The long-term trend of good demand will not change.

The long-term trend of good demand will not change.

1, the demand for new energy vehicles continues to rise, and the transaction volume continues to grow against the trend?

Since 2022, the domestic demand for new energy vehicles has continued to grow. In the first quarter, the cumulative sales volume of new energy passenger cars in China was1190,000, a year-on-year increase of+145.40%, and the penetration rate was 2 1.88%. Among them, the sales volume of new energy passenger cars in March was 455,000, up+122.40% year-on-year and 63. 10% quarter-on-quarter. The penetration rate reached 25.08%, and the demand continued to rise.

In the second half of the first quarter of 2022, due to the spread of the epidemic, the high cost of upstream raw materials, the geopolitical conflict pushing up fuel prices, and the lack of the core of the industrial chain, domestic automobile supply and demand will face greater pressure. Affected to a certain extent, the total sales growth is weak. The data shows that in the first quarter of 2022, domestic passenger car sales reached 5.439 million, an increase of 8.3% year-on-year; In March, the sales volume was 18 1.4 million vehicles, which was-1.6% year-on-year.

Benefiting from factors such as policy support, iterative improvement of product capabilities of new models, and full communication between sales channels and customers, the sales of new energy passenger cars rose against the trend, and the sales of new energy vehicles increased. The power is still considerable.

From June 5438 to March, BYD sold a total of 286,300 vehicles, a cumulative year-on-year increase of+422.97%; Tesla's domestic cumulative sales 14 17000 vehicles, with a cumulative year-on-year increase of145.40%; The cumulative sales volume of Peng Automobile was 34,600 vehicles, with a cumulative year-on-year increase of+65,438+059.00%; The cumulative sales volume in Li was 365,438+07,000 vehicles, which was+65,438+052,6438+00% year-on-year. Weilai has sold a total of 25,768 vehicles, with a cumulative year-on-year increase of +28.50%.

2. Disturbance of the production and marketing pattern of new energy vehicles: terminal price increase, epidemic spread and core shortage bottleneck.

Since 2022, the pattern of tight supply and demand of upstream raw materials has continued to ferment. Compared with the soaring downstream demand, the upstream mining capacity is insufficient. Coupled with the short-term behavior disturbance of market players and other factors, the price of raw materials for power batteries continues to rise rapidly. In March 17, the comprehensive market price of battery-grade lithium carbonate was 480,000-522,000 yuan/ton, while at the beginning of 20021year, the price of lithium carbonate rose from 50,000 yuan/ton to 56,800 yuan/ton, with a large increase.

The upstream price pressure is transmitted to the downstream sales terminal for a long time. In early 2022 and March, new energy vehicles with independent brands, new forces and joint venture brands will have price increases ranging from several thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan. The price increase of low-end models in the price range of 6-6.5438+0.2 million yuan is significantly higher than that of mainstream models. Among them, BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling and Nezha increased their prices by 6%- 16%.

We believe that the price increase driven by upstream costs will affect the demand for new energy vehicles in at least two aspects:

(1) The price increase may cause some low-end car users to postpone the car purchase process. Generally speaking, users of low-end models are more sensitive to price. Have an impact on the car purchase intention of the target users;

(2) Under the background that the cost of upstream materials continues to be under pressure, the frequency of price increase of car companies will increase, which may further squeeze some demand for car purchase.

Since March 2022, the epidemic has spread in South China, Northeast China and East China, affecting the production and sales of new energy vehicles. We believe that this is at least reflected in the following three aspects:

Under the (1) epidemic prevention policy, the production end of car companies was suppressed: for example, Tesla Shanghai factory continued to stop production after entering the phased blockade strategy in Shanghai, resulting in less than expected sales in March and extended delivery time; Ideal Changzhou factory stopped production for 2 days (production has resumed);

(2) Under the epidemic prevention and control, the turnover level of the supply chain has declined: First, the production of upstream parts of automobile enterprises is limited, and the transportation situation is limited by epidemic prevention policies. The production activities of auto parts enterprises such as Lupu and Aptiv are obviously affected;

The limited production of upstream auto parts not only prolongs the turnover cycle, but also directly leads to the shutdown of downstream auto enterprises. On April 9, Weilai Automobile announced the suspension of vehicle production on the official APP. The production was stopped because its upstream auto parts supply partners (mainly located in Shanghai and Jilin) stopped production due to the spread of the epidemic; Second, the downstream vehicle logistics of car companies has slowed down, and the customer delivery cycle has been further lengthened;

(3) Offline passenger flow and new channel expansion are affected: Under the background of epidemic spread, almost all car companies' off-line passenger flow is affected to varying degrees. This influence is more obvious for new energy enterprises that are still in the stage of rapid development and the distribution channels are not yet large-scale and standardized. In addition, the bottleneck of "lack of core" that began in the second half of 2020 has not been fully opened, and the demand for chips in new energy vehicles is generally higher than that in fuel vehicles. Under the background of relatively tight overall chip supply, all car companies are facing different degrees of chip supply shortage.

