Hotspot Engine Program
Original debut |Golden Horn Finance.
Author |Zelda.
Stepping into March, Li Auto, the former king of the "new forces" who had just completed the counterattack by Huawei, began to fight back through a series of big moves.
On March 1, Li Auto released its first pure electric model, MEGA, priced at 55980,000 yuan.
In the context of the new energy vehicle industry being caught in the first war, Li Auto's pricing of MEGA can be described as aggressive. At present, among the new energy MPVs, the main models** are generally within 400,000 yuan; The M9, the flagship model of the Wenjie brand, which has a high degree of overlap with the MEGA crowd, has a starting price of only about 500,000 yuan.
For Li Auto, after getting rid of a number of new car-making forces, it seems that it has seen the taillights of BYD and Tesla. In the Chinese auto market if you don't advance, you will retreatLi Auto has made a move to try to enter the first echelon, that is, to open two technical routes in parallel, pure electric and range extender.
However, companies that covet the first tier are not ideal. In this promotion competition to the first echelon, the ideal should also fully consider Huawei's impact on the market, in this competition, whether the leading MEGA can successfully gain market recognition, is of vital significance.
High-end bureau - go ashore to ensure safety
Judging from the current industry situation, the competition of the new energy track is moving towards the trajectory of "no most volume, only more volume".
In the all-staff letter, He Xiaopeng described 2024 as the first year for Chinese auto brands to enter the "sea of blood" competition. Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue also said in the construction letter that 2024 will be the "most volatile" year.
Just after the Spring Festival in the Year of the Dragon, BYD took the lead in opening the "** war", and its two plug-in hybrid models Qin plus Glory Edition and Destroyer 05 Glory Edition were launched, with a starting price of 7980,000 yuan. Subsequently, a number of car companies followed the brand to reduce prices, which once made the Xiaomi Su7, which had not been able to disclose the price for a long time, rush to the hot search.
For players from all walks of life in the track, only by becoming the "third pole" after BYD and Tesla can they survive in the cruel competition, that is, to be promoted to the high-end game.
Among them, the ideal is constantly approaching the threshold of the high-end bureau.
From the perspective of financial data, in 2023, Li Auto's sales growth will be on the fast track, and the sales list will be released on a weekly basis since March last year, and it will dominate the list for a long time. In 2023, the annual revenue will be as high as 1238500 million yuan, becoming the first new power car company in China with annual revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan. At the same time, the company achieved a net profit of 11.8 billion yuan, and the amount of profit made up for the total loss of the previous five years.
This means,Li Auto has become the third new energy vehicle company in the world to achieve profitability after Tesla and BYD, and it is also the first "new car-making force" to achieve annual profitability.
Judging from the performance of friends, among the three fools of car manufacturing "Wei Xiaoli" that year, Weilai and Xiaopeng have been ideally pulled away. On March 5, NIO disclosed its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. According to the financial report, in the full year of 2023, NIO's total revenue will be 55617.9 billion yuan, an increase of 12 over the previous year9%, a record high; However, in terms of profit, NIO is still in a continuous loss, with a net loss of 207 for the full year of 202319.8 billion yuan.
According to the financial report, as of the third quarter of last year, Xpeng Motors achieved a cumulative net profit of -902.8 billion, the company's overall gross profit margin is -27%, and the gross margin of the automotive business was -61%, it can be seen that Xiaopeng Motors is still in the situation of "selling one and losing one". If calculated according to the recent price cuts, Xpeng's loss in the fourth quarter will further expand.
However, from the perspective of technical reserves, there are shortcomings in the ideal automobile, and it can still stand out in dealing with the low-end bureau, and the strength of the high-end bureau has yet to be tested by the market. Unlike NIO and Xpeng, Li Auto did not choose the pure electric technology route at the beginning, but entered the new energy vehicle track from the extended-range hybrid technology.
A range-extended hybrid vehicle is equipped with both an engine and a battery, but the engine does not provide direct power, and when the battery on board the vehicle is low, the engine burns oil to generate electricity and recharge the battery. This kind of vehicle has a small battery, the cost is advantageous, and the user experience is close to that of an electric vehicle. In some scenarios where charging is inconvenient, the extended-range hybrid technology is conducive to eliminating range anxiety.
With the release of MEGA, Li Auto has officially entered the parallel stage of pure electric and range extender technical routes. For the proficiency of the pure electric technology route, it will directly determine whether the ideal has the strength to enter the high-end bureau.
