Dingjiaoone original.
Author |Dawn.
Edit |Wei Jia.
On the first day of 2024, new automakers announced their sales results for the previous month as usual. Although it is still on holiday, the tradition of "handing in papers on a monthly basis" has not been interrupted.
In December 2023, Ideal delivered more than 50,000 units for the first time, achieving the previously set target and surpassing Aion for the first timeQuestion Jie Delivery 240,000 units, surpassing Weilai and Xiaopeng, second only to Ideal among the new forces;Xpeng continued to rub the side over 20,000 vehicles, and NIO only had 180,000 units, never crossed the threshold of 20,000 units.
And with the release of the December results, the results for the whole year of 2023 have also been announced. Ideal won the 2023 annual sales championship of new EV manufacturers, delivering more than 370,000 vehiclesNIO ranked second with 160,000 units, and the gap between the top two was very largeLeap and Xpeng are both in their early 140,000s, and Nezha, the new force in 2022, will fall behind sharply, and the annual sales will decline.
Compared with 2022, Ideal sold 240,000 more units, and NIO sold 380,000 units, Xpeng sells 210,000 units. BYD, which has completely transformed into new energy, sold 3.02 million units for the whole year, 1.16 million more than in 2022, becoming the national new energy vehicle sales champion. This advantage will be maintained for a long time.
In 2023, the boundaries between the new EV manufacturers and the new brands of traditional car companies are becoming more and more blurred, and they are completely wrestling together. Next, the competition will only intensify. In fact, the moment they announced their annual sales results, a new round of involution had already begun.
Let's first take a look at the results in December 2023, according to past experience, December is the time for car companies to concentrate on sprinting, and the results usually set records.
Cartographic focus.
BYD sold 341043 million units in December, a record high. Before that, BYD was in the early 300,000 units for two consecutive months, showing signs of sluggish growth. But at the end of the year, it still slammed down, further widening the gap with other car companies.
Price reduction** played a big role. A month ago, BYD opened a limited-time preferential activity for a number of models such as Qin, Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan under the Dynasty Network, and the discount range (BYD called it fuel transfer**) ranged from 5,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan, making Qin plus** directly fall below 90,000 yuan. The campaign was limited to December, and the results are evident today.
Ideal's sales growth in recent months has been steady, first exceeding 30,000 units, then hitting 40,000 units, and finally crossing 50,000 units at the end of the year, with a net increase of more than 9,000 units in December compared with November. The ideal potential energy is still there, and this achievement is completely predictable.
In addition to BYD and Ideal, other brands that have taken bigger steps include Wenjie, VOYAH, and Zhiji.
The new M7 was driven by sales, with 20,611 units delivered in December alone, bringing the total number of deliveries to 24,468. Among the new car-making forces, this achievement is second only to ideal.
It is not surprising that the outbreak of the question world is not determined by the market, but by the production capacity. The new M7 has accumulated more than 120,000 units, and it has delivered just over 40,000 units in the past few months, leaving nearly 80,000 units on order. So for it,Monthly deliveries are only a reflection of capacity.
December was a big month for both VOYAH and Zhiji, as they both crossed the 10,000 mark for the first time, setting a good start to 2024.
VOYAH is a steady one. Half a year ago, its monthly deliveries were still hovering between two or three thousand vehicles, and it could not break through. Later, through the facelift and price reduction of the VOYAH Dreamer and VOYAH FREE, the cost performance has been improved, and the volume has gradually increased. Shao Mingfeng, the head of VOYAH Automobile Sales Company, publicly stated in NovemberThe company aims to achieve monthly sales of 10,000 units in December and exceed 50,000 units for the whole year. Today, it appears that both goals have been achieved.
Zhiji's sales breakthrough is due to the new LS6. The car was launched and delivered in mid-October, with a very high configuration, ** lower than competitors in the same class, and the market response was good. Of the 10,412 units sold in December, close to 10,000 should be this car. AnotherThe sales of the other two models, the L7 and LS7, are almost negligible.