3. There is pressure on the short-term production and sales of new energy vehicles, but it will not shake the good trend.

Under the background of price increase, epidemic situation and lack of core, the market has increased doubts and differences about the evolution of the production and marketing pattern of new energy vehicles. As a short-term factor, it will disrupt the new energy vehicle market and will not reverse the overall upward trend of production and sales of new energy vehicles.

In terms of production, although the epidemic situation has an objective impact on domestic production activities, it will not have much impact on the production of new energy vehicles:

(1) The regional differentiation of epidemic situation is obvious, and the focus of supply guarantee for automobile enterprises is that the disturbance of production and sales is concentrated in Shanghai and Northeast China.

The production bases of domestic automobile enterprises such as BYD, Chang 'an, Great Wall, Wuling, GAC Ai 'an and some new energy automobile enterprises are mainly concentrated in Central China, South China and North China. The current epidemic situation has limited impact on the production end of mainstream car companies; The complexity of the structure is lower than that of the traditional fuel truck, and there are relatively few parts. The negative impact of "pulling one hair and moving the whole body" is low; Car companies focus on new energy sources with higher prosperity and better market feedback. Automobile is expected to obtain more guaranteed supply resources from joint venture vehicle enterprise platform and upstream parts suppliers to ensure reasonable production progress;

(2) The turnover bottleneck of the production supply chain is also expected to be gradually opened under the guidance of upper-level policies and epidemic control, so as to reduce the interference of the epidemic on the production end. At the same time, car companies themselves are actively promoting the process of resuming production: the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology sent a working group to Shanghai to work with relevant departments in Shanghai to promote the stable production of key industrial enterprises and ensure the smooth operation of the industrial chain and supply chain.

On April 5th, Wang Jiangping, a member of the Party Group of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, held a teleconference to study and establish an emergency coordination mechanism for industrial chain supply chain demands, establish a "white list" chain supply chain for industrial enterprises, appeal to key enterprises in the fields of industry and information technology, and concentrate resources to ensure that 666 key enterprises in key industries such as integrated circuits, automobile manufacturing, equipment manufacturing and biomedicine can continue their work.

Go deep into the leading enterprises in the industrial chain, and solve the urgent problems affecting stable production such as early warning of key raw materials inventory through peer-to-peer, one-to-one and short-term coordination.

On April 16, the Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Commission issued the "Guidelines for Epidemic Prevention and Control of Industrial Enterprises in Shanghai (First Edition)". The opinion is clear. District governments, streets, towns and industrial parks should actively support enterprises to resume work and production, guide enterprises to "one enterprise, one policy", and do a good job in epidemic prevention and control and resumption of work.

At the same time, under the background of the resumption of work policy and the alleviation of regional epidemic, various car companies are also actively planning to resume work and production. Tesla Shanghai factory was successfully approved after three weeks of production suspension, and resumed production on April 18.

In April 1 1, faw resumed work in an all-round way. At the same time, the first batch of 47 parts companies are returning to work in an orderly manner. Factories such as Jiefang and FAW Toyota will also resume production; On April 14, Weilai Automobile said that the supply chain had recovered slightly and the Hefei production base was gradually resuming production. Subsequent production plan depends on the recovery of supply chain;

SAIC enterprises are also investigating the preparations for resuming work and production, and started the stress test of resuming work and production on April 18.

(3) Car companies continue to work hard to communicate with customers to stabilize expectations: With the stable epidemic situation, car companies are expected to accelerate the digestion of backlog orders and continue to increase the volume in 2022.

From the customer demand, different models correspond to different customer groups, and the demand and cognitive level are also very different. The iterative upgrade, purchase policy and substitution effect of new energy vehicles also affect customer demand.

Therefore, we believe that:

(1) Market customers have different attitudes and reactions to price increases:

The demand shocks effect brought by the price increase is most obvious for low-end models, and it is inevitable that the orders of low-end models will weaken in the short term; Users of mainstream models and high-end models are relatively less sensitive to prices, and the overall price increase of car companies is relatively low. More rational. Since 2022, the price increase of mainstream models ranging from 1.2 million yuan to 200,000 yuan has basically been between 1%-5%, with little overall increase; Some users pay more attention to new energy vehicles, understand the reasons for price increases, extend the delivery cycle, and have a higher degree of causal acceptance of hybrid vehicles; For customers of hybrid electric vehicles, the purchase motivation itself lies in the economic and fuel-saving characteristics of hybrid electric vehicles, and the price increase of several thousand yuan has limited impact;

(2) In the context of the government's continuous support policies and the current high oil prices, new energy vehicles still have a high cost performance, ensuring the demand space:

The higher license plate prices in cities with restricted purchases, coupled with the support of upper-level policies such as subsidies, exemption from purchase tax, license plate exemption and unlimited traffic, make the purchase and use of new energy vehicles more expensive and more competitive. The lower use cost and fuel saving effect of hybrid electric vehicles are more attractive, which has a certain substitution effect for mid-range fuel vehicles;

At the same time, the terminal sales channels of car companies compensate customers through financial policy incentives when prices rise, which also offsets the negative impact of price increases on demand to some extent.