Invest 6 billion to build a supercharging station
As Ideal has entered the stage of parallel dual technical routes of pure electric and range extender, it means that the ultra-fast charging network system needs to be strengthened to enhance the product experience.
Li Auto hopes to sell 8,000 mega models per month, which is the highest level of sales of automobile products with more than 500,000 yuan. Under the aggressive pricing strategy, it is necessary to sell both expensive and good, which means that the ideal mega should provide a higher-end configuration and experience.
For pure electric vehicles that are caught in range anxiety, the most intuitive experience is energy replenishment. Li Xiang, founder of Li Auto, introduced at the press conference that MEGA uses an 800-volt high-voltage platform, and at the same time, it is equipped with a 5C battery pack jointly developed with CATL, with a total range of 710 kilometers, and a 12-minute charging can increase the range by 500 kilometers.
Li Xiang said that the biggest anxiety of long-distance travel of pure electric vehicles is the inconvenience of charging and long charging time, and only the energy replenishment speed of ultra-fast charging can be comparable to that of fuel vehicles, dispelling the concerns of fuel car owners to change cars.
He said that it takes about 15 minutes for a fuel truck to enter the service area to fill up the gas and go to the bathroom. Based on this, the user's psychological expectation of the energy replenishment time of the pure electric vehicle is 30 minutes is the passing line, and 15 minutes is satisfied. And the ideal goal is to challenge better than to be satisfied.
To this end, Li Auto is accelerating the construction of an ultra-fast charging network, and 300 have been built by the end of 2023, covering the four major urban circles of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Greater Bay Area and Sichuan-Chongqing. On the day of the MEGA release,Li Xiang disclosed that Li Auto plans to invest 6 billion yuan to build more than 5,000 self-operated supercharging stations, covering 95% of the country's high-speed and important national highways.
Liu Jie added after the press conference that for the above 5,000 self-operated supercharging stations, Li Auto's plan is to build 2,000 self-operated supercharging stations by the end of 2024, and the remaining 3,000 will be built one after another, and there is no clear timetable yet.
He pointed out that Li Auto's self-operated supercharging stations are located on highways and national highways, and the supercharging stations in the city will adopt a franchise model, which will be quickly implemented in 2024.
Liu Jie said,Tesla's ability to gain consumer recognition is supported by a wide and convenient fast charging network. He believes that only a large investment in the construction of a charging network can ensure the success of Li Auto's pure electric products. As of November 2023, Tesla has built more than 1,800 Supercharger stations in China.
In this way, it poses a new challenge to the revenue capacity of Li Auto. On January 1, 2024, Li Xiang publicly announced that the sales target for 2024 is 800,000 units. This year will be a big year for ideal auto products.
The sales target of 800,000 units is a huge leap from the delivery volume of less than 400,000 units in 2023, which means that Ideal needs to truly realize the leap from range-extended hybrid to pure electric products. It is reported that Li Auto plans to launch three more pure electric models in the second half of 2024.
As a popular product leading the way, the success of MEGA is of great significance to the strategic transformation of Li Auto.
At present, among the new energy MPVs, the main models** are generally within 400,000 yuan. For example, the Denza D9, which sold more than 100,000 units last year, is 34Starting from 980,000 yuan, the Xpeng X9 listed on New Year's Day this year is 35From 980,000 yuan.
Before the launch of the Ideal MEGA, the most expensive domestic pure electric MPV was the Zeekrypton 009, with a price starting at 500,000 yuan, and the cumulative sales in 2023 will be 19,210 units.
Li Tie, CFO of Li Auto, said that pure electric vehicles and extended-range models will reach a gross profit margin of about 25%. He pointed out that from the second half of 2023, battery raw materials** will continue to decline, providing a good time for Li Auto's pure electric products to be launched.
However, the release of MEGA can be described as a twist and turn. As early as 2023, Li Auto has carried out multiple rounds of warm-up for the MEGA model, and clearly put forward the new car release and delivery schedule: it will be released in December of that year, the show car will arrive in stores in January this year, and deliveries will start in February.
Subsequently, the MEGA release was surprisingly postponed to March 1 this year, and Li Auto did not publicly explain the reason at that time, only saying that the MEGA release was delivered.
Ideal with Huawei,
Dead last ticket
Behind Li Auto's radical strategic transformation, its extended-range products are facing tremendous pressure from Huawei.
