Tesla's price cuts are becoming uncared for, and Tesla's "presence" in this round of price cuts is not?
If you are not a long-term consumer who has been following Tesla for a long time, you may not have noticed that Tesla launched a new round of ** policies in the Chinese market last Friday. The company, which once led the new energy vehicle industry, set off a most extensive battle in history last year, but now its price reduction strategy no longer seems to be able to cause waves in the market, but there are some signs of becoming a follower.
In the latest round of ** policy, Tesla still uses a time-limited insurance subsidy of 8,000 yuan. According to the official statement, after the superposition of various policies, the maximum preferential range can be close to 350,000 yuan. However, this is not Tesla's first action this year. In the first three months of this year alone, Tesla has launched three direct price cuts or preferential subsidies, and the frequency of price adjustments is almost the same as last year. Looking back at 2023, Tesla has conducted four rounds**, which also includes a user referral reward.
Despite the increased frequency of price adjustments, Tesla's price cuts have not exceeded consumer expectations. In January last year, Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y products plummeted by 2 to 480,000 yuan, which triggered a number of automobile companies in the same range, such as Wenjie and Xiaopeng, to be forced to follow up.
However, Tesla has only cut prices directly once this year, with a reduction of 6,500 to 1550,000 yuan, of which the model 3 has not yet fallen below the record low.
At the same time, Tesla's discounts are difficult to compare with other car brands. BYD, which took the lead in launching the first battle, reduced the price of some models by more than 10%, and its successive Glory Edition models were much lower than the previous versions; Li Auto lowered its price by 33 to 350,000 yuan, the starting price of the entry-level model fell below the 300,000 yuan mark for the first time; The Zhijie S7, which has been on the market for only one quarter, provides up to 5With a car purchase discount of 50,000 yuan, this pure electric model that benchmarks Tesla's Model 3 has undoubtedly brought huge market pressure to Tesla.
In the context of the general price reduction market, consumers are increasingly on the wait-and-see mood, and they are becoming more and more insensitive to Tesla's activities. According to market analysts, Tesla's latest round of preferential activities has not brought significant growth in store entry and transaction volume. This is undoubtedly a dangerous signal that Tesla is losing the leading and attention of the 250,000 to 300,000 yuan Chinese passenger car market.
Tesla is currently facing serious product aging issues and the risk of overtaking its technological leadership. In the same ** range, Chinese auto brands have launched more competitive new products, and the number of products benchmarking Tesla's main models has reached dozens of models. Advanced technologies such as 800V architecture platform, 8295 cockpit chip, and urban high-end intelligent driving have become the basic requirements of consumers for market segments of more than 250,000 yuan. However, Tesla's product spectrum is relatively simple, with only five passenger cars to choose from (including the low-volume, non-Chinese Cybertruck), which makes it difficult for Tesla to meet the challenges posed by the model cycle.
Tesla, the world's champion in battery electric vehicle sales, warned that growth in 2024 is likely to be lower than last year's, and rarely gave a specific sales target. Elon Musk, the company's CEO, admitted that Tesla is currently in a transition period between two major growth waves, and the launch of the next generation of new products is optimistically expected to wait until the second half of next year. In the oversupply of new energy vehicle market environment, automotive companies must keep up with the pace of technological changes and consumer trends to capture more market share. However, Tesla, lacking new products, has not been able to become the focus of market attention as it has in the past. Now users are more concerned about the launch of Xiaomi's first model and the price of its first model – which is still a competitor to Tesla's Model 3 for market share.
While Wall Street still treats Tesla as a technology company, its performance in China is increasingly similar to that of traditional car companies. Most of the "Big Seven" of U.S. technology stocks are still growing this year, but Tesla's stock price has fallen by 23%, becoming the largest decliner**. This undoubtedly casts a shadow over Tesla's future.
This year's high-frequency price adjustment behavior also reflects that Tesla is facing huge growth pressure. Considering the slowdown in the growth rate of the pure electric vehicle market and the further intensification of market competition, it is not difficult to ** For a long time, Tesla will continue to adopt the strategy of exchanging price for volume to maintain market share.
This strategy is bound to have an impact on the company's profit margins. Goldman Sachs expects BYD's battery costs to fall by 22% in 2024, which means that BYD will have a broader space for terminal price adjustment to cope with market competition. If Tesla wants to stay in the world's largest car market and get a piece of the pie, it must be prepared to withstand declining profit margins.
Affected by the ** war, Tesla's gross profit margin fell to 17 in the fourth quarter of 20236%, the lowest level since 2019; For the full year of 2023, Tesla's gross profit margin will be 182%, down 735 percentage points. This data undoubtedly sounded the alarm bell for Tesla's future development.