Generally speaking, the target groups of small cars (A0-class) and compact cars (A-class) will pay more attention to the cost-effectiveness of buying cars and the economy of using them, while the sales of medium-sized cars (B-class) are often driven by the first/repeated purchases of white-collar workers in families or cities, and they will also pay attention to the cost-effectiveness of new energy vehicles compared with fuel vehicles to make decisions.

Therefore, we take 60,000 kilometers in three years as the standard, and calculate the unit use cost of the representative model corresponding to the model grade and price. The results show that under the premise of high oil price and continuous policy support, the unit cost of new energy vehicles is lower, that is, the economy is better. The calculation basis is that the charging electricity price is 0.56 yuan/kWh (household electricity price), but even assuming that the electricity price of some charging stations is 1.5 yuan/kWh, new energy vehicles still have good economy.

(3) The promotion of products driven by electrification and intelligence will further enhance the attractiveness of new energy vehicles;

Driven by leading independent brands and new car manufacturers, the technology and consumption attributes of new energy vehicles have been continuously improved, and product strength has become an important factor in determining demand. Due to the particularity of electrical architecture and other factors, new energy vehicles are more suitable for intelligent solutions, and their product strength has certain advantages over fuel vehicles with the same price, which has strong support for improving the penetration rate of middle and high-end vehicles. High-end cars-high-end models (target users usually emphasize the passenger experience). Compared with mid-to-high-end models, according to the relevant parameters of new energy explosion SUV and high-end models, we find that new energy vehicles have advantages in driving experience such as space, acceleration performance and intelligent configuration, which is conducive to improving passenger experience.

At the same time, with the continuous promotion of intelligent and high-end new energy vehicles, new energy vehicles such as high-voltage fast charging, long battery life and laser radar will be listed one after another in 2022, and the product lines of major car companies will also be continuously expanded.

The "arms race" of intelligent hardware configuration upgrade has begun, and the continuous improvement of product strength is expected to further open up mainstream and high-end models, enhance the attractiveness of new energy vehicles and open up demand space.

Generally speaking, we believe that the trend of rapid growth in demand for new energy vehicles has not been reversed. Interference factors are more aimed at the supply chain of automobile enterprises. Due to the time lag of customer order mechanism and other factors, there is still some buffer space for car companies' sales, and the order level is still in a strong state.

Although consumers' bullish mentality may drive a certain amount of early demand, with the gradual digestion of historical orders and the gradual emergence of price increase effect, industry orders may decline in April-May, but the overall decline is limited, and the demand in the second half of the year will not be lower than expected, and the total order demand will be supported.

4. Market prospect of new energy vehicles: the supply of raw materials is expected to restore balance in the medium term, and the long-term penetration rate will continue to increase?

In the medium term, the upper-level design of ensuring supply and stabilizing prices will continue to advance, new supply is expected to be released in an orderly manner, raw material prices are expected to stabilize and fall back, and the decline in upstream cost pressure will slow down the pace of price increase by car companies and curb the erosion of downstream demand; With the increase of sales of new energy vehicles, the cost of the platform is reduced, and the cost allocated to vehicles plays a certain offset role, controlling the increase of the cost of new energy vehicles, maintaining the cost performance ratio, and gradually restoring the market balance.

In the long run, after the policy is completely retired, new energy will fully compete with fuel vehicles. The battery technology, reliability, equipment upgrade, convenience and experience of new energy are more important than the level of fuel vehicles, so the market will eventually be product competition.

The continuous improvement of the product strength of new energy vehicles is expected to drive the penetration rate of new vehicles to continue to climb. The main customer base covers urban white-collar first-time buyers and home buyers. , and the user's mining space is still very large; In terms of car ownership, among the 307 million cars in China, new energy vehicles only account for less than 3%, and the remaining customers will be a bigger source of customers. With the improvement of the convenience of using new energy vehicles, the iteration of technological innovation, the improvement of intelligence level, the brand marketing of manufacturers, the precipitation of users, the continuous verification of product reliability and stability, and the improvement of value preservation rate, consumers' awareness and acceptance of new energy are constantly improving, and the future demand development potential is still great.