Auto sales data in the domestic market in April has been released, and it still maintained a high growth year-on-year. However, the quarter-on-quarter data shows that the new energy vehicle market seems to have reached a turning point. The boom period seems to have ended and the knockout competition has begun.
1. The May Day holiday once again exposed the true face of the electric father
Long-distance travel of new energy vehicles is first of all afraid of traffic jams. When the air conditioner is turned on, the battery life is discounted and then discounted. Once encountering a traffic jam, I dare not even turn on the air conditioner. People sighed about the air conditioner in the car, while the electric car drivers and passengers hurriedly got out of the car and shook paper fans on the side of the road. Electric cars are no longer elegant.
If it is stop and go, it is even more torture. Without the air conditioner, the car is like a steam oven in such weather. If the air conditioner is turned on, the power consumption will be rapid, and the owner is extremely worried about whether the battery power can support the next charging station. The feeling of anxiety makes the car owner suffer a lot, and even the family members who take the car are also uncomfortable.
The second is the fear of charging. The well-known Tesla said that it can charge 250 kilometers in 15 minutes with its supercharger. High-speed charging is required; the charging time of other new energy vehicles using public charging piles is much longer than 15 minutes, because the fast charging technology of various brands of electric vehicles is different, it is difficult to adapt to the fast charging technology of public charging piles, resulting in a long charging time, During the holidays, there are serious queues for high-speed charging piles, and it often takes 2-3 hours to charge once, which is simply torture.
Another issue is battery life anxiety. For a car with a nominal battery life of 600 kilometers, if the air conditioner is turned on at high speed, the battery life may be only 40% off, which is 360 kilometers. The industry knows that when driving on the highway, the faster the speed, the new The more serious the power consumption of energy vehicles, the more severe the reduction in battery life. This has led to a serious reduction in the battery life of electric vehicles at high speeds. A video blogger once measured a mileage of 1,200 kilometers, and the number of charging times reached as many as 5 times.
Endurance anxiety also makes the journey time much longer than that of fuel vehicles. In order to prolong the battery life, the owners of new energy vehicles can only drive at an economical speed as much as possible, thus forming a unique phenomenon. One after another, fuel vehicles surpass new energy vehicles. Automobiles and new energy vehicles have become a unique phenomenon when driving at a slow speed on the expressway.
2. The new energy vehicle market seems to have reached a turning point
In addition to exposing the weakness of electric vehicles during the long holiday, the low cost of use of electric vehicles is not in line with reality. The energy cost of electric vehicles is low. In fact, the energy cost is calculated based on household electricity. If it is charged at a public charging station, Electricity costs have doubled, plus parking fees and other costs. Some car owners say that the energy cost per kilometer for charging at public charging stations is close to 40 cents per kilometer, which is comparable to fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles.
The insurance premium rate of new energy vehicles is far higher than that of fuel vehicles. The "New Energy Vehicle Insurance Market Analysis Report" issued by China Baoxin pointed out that the average insurance premium of new energy vehicles will be 21% higher than that of fuel vehicles. There are even owners of electric vehicles of a certain foreign brand Said that it was 5,000 yuan higher, and the energy costs usually saved were handed over to the insurance company.
Another thing is that the cost of battery replacement for electric vehicles is staggering. Most car owners now know that electric vehicles need to replace batteries after 6 to 8 years of use, and the cost of battery replacement may reach 80,000 yuan. There are even electric vehicle 4S shop reports The price of hundreds of thousands of yuan was paid, and the car owner exclaimed that the price of replacing the battery exceeded the price of a new car.
The various costs of new energy vehicles have begun to cause headaches for car owners. It turns out that the so-called saving money of new energy vehicles does not actually save money, so many consumers are discouraged from new energy vehicles when they are ready to buy cars. There are already signs of a turning point in the high growth market.
In April, domestic sales of new energy vehicles reached 500,000 units, a year-on-year increase of nearly 80%, but fell by 8.4% month-on-month. Compared with the monthly sales peak of 640,000 units in December in 2022, it fell by 22%; Passenger car sales in the narrow sense fell by only 1.3% month-on-month in April, and the month-on-month decline in sales of new energy vehicles exceeded the decline in overall car sales, showing that consumers have turned to fuel vehicles again.
As the boom period of the new energy vehicle market is coming to an end, some new energy vehicle companies have already felt the difficulty of selling cars, so in order to boost sales, they have continued to cut prices, and the price reduction has been nearly 50,000 since the end of last year. It can return to the peak of sales, which also reflects the signs that the upsurge of new energy vehicles has cooled.