Around 2015, a large number of new car-building forces have emerged in China’s auto market.
Some people have roughly counted that the number at its peak reached more than 100.
In the past two years, the only new car-building forces that really have sales statistics are Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal, Zero run and Nezha.
Another figure is that according to the same rough statistics, the total production capacity of these hundreds of new car-building forces has exceeded 10 million vehicles.
Of course, there is no point in pursuing the production capacity of these 10 million vehicles now.
If you only look at the remaining five, most car companies have excess capacity compared to their own sales.
According to relevant media statistics, the production capacity of Lulai Automobile has reached 480000 vehicles since 2023, Xiaopeng Automobile has achieved its own production capacity of 400000 vehicles in 2023, and the total production capacity of ideal cars has been expanded to 500000 vehicles by the end of 2023.
Zero-running cars already have a production capacity of 250000 vehicles (400000 vehicles under construction).
The total production capacity of the three factories of Naha Automobile can reach 280000 vehicles.
Let’s take a look at the sales volume of these five car companies last year.
Lulai delivered 160000 cars in the whole year, Xiaopeng delivered 141000 cars in the whole year, ideal cars delivered 376000 cars in the whole year, zero-running cars delivered 144000 cars in the whole year, and Nahu delivered 127000 cars in the whole year.
Even if some of the capacity under construction or sprint capacity is removed, the capacity of these car companies can fully meet the delivery volume.
So the question is, why do these five new car-building forces, which were established in 2014-2015, have been in the Chinese auto market for nearly 10 years and still have difficulties in delivery due to capacity problems? And this is not an isolated case, it is a common phenomenon in these car companies.
The difficulty of overall production capacity, if the biggest victim of the difficulty of production capacity, it must be ET5.
As early as August of 2022, Qin Lihong, president of Lulai Automobile, boldly predicted that “in the past year, the average monthly sales of the BMW 3-Series will be more than 12000 vehicles, and the ET5 sales will exceed the 3-Series within a year.
” This strength stems from the fact that the order volume of ET5 at that time exceeded 100000 vehicles.
But as you can see from the later results, apart from achieving this goal in some months, there is still a big gap between the sales of the Lulai ET5 and the BMW 3-Series.
Even Li Bin later concluded, “the order of ET5 is not a problem, but the overall delivery volume is indeed thousands less than expected.
” There are many factors behind this, some are supply chain problems, some are caused by the epidemic.
” Originally, the ET5 is supposed to be the volume model of Weilai, and the quantity of this model will determine the fate of the car to some extent.
The same fate also happened to Xiaopeng car.
Once Xiaopeng car became popular with the shot of Xiaopeng P7, and finally lost its main selling model.
Therefore, Xiaopeng car is also in urgent need of a high-volume model emergency, followed by the launch of Xiaopeng G6 in the face of danger.
As a cost-effective pure electric model at that time, the Xiaopeng G6 was defined as a product that “only allows success, not failure”.
Similarly, the car lived up to its mission, taking 35000 orders in just 20 days of pre-sale.
In order to catch up with the delivery schedule, he Xiaopeng even went to the factory to hit the screws.
However, this operation has not achieved much effect.
He Xiaopeng also summed up the capacity problems of the Xiaopeng G6: related to the insufficient production capacity of suppliers of integrated die-casting parts and lidar.
However, the sales of the Xiaopeng G6 did go up all the way after its launch, but finally stopped at the monthly sales figure of 9000 vehicles.
Ideal car, as the hottest and best-selling car company in the new power of car-building, is also facing this kind of trouble.
Li Xiang made it clear at the earnings report in the second quarter of last year that “capacity in this quarter is the only bottleneck and there is no solution at present.
” Capacity bottlenecks are mainly affected by the capacity of the supply chain, mainly because there are fewer production plans for ideal cars at the beginning of the year.
Wei Xiaoli learns a lesson from the fact that insufficient production capacity leads to poor sales.
Rationality will serve as a warning to newcomers, but unfortunately it does not.
“since its listing, current orders have been in short supply, and the factory has worked overtime to guarantee supply,”, Zhang Yong, a Nahan car, wrote on Weibo this year.
” Why did this happen? Zhang Yong also explained the situation earlier: the sales forecast of Nezhan L is conservative, and the prediction of vehicle variety structure is not correct.
In the 35 days after it went on sale on April 22nd, Neferl had orders for 30,000 vehicles.
