Ten years ago, a group of cross-border carmakers broke into China’s auto market, setting off a competition between the old and the new.
After the fierce baptism of the market and the squeeze of the investment bubble, once hundreds of new forces are now few.
And those who really stand out are only a few, such as Weilai, ideal, Xiaopeng, Zero run, and so on.
In the past two years, there have been only two brands, Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing and Xiaomi.
These major brands already have a place in the new energy market, and their popularity and market share are not to be underestimated.
However, if we take the scale of sales and performance as the measure, apart from ideals and boundaries, several other companies are still hovering in the critical stage of survival and development.
For example, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Zero and Nezha, annual sales have yet to break through the 200000-vehicle mark, and operating losses still need to be improved.
Once the capital chain is broken, some of the new forces in the head may face severe challenges.
And Xiaomi, as a newcomer who just joined this year, is also in the stage of investment.
In order to break through the bottleneck of development, expand the scale of sales volume and dilute the cost, Weilai and Xiaopeng chose the “down” strategy.
The hot sales of the L60 and Xiaopeng MONA M03 models have given a shot in the arm to the two major car companies, and the target of selling 30, 000 or more a month seems to be within reach.
And long-term deep ploughing 150000 level market zero run, also ushered in the strong growth of sales.
Thus it can be seen that these three new forces have gradually broken down the barriers of the Internet circle and integrated into the broader mainstream market.
It took a whole decade for these cross-border carmakers to go from fledgling “Internet car companies” to growing into the backbone of new power to being recognized as “new energy brands”.
In the past ten years, cross-border car builders represented by Weilai, ideal and Xiaopeng have finally entered the hinterland of the mainstream market.
In the first decade, in 2014, Weilai and Xiaopeng were established one after another, followed by ideal, Zero run, Nezha, etc.
, and the cross-border car-building fever in China began.
Although Tesla is used as a reference, the differences between national conditions and market environment make these cross-border carmakers can only cross the river by feeling the stones.
In the early days, the car circle did not approve of these “outsiders”.
People in the industry have commented that “there are no shortcuts to building cars.
” Even if the entry threshold of new energy vehicles is relatively lower, vehicle manufacturing is still an industry with high technical barriers.
Moreover, the road to building a car is far more difficult and expensive than imagined.
He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng, once lamented, “at first, there was not even a decent garage, let alone air conditioning.
” Li Bin, founder of Weilai, compared building a car to “climbing Mount Everest” and raised the entry threshold from 20 billion yuan to 40 billion yuan.
Ideal founder Li Xiang’s first car-building project was stillborn.
Source: he Xiaopeng’s personal social platform, especially in 2019, the whole new power industry is facing the test of life and death, and Li Bin is jokingly called “the worst person of the year”.
At that time, Wei Xiaoli was ridiculed by the industry as “three fools of new forces”, and zero running and Nezha did not have a high sense of existence.
In 2020, he Xiaopeng posted a photo with Li Bin and Li Xiang, with the article “three bitterness, thinking hard for change.
” At that time, all three brands had just gone through the darkest hour.
He Xiaopeng once laughed at himself and asked him to build a car if he wanted to “trick his friends”.
Then, their good friend Lei Jun “entered the pit”.
So this year, New Power has added another company with operating losses.
Xiaomi has lost 60,000 yuan per car sold in the second quarter of this year.
Photo source: Xiaopeng Motor, in this decade, the ideal is to reach the annual sales scale of 300000 vehicles as soon as possible, and to turn losses into profits as soon as possible.
Ideal in the eighth year after its establishment, that is, 2023, ushered in a sales explosion, annual sales reached 376000 vehicles, achieving a profit of 11.
7 billion yuan.
Today, it is ideal to tap into the mass market of 200000-300000 yuan.
Weilai, Zero run and Xiaopeng didn’t take a turn for the better until this year, and they are expected to achieve a major breakthrough in sales.
This comes from the achievements made in the mainstream market.
Among them, Zero quickly opened the 150000-level market by virtue of its competitive pricing and product power.