In January 2024, Huawei's sales exceeded its ideal sales for the first time, ranking first among new EV manufacturers. Previously, in order to circumvent Huawei's edge, Li Auto took the initiative to postpone the release of MEGA products, and borrowed the 2024 products of the L series to renovate, and significantly reduced the price of the current model.
However, many measures have not been able to turn the tide for Li Auto. According to the data released by Wenjie and Li Auto on March 1, Wenjie's sales in February continued to lead Ideal. This is the second consecutive month that the sales volume of Wenjie has surpassed that of Li Auto, and it has won the championship among the new car-making forces.
Some analysts believe that Li Auto shortened the pace of mega release and delivery, perhaps in order to stagger the edge of competitors. On December 26, 2023, Huawei unveiled the M9, the flagship model of the Wenjie brand, which is available in two versions, a range-extended hybrid and a pure electric model, with a starting price of 470,000 yuan and 510,000 yuan, respectively.
Although the Ideal MEGA is an MPV model, and the Huawei Wenjie M9 is a large SUV, the current MPV model is gradually moving from public and commercial use to family car positioning, which gradually blurs the boundaries between the two models for customer groups. In addition, in terms of selling price, the M9 and MEGA are also direct competitors.
Regarding the statement that the release was postponed to avoid Huawei's edge, Liu Jie responded that the main reason for the postponement of the release of MEGA was the consideration of the timing of the release and delivery. In his opinion, consumers before the Spring Festival hope to be able to get in the car before the holiday and drive home, but the mass production time of the ideal mega is March, so the pre-holiday is not a good time to convert orders.
As a start-up, we are very lucky and excited to meet such a model of science and technology who can learn from the revenue of more than one trillion yuan when we are entering the scale of 100 billion yuan in revenue." Li Xiang said frankly that in the face of Huawei, 80% of Li Auto is learning, and 20% is respect.
On February 26, Li Xiang judged at the performance meeting that by the fourth quarter of 2024, the new energy vehicle market of more than 200,000 yuan will be concentrated, and the top three will occupy 70% of the market share. On March 1, Liu Jie added that Huawei and Ideal will be among the top three, and competition between leading companies will be the norm in the future.
Liu Jie reviewed the development process of Huawei's automotive business and pointed out that the initial cooperation between Huawei and Celis was not successful, and the early model market response was not good, but Huawei quickly made changes, which reflects Huawei's ability to quickly review, precipitate and learn from the outside world.
For Li Auto, which has just debuted a pure electric car, whether it can win back in the second half of the competition with Huawei depends on whether it can make a breakthrough in the research and development of intelligent driving.
In 2023, Huawei's M7 intelligent driving version will sell well, allowing the market to re-understand the value of intelligent driving, and Huawei also plans to spin off the automotive intelligent solution business unit and establish an intelligent component company. The industry generally expects that the influence of intelligent driving in consumers' car purchase decisions will gradually increase in 2024.
Liu Jie believes that Huawei's capabilities are not only reflected in the technology itself, but also in improving the overall level of technology awareness in the industry. He cited the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) function as an example, saying that the AEB usually operates at a speed of 10 km/h to 80 km/h, and Huawei proposes to cover it up to 120 km/h. "The value of this technology to consumers is obvious, but it wasn't thought of in the industry that way before. Liu Jie said.
In the past, Li Auto was not known for intelligent driving. Its first model is equipped with an intelligent driver assistance system powered by Mobileye**. At that time, Mobileye's strategy was to provide "turnkey" solutions to car companies, and Li Xiang once commented that Mobileye's perception algorithm was a "black box" and car companies could not participate in research and development.
It will not be until the second half of 2023 that Li Auto will clearly take the leading technology of intelligent driving as its core strategic goal and begin to invest heavily. On November 9 of that year, Ma Donghui, president and chief engineer of Li Auto, said that Li Auto currently has about 900 intelligent driving R&D personnel, and by the end of 2024, the number will reach 2,000 and more than 2,500 in 2025.
However, after heavy investment, Li Auto still has a long way to go in terms of intelligent driving. A veteran of the intelligent driving industry said that the performance of Li Auto's intelligent driving system cannot even be compared with that of Xpeng Motors, and "it will take time to catch up".
Reference: Caixin "Li Auto plans to invest 6 billion yuan in self-built supercharging network, and extended-range models are still the largest sales volume in 2024".
Titanium ** "530,000 square meters of ideal mega, "harvesting" middle-class multi-child families? 》