. Companies that have now refined their brands, technology, overall systems, teams, etc. to initially form unique competitiveness will be seen as receiving greater benefits in the next major market reshuffle.

Typical companies such as NIO, Ideal, Tesla, and BYD are all companies that the capital market believes will reap greater benefits from the wave over the next 5 years, so it is also possible to evaluate this company with higher valuations.

However, many traditional car companies do not have such conditions and capabilities; therefore, their income expectations are smaller and lower.

Thinking perspective 3: How do you understand Tesla's sharp price cuts and the strategies and responses of NIO and Xiaopeng? How do you view the subsequent development trends of the three new car builders, Xiaopeng, Ideal, and NIO?

Answer: Essentially, because the inflection point of market development has arrived, everyone is actively arranging to seize the entrance of a new era.

As mentioned above, we understand that fuel vehicles and new energy smart cars have completely different logic. The former is a transportation tool or luxury item with a symbol of identity, while the latter is a terminal that can establish a deep connection with the user himself. Even in terms of the imagination of the business model, it is quite different.

Imagine you have purchased a new energy smart car. This car can be familiar with your body shape, weight, sound, music preferences, driving preferences, temperature preferences, and can also set different interior atmosphere and temperature according to your mood, and even open some cloud services for you...

Also, once you've become dependent on these services, why can't you charge for the services separately? For example, everything from autonomous driving to music membership to various cloud services may become value-added services in the future, creating a new “automotive aftermarket.”

In this context, a new energy vehicle is like a mobile phone in the mobile internet era — when you choose a brand and are familiar with its operating system and even stores a lot of your data, chances are you'll still use the same brand of phone for many years to come.

Therefore, whether it's Tesla, NIO, Ideal, or Xiaopeng, the focus now is on hoping to “become a family's first new energy electric vehicle as possible” and enable users to “like and rely on themselves.”

However, when households in first-tier cities buy cars, the most common demand is nothing more than two categories. One is a family car, and the other is a small to medium sized SUV.

So, you'll see that starting in 2020, Tesla is trying to build two “hot cars”. The prices of these two cars are extremely attractive, and production capacity is fully capable of keeping up, so they will be extremely lethal to the target user group.

There are two cars, one is the Model 3, and the other is the Model Y.

■ Finally, I can share my opinion on a few more companies

1. Within 2 years, Tesla will be the highlight, and the pattern of leading the market as an industry leader will not change for the time being, but there may be some variables in 2 years.The changes in 2 years may appear on two fronts. One is what Musk himself will become, including whether it will be influenced by some political factors, etc.; the second is whether Tesla's organizational ability can adapt to the increasingly intense local competition environment — the Chinese market has always had its own special characteristics. Since entering the Internet era, from social networking to group buying, e-commerce to Saas, there is no precedent for a single multinational company to achieve full success in mainland China.

In particular, if the level of competition begins to be extremely fast paced and requires adjustments in strategies and tactics on a daily by week basis, the organizational structure of multinational companies may become a huge constraint.

I'm also looking forward to seeing how Musk can solve this proposition.

2. To put it bluntly, NIO Auto may have two directions in the next few years, either a big success or a big loss.

NIO, a company, has several characteristics --

1) Its user operation system is essentially closer to being constructed based on a strong circle and a socialized religious model;

2) NIO is currently one of the few new energy car builders that has begun to fully expand its product line and is preparing to start a head-on competition with Tesla;

3) Currently, NIO's market capitalization and corporate valuation are at a very high level.

The three points mentioned above have determined that in the next 2-3 years, NIO will either make an all-out attack, steal a large share from Tesla, gradually flatten the blue clouds, and completely establish its strong position in the field of new energy vehicles.

Or, because NIO has too many product lines, it may be disadvantageous to compete on certain product lines, or its strong social user base may be impacted by the gradual increase in the number of users, causing more brand and organizational losses.

No matter what kind of possibility appears, it will increase NIO's performance,Market shareWaiting falls short of expectations. Once market control is unstable, it may lead to a gradual stance on NIO's overall overestimated capital, which will have a huge impact on NIO as a company.

3. Ideal Auto will develop and rise steadily at a very steady pace, but it's hard to predict that the company's trend over the past 3 years will be as crazy as NIO this year.

The reason is simple. Compared to NIO, in front of Tesla, Ideal Auto chose a competitive strategy that focuses on + vertical differentiation. In terms of products, Ideal has launched a medium to large SUV for families with many children. It claims to “only build one car in 3 years”. This choice is extremely focused, and can also make Ideal One have the potential to be the first choice for “multi-child dads” to buy a car. However, since the base is not large enough, it cannot be Tesla's priority choice for the time being.

In this way, the ideal is to be able to avoid head-on competition with companies such as Tesla and NIO and develop steadily in a vertical field within 1-2 years. This would be a probable event. However, “multi-child dads” are also a group with great potential in terms of car purchases and spending. Once a strong brand identity is formed among this group of people, Ideal Auto's future development will also be very steady.

4. It's true that Xiaopeng doesn't know much about research here, so I'm not talking nonsense.

The above are some perspectives and my personal thoughts and observations on the recent bustling new energy vehicle manufacturing market for your reference.

I also want everyone to remember what I said. Good questions are easier to get good answers. Sometimes, instead of just pursuing “good answers,” it's better to let yourself ask “good questions” from multiple perspectives first.

Everyone is also welcome to shoot bricks and talk.