Weilai launched the 200000-level Ledao brand, and the first model, L60, exceeded 30, 000 in 72 hours.
and M03, the first model of Xiaopeng’s 100000-class MONA series, exceeded 30, 000 within 48 hours after its launch.
This will not only lead to the expansion of sales scale, but also dilute the cost of replacing the power station with the help of Ledao, and Xiaopeng reduces the cost of intelligence with the help of the MONA series.
Looking back on the car-building process, he Xiaopeng’s “very bitter but cool” appropriately summed up the mental journey of this group of cross-border car makers.
He firmly believes that “although Xiaopeng has been swimming in the sea of blood, it will eventually swim until the sea turns blue.
” Weilai fulfilled its initial promise to launch a brand for the mass market in time to serve a wider range of users.
Hey, what did they do right? Some new forces, such as Weilai, ideal, Xiaopeng and so on, stand out in the gap between traditional auto giants and hundreds of cross-border carmakers.
The story begins ten years ago, when new energy vehicles were still a “new species”.
Cross-border carmakers emerge as the times require, and are called “new forces of car-building”.
In the early days, most of these new forces described themselves as “Tesla of China”, drawing lessons from Tesla’s model to create founder IP, create direct operation model, focus on intelligence, and so on.
This is the first step for them to take the right step, which is well different from the traditional car companies and forms a differentiated competitive advantage.
But in the process of development, they also fumbled out their own business model, which is the right second step.
Photo source: he Xiaopeng personal social platform, specifically, Weilai early focus on 300000 + high-end new energy market.
“We are not selling cars, we are selling lifestyles.
” Based on this concept, Weilai aims at a group of young consumers with high income and pursuing quality of life.
This group has a high degree of overlap with BBA traditional luxury brands.
In order to grab customers, Weilai has made great efforts in service, such as setting up NIO House in prosperous areas with an inch of land and creating a social space that integrates exhibition halls, cafes, libraries and so on.
At the same time, pay attention to the maintenance of community private domain traffic, Li Bin and other founders even personally maintain customer relations.
This high-cost operation model has been questioned, but as a “newcomer”, to gain a foothold in the luxury car market, it needs to cultivate a group of loyal “fans” as its platform.
Facts have proved that this decision is correct, when the financial crisis came in 2019, it was this group of diehard users who “brought the new with the old”, helping the company to sell more than 20,000 vehicles that year and tide over the most difficult times.
Photo: Li Bin personal social platform, after the annual sales of 100000 vehicles in the high-end market, Weilai began to explore the mass market.
Li Bin recognized thatThe time is ripe for “it will be harder to compete in the mass market in the first place”.
The ideal also starts from the high-end market and gradually goes down to the 200000 + market.
They target a neglected group: home users who crave large space but are worried about mileage anxiety.
In the early days, the ideal was to take the “nanny” market as the main target.
The ideal chose the extended SUV market in another way.
Although extended range technology was once regarded as backward, Li Xiang said, “We are more concerned about how to meet customer needs.
” Around 2020, the first model sold quickly after delivery on the ideal ONE scale, and its advantages such as a price of just over 300000, a length of more than 5 meters, a “refrigerator color TV sofa” and no battery life anxiety hit the pain points of many families.
In just three years, the ideal has achieved an annual sales of 370000 vehicles, becoming the fastest new force to achieve positive profits.
The ideal success has affected the industry, and the “refrigerator color TV sofa” has become the standard product of the same class, and the extended range technology has also become popular.
From the ideal, car companies must have accurate insight into the needs of consumers, choose the right technical route, and aim at the target customer base.
In the initial stage of car construction, we should choose a major direction for deep ploughing, rather than pursuing “both want and want”.
At the same time, when there are strategic mistakes, we should review and adjust them in a timely manner.
While Xiaopeng focuses on the research and development of smart driving, in order to enter the 100000-300000 mainstream market.
Xiaopeng followed Tesla’s route to implement the pure vision scheme in the early stage, but later turned to the fusion perception route based on the consideration of technical reserve and road conditions in China.
Photo: Xiaopeng Automobile, in 2021, Xiaopeng P7 with high-speed driving assistance system was launched, so that the label of “intelligent electrification” can really stand.
