Automotive Price War Slowing Down? New Energy Vehicles L2 Penetration Rate Reaches 54%
Jul 03, 2024
Introduction
With the implementation of national policies such as "trade-in for new," under the industry background where the traffic and voice of the car market "resonate," the new energy vehicle market has also ushered in a "red May" with both year-on-year and month-on-month growth. The recovery of market sales is hard to cover up the challenges faced by car companies. The continuous "price war" has intensified the competition in the industry, and the introduction of punitive tariffs by the EU and other places has caused worries about the road to overseas cars.
Whether to continue "rolling prices" or "rolling value" is a problem that car companies need to weigh carefully. In the new round of technological development of intelligent vehicles, AI large models, "end-to-end" autonomous driving, solid-state batteries, and other technical tracks seem to have reached the "tipping point," and technological changes will bring new development opportunities. Under the competitive theme of "new, smart, cooperation, and volume," at least the first three key points can be chosen.
Data Description:
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Affected by the continuous impact of the "price war," consumers have a currency waiting and watching sentiment. In May, the retail sales of passenger cars were 1.71 million vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 1.9%, and a month-on-month increase of 11.4%. The new energy vehicle market, however, maintained growth momentum. In May, the retail sales of new energy passenger cars were 804,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 38.5%, and a month-on-month increase of 18.7%. The new energy penetration rate reached 47.0%, an increase of 3.1 percentage points from April, and an increase of 14 percentage points from the same period last year, truly achieving a balance with traditional energy vehicles and reaching a new level of development.
The enthusiasm for new energy consumption stimulated by "policy + market" has to some extent squeezed the fuel car market. At the same time, the introduction of punitive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles by the EU has cast a shadow over the booming wave of car exports, and the future development of the car market still has many variables.
Looking at the car series, Qin PLUS, which first pressed the "acceleration key" of the price war, won the sales championship, with a total monthly sales of 48,668 plug-in and pure electric models. Model Y's delivery volume recovered, with a month-on-month sales increase of 51.7%, ranking second in the new energy sales list.
BYD's sales in May exceeded 330,000 vehicles, injecting a strong stimulant for the annual target. In addition to Qin PLUS, there are also Hai'ou, Song PLUS New Energy, Destroyer 05, Yuan PLUS, Song Pro New Energy, Han, and other seven series in the top ten sales list. AION Y and AION S from Aion ranked ninth and tenth respectively. Other series with sales exceeding 15,000 vehicles include Wenjie M9, Hongguang MINIEV, and Tesla Model 3.
May's smart electric vehicle sales increased by 21.2% month-on-month, reaching 434,000 vehicles. Looking at the energy type, the sales of smart pure electric vehicles that fell last month rebounded this month, represented by the sales growth of Tesla Model Y, Model 3, Zeekr 001, Xiaomi SU7, NIO ES6, etc. Correspondingly, although the sales of plug-in hybrid models also increased, the proportion fell by 3.5 percentage points, accounting for 27.9% of smart electric vehicle sales. The reason is that although the sales of plug-in hybrid models represented by BYD have increased, this is partly due to the promotion of price reduction strategies, and this part of the incremental market is not sensitive to the high added value brought by intelligence.
The attention share of new energy in May has declined for two consecutive months, with the new energy attention share falling to 55.6%. On the one hand, this is due to the "price war" in the car market starting earlier this year, and it has slowed down in May; on the other hand, the attention to popular models such as Xiaomi SU7 has also declined. The attention share of smart electric vehicles also fell to 65.7% after reaching a historical high of 68.1% last month.
In the overall new energy market, the attention share of China's new force brands and mainstream brands has increased by 4.4 percentage points year-on-year. The attention share of new force brands has decreased by 3.2 percentage points month-on-month to 19.2%.
A total of 127 new energy vehicles were launched in May, with the number of launches increasing by 67.1% year-on-year and decreasing by 39.8% month-on-month. The rate of intelligent configuration of new cars launched in May has also decreased significantly, with a total of 61 smart new cars launched, accounting for 48.0%.
The intelligent configuration level of new car models launched in May is 48.0%, and the overall level of intelligent configuration has declined. In addition to the high configuration rate of car networking as a basic intelligent configuration, the configuration rate of other intelligent projects has decreased significantly. The decline in the intelligent configuration rate of new models is just a normal fluctuation and does not reflect the overall trend.
The "price war" in the car market in May is slowing down, and the overall decline in car quotes is still greater than the increase. The top five car series in terms of weighted selling price increase in the smart electric car market are: Wuling Starlight, Ora Good Cat, Geely Geometry A, Geely Geometry G6, and Taycan.
Among SUVs, the top five car series