But in the full sales month in May, Nezha L delivered only 3732 vehicles.
Throughout the products of Xilai ET5, Xiaopeng G6 and Nezhan L, they are all “key gentlemen” of their respective brands, but they all made a big stumble on the issue of production capacity, which directly affected the development of the whole brand.
In fact, the problem of production capacity is indeed a major worry for new energy car companies.
There is also this problem, including Xiaomi cars that “go all out”.
Xiaomi SU7 exploded and the pick-up cycle has been more than half a year.
In the face of this situation, Xiaomi has increased its spare parts orders by 80% on the one hand, started dual-shift production on the other hand, and is also speeding up the construction of the second phase of the plant.
Faced with the huge challenge of capacity climbing, even if it is better than Tesla, Musk needs to sleep in the factory to solve it.
Manufacturing is so complicated.
If one link falls off the chain, the whole process will be ruined.
This is the mass production problem that Tesla is facing, and we will enter the production hell.
” From this we can see that the lack of production capacity of China’s new car-building forces is mostly due to the problem of the supply chain, while Tesla is faced with the problem of production efficiency.
Traditional big factories can’t avoid it.
To sum up, the reasons for insufficient production capacity of these new car manufacturers are as follows: inaccurate forecasts for orders and sales, supply problems at the end of the supply chain such as spare parts and chips, insufficient production efficiency of production lines, weak flexible production, and so on.
Internal factors and external factors are stacked together, resulting in a grim final result.
If these problems may be caused by the new car manufacturers’ short development history and lack of experience, then for the new energy brands incubated by traditional car companies, they have the experience, strength and resources to avoid this problem.
But in fact, many new energy brands that rely on traditional car companies do not take too many shortcuts.
For example, Avita, which is backed by Changan Automobile, has experienced a production capacity crisis from Avita 11 to Avita 12.
In particular, the Avita 12 order exceeded manufacturers’ expectations, and the car company not only experienced capacity climbing in the delivery phase, but also had problems with the supplier’s supply of parts.
So thatDue to delivery delays, some potential users were lost.
, , it can be said that it is a disaster that new car-building forces have gone through, and Avita has been involved in everything.
This is also the reason why Avita’s performance on the sales side has been flat after its establishment for so long.
In addition to Avita, Krypton, which relies on the new energy brands of traditional car companies, is also experiencing such pains.
, Gekrypton blamed the lack of production capacity for the inability of 009 sales to increase.
001 has also been affected by the supply gap of chips, high-definition cameras, and suspension components.
However, the reason why Gekrypton can become the leader in sales of new energy vehicle companies is that Gekrypton’s manufacturing capacity and procurement capabilities share products with Geely, especially under the vast structure, and has more advantages than other car companies in promoting production capacity increases.
, then summarizing the performance of these new energy vehicle companies above, supply chain problems are the first reason for insufficient production capacity.
As industry insiders say, the supply chain’s lack of confidence in new forces has become a major problem for the industry.
Many new energy vehicle companies are facing the problem of production stagnation because supply chain companies are more inclined to cooperate with manufacturers with more reliable brands and products.
, , so how to solve the problem? The answer is that some leading car companies choose to cooperate with domestic supply chain companies to solve production capacity problems by developing together with suppliers.
At the same time, automobile companies must not only manage primary and secondary suppliers, but also manage more upstream suppliers to strengthen their own supply chains.
Some people have also pointed out that the lack of production capacity of many models lies in the too many options and too many model versions.
After consumers make various personalized choices, emerging new energy vehicle companies are unable to carry out large-scale mass production, which also slows down the entire production and delivery pace.
Therefore, this also tests the flexible manufacturing level of automobile companies.
For example, before the launch of the new M7, Huawei invested 500 million yuan in conjunction with Celis to carry out a major renovation.
These include the upgrade of the important first ring production line, the renovation of the welding production line and the re-mold of the body.
Its essence is to unify common parts and components, streamline production processes, improve manufacturing efficiency, and make every effort to ensure delivery.
, , on one hand, there is the expanding “production capacity”, and on the other hand, there is the “production capacity” that cannot keep up.
In fact, it is a concentrated expression of the deep-seated problems and challenges faced by the new energy vehicle industry in the process of rapid development.
What is certain is that the war on new energy vehicles is not only a war on the supply chain, but also a baptism of how the car companies themselves can carry out major changes.
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