Now with the launch of the MONA series, industry insiders predict that Xiaopeng will popularize the smart driving technology to the 100000 market, which is expected to usher in a new round of sales explosion.
In September this year, Xiaopeng’s monthly sales exceeded 20,000 vehicles for the first time, of which the new M03 contributed nearly 50%.
At the beginning of the zero run, we chose the more challenging mass market of 100000-200000 yuan.
After the failure of the first model S01 (two-door four-seat pure electric sedan), Zero turned decisively to the 150000-tier market.
Analysts at the Global Automotive Research Institute pointed out that its C-series models have won market recognition because of their high performance-to-price ratio.
Therefore, zero running is also called “parity ideal”.
Today, zero-run monthly sales have stabilized at more than 30,000 vehicles, and maintained a high-speed growth trend.
To find a way for the newcomers, we can see that although new forces such as Weilai, ideal and Xiaopeng have adopted different strategies, they all pay attention to differential competition and the cultivation of the mind of users.
Around 2018, the outlook for the new power market is still shrouded in fog.
At that time, the new forces were still fighting for annual sales of more than 10,000.
In addition to Tesla, Weilai and Xiaopeng are so poorly known in China that they are even labeled as “PPT cars” by people in the industry.
The breakthrough they chose is to first strive for the recognition of consumers in the Internet circle, and then gradually expand their influence.
In 2020, with Tesla made in China, China’s new energy vehicle market ushered in an important turning point.
The retail sales of new energy passenger cars in China reached 1.
11 million that year, of which Tesla accounted for more than 10%.
Xilai, ideal, Xiaopeng and Zero have also benefited, with the four brands accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the new energy market.
It can be said that it is the joint efforts of Tesla and the new forces in China that have gradually completed the mental cultivation of China’s automobile market and consumers.
This process not only changes the concept of consumers, but also makes traditional car companies face up to the rise of new forces.
Since then, consumer acceptance of cross-border carmakers has increased significantly.
This can be seen from the expanding sales scale of the new power, and it has become the norm for a number of new energy brands to sell ten thousand vehicles a month.
Among them, such as ideal head brand monthly sales is more than 50,000 vehicles, the other three brands have also reached new highs.
It is Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal, zero running and other forerunners who are pioneering in front, paving the way for the newcomers Huawei, Xiaomi and so on.
They are able to achieve faster product launch, more accurate positioning of market demand, and maximize their competitive advantage.
Huawei, for example, does not build cars, but relies on its leadership in 5G, optical and artificial intelligence to work with vehicle manufacturers to position itself as a supplier of smart car solutions.
Although this model has undergone a run-in, Huawei undoubtedly had a higher starting point when it entered the auto market than the early “Wei Xiaoli”.
Coupled with Huawei’s strong brand effect, it is easier to accumulate a user base.
Since the beginning of this year, Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing alliance lineup has been expanded to four brands, with cumulative sales of 310000 vehicles in the first three quarters.
The Global Automotive Research Institute predicts that sales of the Mengjie series alone are expected to reach 430000 this year.
Xiaomi car is standing on the shoulders of giants.
At the end of last year, Xiaomi displayed core technologies such as motors, batteries, 9100 tons of die-casting technology and intelligent driving at a technical conference, reflecting its “people have their strengths” strategy.
With the help of Xiaomi Group’s perfect “human and car home” ecosystem, as well as Lei Jun’s “bombardment” marketing campaign, Xiaomi SU7 has achieved hot sales on the market, with monthly delivery volume stable at more than 10,000 vehicles.
During the seven-day National Day holiday, Xiaomi SU7 locked more than 6000 vehicles, and Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing ordered a total of 29000 vehicles.
It must be admitted that cross-border carmakers have become an important force that can not be ignored and replaced in the new energy market.
They not only occupy about 15% of the market share, but also have a profound impact on the business model of traditional automobile enterprises and promote the rapid development of the intelligent electric market.
Looking to the future, we can foresee that the new power, traditional Chinese car companies and foreign brands will compete together in China and even the global market, each occupying a place.
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