On May 9, the 500000 mass production vehicle of Weilai was rolled off the production line at the second advanced manufacturing base of Weilai in Hefei. This is the first Chinese high-end pure electric brand that has reached the mass production scale in China, becoming a new milestone in the development history of China's automobile industry.
The competition of automobile industry highly depends on scale advantage and brand effect. Without scale advantage, it is difficult for enterprises to reduce R&D, manufacturing and sales costs and improve the bargaining power of the supply chain; With only scale advantage and no brand premium ability, it is difficult for enterprises to move towards the middle and high end of the industrial value chain to achieve better profitability.
China's automobile industry was developed on the basis of joint venture and joint venture. The early rise of independent brands relied on low quality and low price to occupy the low-end market. Even today, due to the lack of sufficient support in key core technologies such as engines and transmissions, self owned brand products are mainly concentrated within the price range of 150000 yuan, and the high-end car market is firmly occupied by overseas brands represented by Mercedes Benz, BMW and Audi. Therefore, "big but not strong" has become the inherent impression and cognition of many people on China's automobile industry, and even has become an unspeakable pain in the hearts of countless automobile people.
The key change is that, in the face of the resonance of the third energy revolution and the fourth industrial revolution in the world, we assess the situation and cut into the new energy track prospectively. Through electrification and intelligent transformation, China's production and sales scale of new energy vehicles has ranked first in the world for many consecutive years, forming a global comparative advantage. As a representative of the new force of car building, Weilai has a large-scale market of 500000 mass production vehicles in just a few years when the average price of its products exceeds 300000 yuan, which shows that Chinese car enterprises can completely achieve high-end products and brands by switching to new energy.
Of course, it is difficult to form product scale and brand influence if we just change the way and cannot launch high-end products with market competitiveness. Some people say that products are the crystallization of technology, and products with market competitiveness are all condensed with unique technology, which is very reasonable. Looking back at the world automobile history, the key core technology is always the source of enterprise competitiveness. Mercedes Benz, BMW, Tesla and other leading enterprises have their own unique skills. Just imagine, if Weilai does not invest more than 43 billion yuan in research and development, and does not develop technologies including the whole vehicle global operating system, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and so on, how can today's 500000 high-end mass production vehicles be successfully launched?
Recently, some American politicians and media fabricated the "China's new energy overcapacity theory", claiming that the development of China's new energy vehicles is highly dependent on government subsidies, leading to "unfair competition". In fact, the booming development of China's new energy vehicle industry, including Weilai, depends on the continuous independent innovation of enterprises, a more stable and secure supply chain, a higher degree of industrial agglomeration, more sufficient market competition, and the strong support of the super large market for rapid technology iteration. These factors have jointly promoted China's new energy vehicles to achieve rapid breakthroughs and lead the world in production and marketing scale, technological innovation, industrial chain cultivation, etc., forming a strong competitive advantage. At least for now, besides Tesla, there is still a gap between the old multinational auto companies and us in this respect.
However, the launch of the 500000th mass production vehicle of Weilai is only a phased success of the enterprise in positioning high-end, focusing on technology and service quality. At present, the automobile market is highly competitive, and price wars keep cropping up. Independent high-end brands such as Landu, Jikrypton, Haobo, and Yangwang are springing up like mushrooms. This means that Dongfeng, Geely, GAC Ai'an and BYD are all seizing the opportunities brought by electrification and intellectualization to compete for high-end cars. The competition pattern in the high-end car market is far from being finalized.
In the long run, the high-end market demand of self owned brand new energy comes from two aspects: on the one hand, it is the new demand transformed from the fuel vehicle market, and on the other hand, it is the replacement demand of its own users for upgrading. As time goes on, the latter will account for a larger proportion. In this regard, Dongfeng, Geely, GAC Ai'an, BYD and other products will have to go from bottom to top to achieve brand upgrading. On the other hand, Weilai, which has taken an earlier step in the high-end market, should extend its products to a lower level to achieve a larger scale. Perhaps it is because of this that Weilai will also launch a more affordable Ledo brand this month, which will meet the needs of more user groups in the market and promote the overall sales of the company. After all, the essence of the current market pattern is just the confrontation stock of technology and scale. Only by forming a larger scale of production and marketing can feedback of technology iteration be achieved. The technology precipitation will also base high brand value. This is why people often say that "even if there are two Rolls Royces, they cannot be called a powerful automobile country".
The high-end independent brand is not only the embodiment of the technology level and R&D strength of automobile enterprises, but also the symbol of the overall ability and brand image of automobile enterprises. It is also an important symbol of the high-quality development and strength of China's automobile industry. Compared with Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and other multinational automobile enterprises with a history of 100 years, Chinese automobile enterprises have made a good start in building global well-known brands, especially high-end brands. More enterprises need to invest more time to accumulate, precipitate and break through. This is also the strategic choice that Chinese auto enterprises must make to accelerate the formation of new quality productivity and consolidate and expand the development advantages of intelligent connected new energy vehicles. (Source: Economic Daily, Yang Zhongyang)
