Text: Liu Junhong
New energy vehicles are leading China's auto market to a new peak.
In 2023, the growth rate of new energy vehicles will significantly outpace the overall auto market. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers**, in 2023, the total sales of automobiles are expected to exceed 30 million, a year-on-year increase of 117%。Among them, passenger cars are expected to reach 26 million, a year-on-year increase of 103%；Commercial vehicles are expected to reach 4 million, up 21 percent year-on-year2%；New energy vehicles are expected to be 9.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 365%。
It is expected that driven by new energy vehicles, the total production and sales of automobiles in 2023 will exceed 28.88 million units in 2017, achieving a record high.
Looking back on the auto market in 2023, although it has experienced a whole year of price reduction. However, with the continuous improvement of battery LCOE, energy replenishment technology, intelligence and other configurations, new energy vehicles have been continuously recognized by the market and successfully taken over the banner of overall automobile growth.
Intelligence, as the biggest differentiation between new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles, will continue to make waves in 2023. Smart cars have experienced the "race" of intelligent driving and "learned" from the mobile phone industry, and the value of intelligence has begun to be recognized by the market. Intelligent configuration, as a weight for car price reduction to improve cost performance, is also getting higher and higher. The competition within smart cars will also intensify.
No company can sit back and relax, no company is absolutely leading and safe," Liu Jie, vice president of business of Li Auto, felt a little "anxious" in the face of the next competition. "The three years from 2023 to 2025 should be the most critical knockout competition for the entire industry, and even this knockout competition has a tendency to continue to advance."
Fierce competition is the theme of the automotive market in 2024. For this reason, even car companies such as Weilai, Xpeng, and BMW have launched a ** to prepare for the competition in 2024 in December. The 2023 model year must be cleared within the year, otherwise it will not be able to catch up next year", a Beijing car dealer told Light Cone Intelligence.
In the coming competition and variables, the judgment of new energy vehicle companies and chains on the market outlet, product design concept, and enterprise development trend has begun to become particularly important, and the fault tolerance rate of car companies is getting lower and lower.
Looking forward to the new energy vehicle market in 2024, automotive intelligence is still the focus of industry competition. In order to occupy more ** segments and model categories, car companies will also invest more smart car products in the market.
Under the trend of price reduction in the overall market, smart cars will compete in the price range of 15-200,000 yuan. At the same time, with the development of intelligent technology and the improvement of car companies' awareness of intelligence, benchmark models of high-end intelligent vehicles will also be born.
A "card war" for smart cars is about to begin.
After witnessing the proportion of Xpeng G6 intelligent driving version purchased in 2023 and the performance of Huawei's "black technology" of automobiles, consumers have gradually recognized the value of intelligence in automobiles. Car companies have reached a consensus in the competition of intelligent cars.
In terms of intelligent driving, it is Huawei and Xpeng that will take the lead in launching the battle of urban NOA in 2023. Subsequently, under the consensus of the technical path (bevformer), according to the incomplete statistics of Light Cone Intelligence in "Autonomous Driving Siege Battle, Huawei Xiaopeng Shines the Sword First", ideal, Weilai, Zhiji, Great Wall and other car companies began to launch their own products to support the timetable of urban NOA.
Although more players will follow, the popularity of high-end assisted driving (including high-speed NOA and urban NOA) in 2023 is still very early. According to CICC's research report, the penetration of NOA function has accelerated in the past 23 years, and the penetration rate of NOA in high-speed and urban areas in September was only. 2%。
In 2024, with the landing of more car companies (such as Ideal, NIO, etc.) and the addition of other car companies (such as BYD), the urban NOA function is expected to become the standard configuration of smart car brands.
At the same time, with the opening of L3 autonomous driving at the policy level in China. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Zhiji and other subsequent brands will promote the L3 autonomous driving access pilot. In 2024, the leading intelligent driving players are expected to establish deeper intelligent driving barriers based on the pilot's pick-up volume, mileage and other indicators.
In the field of cockpit, the current players of smart cars are combining their understanding of products with their own strengths, emphasizing differentiated intelligent expression. Looking forward to 2024, it will be the general trend of intelligent cockpit development to continuously optimize the interconnection between the cockpit and other intelligent devices and the addition of large on-board models.
In terms of the intelligence of the car machine, Huawei's HarmonyOS car machine combines Huawei's advantages in the field of communication and mobile phones, and realizes the advantages of mobile phone-like operation logic and multi-device interconnection on the car machine. In the upcoming Xiaomi car, Xiaomi will also take advantage of its advantages in Alot, with the blessing of the surging OS, the car machine can also realize the interconnection of multiple devices.