The remaining brands didn't have much of a bright spot in December. NIO delivered 18,012 vehicles, more than 2,000 more than in November, but still missed the target of 20,000 unitsXpeng delivered 20,115 vehicles, and delivered 20,000 vehicles for three consecutive months, but they were all wiped out;Leap delivered 18,618 vehicles, only more than 100 more than in NovemberZEEKR delivered 13,476 vehicles, which also did not grow much.
It is worth mentioning Nezha Automobile. The way it announced its results this time was rather strange, only announcing the results for the whole year, but not mentioning the results for the single month in December. Under normal circumstances, if car companies do not take the initiative to publish certain data, or deliberately create confusion in statistical caliber, then this data will most likely not look good.
We subtract the data of the previous 11 months from the data of the whole year to get the real delivery volume of Nezha in December - 5,135 vehicles. This result is almost at the bottom.
Throughout 2023, Nezha's sales will be weak. It has remained at 1 for many monthsAbout 20,000 units, not up or down, suddenly fell sharply in December, Nezha is likely to encounter some challenges.
Let's take a look at the results for the whole year.
Cartographic focus.
BYD and Aion, strictly speaking, belong to traditional car companies, with deep family backgrounds, deep pockets, and wide channels, and the competition from new car-making forces is not in the same dimension.
Among the new forces, Ideal won the sales championship in 2023 and took a large lead. 2023 is the year of the Ideal explosion, the Ideal ONE has been completely discontinued, and the inventory cars have basically been sold out. With the three models of the L series - L9, L8 and L7, the ideal sits on 30,000 units per month and sprints to 50,000 units, and delivers 37 units throughout the year60,000 units. 13. with 2022Compared with 30,000 units, it will increase by 1 in 20238 times.
Let's take a look at the last year's sales champion Nezha. Nezha's total deliveries in 2023 are 127496 vehicles, which can only rank fifth among the new forces, and the gap between the sixth-ranked Zeekrypton and it is less than 10,000 vehicles.
Compared to 2022,Nezha was the only brand with declining sales- 152073 units delivered in 2022, down 16% in 2023. Nezha's lag is not just in December, but throughout the year.
This can be attributed to a disadvantaged transition, in part. Nezha has four models on sale: Nezha AYA, Nezha X, Nezha S, and Nezha GT, of which the main sales force is Nezha Aya and Nezha X. Interestingly, though, both cars are "old cars".It was remodeled on the basis of the original Nezha V and Nezha U, and then changed its name.
In 2022, Nezha will rely on the low-end Nezha V and Nezha U to win the annual sales crown, and many people are not convinced, thinking that a car of 100,000 yuan cannot be compared with a car of 200,000 yuan. Leap, which is in a similar situation to Nezha, will completely transform in 2023, replacing the old model with a higher-priced C series model, completing the product upgrade and hitting a new high in sales. Nezha has a bit of a feeling of "gnawing at the old book".
Moreover, it is obviously a facelifted model, but it has to change the name of the new car, and it does not essentially expand the new track. It hit the high-end new models Nezha S and Nezha GT, and sales have not come up.
In 2023, NIO's deliveries increased by 37,552 units, and XPeng's deliveries increased by 20,844 units. In 2022, the delivery volume of both is about the same - both are in the early 120,000 units, so NIO's performance in 2023 is a head higher than that of Xpeng. It's just that since the second half of the year, Xpeng has been on the offensive very fiercely, and the delivery volume has exceeded that of NIO for several months, but the gap between the two sides has not widened significantly. Since the average price of a bicycle is more expensive than that of Xpeng, NIO's market performance in 2023 is actually stronger than that of Xpeng.
Leaprun's annual delivery volume is just sandwiched between NIO and Xpeng, which is not bad for Leaprun. On the one hand, it shook off Nezha, and the two were often compared togetherWhat's more, it has upgraded its product structure, and the C-series models with higher prices, stronger configurations, and better tonality have taken over.
Interestingly, the industry has an evaluation of Leap as "extreme cost performance", and this word has always been Xiaomi's label before. Xiaomi Auto held its first technology conference on December 28, 2023, unveiling its first model, the SU7, with a lot of PPT. The next day, Leaprun announced that it would hold the "Global Self-Research Open Day" event on January 10, with a row of eye-catching big characters on the poster:The technology should be in the car, not on the PPT.