However, in the trend of interconnection, different players have slight differences. For example, Geely's Flyme Auto system, which was released after the acquisition of Meizu, has also realized the interconnection of vehicles and machines. However, Meizu proposed the concept of "mobile phone domain" for cars, which is a tool that wants to put mobile phones into the control of the vehicle.
On the other hand, in order to improve the intelligent level of the cockpit, car companies hope to achieve differentiated intelligent exploration by introducing AI large models. The AI model is used to quickly perceive, understand, and intelligently control multimodal behaviors such as vision, hearing, and gestures, and redefine the intelligent level of cockpit interactive experience. In this regard, Luo Yonggang, chief engineer of AI Lab of Chongqing Chang'an Technology Co., Ltd., said, "In terms of interactive experience, based on the AI large model, it is expected to achieve full voice intelligent cabin understanding, without the need to use buttons and other ways to control."
For example, at the Xingtu Star Era released on December 20, Chery emphasized its cooperation with iFLYTEK to provide users with functions such as health monitoring and natural language dialogue. Similarly, on the recently updated Mind GPT of Li Auto, Li Auto tries to introduce the ability of large models, providing functions such as family travel planning and knowledge quizzes for children, further emphasizing the label of "car and home".
With the next such cooperation as Great Wall Motors and iFLYTEK;FAW Jiefang plans to cooperate with Huawei;Zhiji, Chery New Energy and many other companies have cooperated with Alibaba Cloud in the large model, and it is expectedIn 2024, there will be more AI models "on the bus".
The new energy vehicle market will further expand in 2024.
According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's total automobile sales will reach 31 million in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 3%. Among them, the sales of passenger cars were about 26.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 31%。Sales of new energy vehicles will reach about 11.5 million units, a year-on-year increase of 20%.
It can be confirmed from the ** of the total market that although the growth rate is not as fast as in 2023, the industry growth in 2024 will still be dominated by new energy vehicles. The expected total growth provides a basis for the market space for car companies to launch products in 2024.
Refer to our previous research in "China's Smart Cars This Year, Focusing on a "Volume"". Among the mainstream new energy vehicle companies in 2023, in addition to BYD launching many new products, other players focusing on intelligence will launch relatively few new products.
However, in 2024, the product richness of smart cars will usher in a wave of "small explosions".
According to incomplete statistics, at the level of new car-making forces, Ideal will launch L6 and deliver three new pure electric cars in the second half of the yearIn addition to the Mona, Xpeng will also launch a number of new carsNIO will launch a new brand, AlpsLeap will be out of the C10 and according to the tender announcement revealed B13. In addition, Xiaomi cars will also join the fray in 2024.
On the side of traditional car manufacturers, technical support from Huawei is expected to continue to produce smart car products similar to Xingtu Star Era. Come to Chang'an's Deep Blue and Qiyuan or with the help of AVATAR's cooperation case, to improve the ability of intelligence.
At the same time, with the continuous improvement of intelligent capabilities, traditional car companies will also enter the "big era" of intelligent car publicity.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, once said, "In the first half, BYD's electrification strategy made good progress, and intelligence will lead in the second half." At this year's Denza N7, BYD is equipped with high-end intelligent driving and a smart cockpit that is fully compatible with the Android ecosystem. Geely Automobile's Geely Galaxy, which will also be released in 2024, will also emphasize the "intelligent pure electric" and "intelligent electric hybrid" labels on a number of products. Great Wall Motor established the AI Lab, a technology center, to improve the overall intelligent performance of coffee intelligence.
In terms of product concepts in 2024, intelligent capabilities will be an important direction emphasized by most new products.
This year's auto market is a volume, and next year will be more volatile, with a high degree of homogenization of products, coupled with weak domestic demand, the competition will be very fierce next year", Fu Yuwu, honorary chairman of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, previously concluded the automobile market in 2023.
Looking back on 2023, the auto ** war led by Tesla does not seem to have a tendency to end.
In December, a number of car companies announced the adjustment of model models, and the price adjustment of some products will continue until January 2024. Among them, some products such as Volkswagen ID series, Xpeng, and Weilai have directly reduced prices (preferential), and GAC Aion has launched a price insurance policy.
The main reason behind the many and large price reductions of new energy vehicles isThe result of the car company's choice of "price for volume".
For example, at the press conference of Zhijie S7, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Device BG and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, once said that "pricing is a loss". At the moment when new products are frequently released in the new energy vehicle market, it is difficult for car companies that lack popular and frequently sold products to enjoy Wright's production cost reduction. The overall automotive industry in 2023 has seen an increase in operating income, but almost no increase in total profit.