ZEEKR will deliver nearly 120,000 vehicles in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 65%, and VOYAH will increase by 16 times to more than 50,000 units. They all have a lot of progress.
"Involution" is the key word for the 2023 rim.
In order to raise funds, the founders of NIO and Leap lost their position as the largest shareholder in the company;For the sake of sales, almost all brands have reduced the price of the main models, and the ** war has not stopped;For the sake of marketing, touching porcelain, stepping on friends and businessmen, and war of words have become common phenomena, and automobile marketing is becoming more and more like the health care products industry.
In a way, this is becauseThe competitive landscape of the entire new car industry has not yet taken shape, and all players want to squeeze into the top few and enter the finals.
Photo via Pexels
Even if the ideal is in the limelight, there is no guarantee of success. There have been two recent events that have exposed the problem of ideals.
First, the listing of Ideal MEGA has been postponed. The MEGA is Ideal's first MPV model, which was unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show in November 2023 and opened pre-sales, and the car is scheduled to be launched in December, with the first test drives starting on January 13, 2024, and deliveries starting in late February.
But it wasn't until the last day of December that Ideal announced that MEGA's launch event was postponed to March 1, 2024. It is reported that the MEGA will change the front body design and make changes to the A-pillar structure, which will delay the launch. Previously, some people questioned the potential safety hazards in the process of welding + bolts for the front side member and B-pillar roof of the ideal MEGA, and Dr. Kou, the person in charge of the ideal body safety, "two pieces of 1500MPa steel are superimposed together to equivalent to 3000MPa" was also ridiculed by netizens.
Before the originally scheduled December press conference, Ideal did a lot of marketing warm-up for MEGA, but suddenly there was no news in December, and the original listing rhythm was disrupted. Its competitor Xpeng X9 was also unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show, and now it has held a press conference to officially launch, and it is expected to be delivered in January, ahead of the ideal MEGA.
The second is a traffic accident in late December, which caused concerns about data privacy. Before the traffic management department made a determination, Ideal released the contents of the car recorder at the time of the incident without the permission of the person concerned (who had already died), which caused many controversies. Some people think that ideals can do anything in order to absolve themselves of responsibility.
The brand is hurt, and the impact on the ideal is intangible. In 2024, the ideal sales target is 800,000 units, and there is uncertainty about whether it can maintain the growth rate in 2023.
NIO has had a relatively difficult year in 2023, and although it has laid off a significant proportion of its staff, postponed and cut some project inputs to control costs, and raised a new amount of money from the Middle East, the cash on NIO's books is still not abundant in terms of the current pace of spending.
What's more, NIO has not launched new models that can be sold in the short term, and now it mainly relies on ES6 and ET5T, and it is challenging to sell more than 20,000 units per month. Increasing sales is the only way for NIO to break the game.
With Huawei's strong support, Wenjie is gradually getting better. In addition to the new M7, the M9, which has just been on the market for seven days, has received 30,000 large orders, which is priced at 46Starting at 980,000 yuan, the highest is close to 600,000 yuan. Next, Wenjie will soon deliver more than 30,000 vehicles per month and hit a higher target.
Huawei has rapidly accumulated experience in the automotive industry and has completely opened up the situation through the Wenjie brand. Huawei's in-depth cooperation with Chery, JAC and other car companies will also take some share from the market, intensifying the involution of the entire industry.
In fact, the "volume" of 2024 will start from the New Year's Day holiday. On January 1, in addition to announcing the annual report card, Xpeng held a X9 launch conference, and ZEEKR 007 officially started delivery.
The Xiaomi SU7, which is at the same level as the ZEEKR 007 and is configured in multiple directions, will enter the market in the first half of 2024. Lei Jun has already spoken: "Xiaomi has been rolled up since childhood. ”
A new round of involution has begun, and there is no winning general for new cars.
Title image** on Unsplash. List of high-quality authors