Almost all of the participants in the battle understand that long-term shopping is not a sustainable state. But before you can defeat your opponent, you can only fight hard. "Now car companies can sell cars through price reductions, which means that it is not enough volume, if car companies lose money every year, bleed out, and 'die' a large number of them, it is called a real volume," said Chen Yudong, President of Bosch China, commenting on the current situation of the automobile war. And for the endgame of the ** war, he thinks"In the next five years, 80% of China's vehicle companies will face 'shutdown and turnover'."
For smart cars, in 2024, the common involution from car companies and the automotive intelligent ** chain will launch a cost-effective war of automotive intelligence in the price range of 10-200,000 yuan.
At the hardware level, it is the cost reduction of lidar, chips and other configurations. At this year's Global Intelligent Vehicle Industry Conference, Yijing Technology said that it will use digital lidar technology to reduce costs by 30%. Liu Tong, global vice president and general manager of NVIDIA's automotive division in China, said, "The chip of the future is a converged chip, and the capabilities of the intelligent driving chip and the cockpit chip are put in one chip to reduce costs."
At the software level, the main thing is to reduce the cost of intelligent driving solutions. Momo Zhixing reduced the ** of urban NOA to 8,000 yuan (without lidar), and the total BOM cost of the solution provided by Yuanrong Qixing with lidar was 140,000 yuan.
Under the continuous cost reduction of ** businessmen, car companies are also constantly exploring high-end intelligent driving models**. For example, the Baojun Yunduo Lingxi Edition equipped with DJI's solution supports high-speed no-map NOA, but the starting price of the product is only 12580,000. Xpeng offers high-speed NGP (same as NOA) on the new P5, with a starting price of $15690,000. The MONA, which is expected to be released in 2024, will have a ** level of 150,000 with high-end intelligent driving.
Smart cars in 2023 have begun to gradually feel how intelligence can be integrated into the design of vehicle product power. Explosive products of smart cars have begun to emerge.
In the past era of fuel vehicles, such as Toyota Corolla, Volkswagen Golf, Honda Civic and many other cases have long been provenWhether car companies can create explosive products is the clearest criterion for testing the technology, product design and market perception in the hands of car companies.
In smart cars, there are hot sales from Ideal ONE to L7, L8, and L9. Later, after Huawei's smart car went through the Cialis SF5, Wenjie M5, and Wenjie M7, it ushered in the new Wenjie M7. After G3, P7, P5, and G9, Xpeng gained the popular G6. Behind the three popular smart cars in the past corresponds to Ideal's clear understanding of the needs of "daddy", Huawei's understanding of the overall design of the car, and Xpeng's exploration of the ultimate cost performance of intelligence.
From the successful smart car products in 2023, we can see that more and more players are gradually mastering how to integrate intelligent configuration into the product in a systematic and conceptual way, and form their own "intelligent concept" of smart cars according to their own concepts.
The active intelligence of automobiles will be one of the common goals pursued by intelligent vehicles in the future.
On the Huawei series, the Turing Intelligent Chassis uses the ability of AI to control the motor and air suspension, so that the chassis automatically adapts to the road surface and controls the power output, thereby reducing car bumps and improving handling performance. ("Using AI to control the chassis, what big chess is Huawei playing in the next game?")On Xpeng Motors, it automatically closes the windows for the owner after starting the NGP on the highway. On NIO, it was NOMI who took the initiative to interject and provide service when it "heard" the conversation in the car. In the Star Atlas Era, health management is extended to health detection in driving scenarios.
These features may seem like minutiae,But the ultimate meaning of active intelligence is the ultimate driving experience for car owners.
For example, the driver's seat automatically adjusts the seat through facial recognition, so that home users do not need to readjust it every time when they "switch on" when they are on a long-distance tripThe in-vehicle navigation automatically sets the charging plan according to the power and travel planThe AEB function replaces humans to identify risks and react faster to brake and avoid obstaclesThe valet parking function automatically looks for a parking space in the basement and automatically returns to find the owner with a one-click recall.
Under the combination and emphasis of different configurations of these functions, players of smart cars can also gain a clearer label from it.
Referring to the success of Li Auto in Ideal ONE, the next stage of smart cars will no longer appear as a benchmark competitor, but have their own definition. For example, the Zhijie S7 is a Huawei-style intelligent sedan, the Wenjie M9 is a luxury flagship SUV supported by all Huawei's automotive technologies, and the ideal MEGA is an intelligent "home".
Looking forward to the new energy vehicle market in 2024, it is foreseeable that with the reduction of the cost of battery LCOE, the improvement of battery energy density, the standard configuration of fast charging technology and the improvement of the energy supplement system, the shortcomings of new energy vehicles compared with fuel vehicles will be further smoothed out. With the popularization of intelligence and price reduction, consumers' perception of new energy vehicles will gradually switch from low travel costs to the direction of focusing on intelligent functions and comfort.
Kunpeng Project