Wei Lai, who just said “no price increase for the time being”, can’t bear it and joined the team of price increase of new energy vehicles.
On May 10, Weilai officially announced that it would increase the starting price of three models of Weilai by 10000 yuan from May 10, 2022.
auto boss: price rise, forced
In response to the price increase, Li Bin, CEO of Weilai, left a message on Weilai app on April 11, saying that raw materials, especially battery raw materials, have risen too much this year and there is no downward trend in the near future. I wanted to carry it. The epidemic situation is more unbearable, and the price increase is also a last resort. Please understand.
On March 25, at the 2021q4 earnings conference call of Weilai, Li Bin said that after the sales volume of Weilai increased, many shared costs decreased a lot. At present, we have no idea of raising the price of our products.
However, at that time, he also said, “this year, Weilai has a product improvement plan. At that time, a new price strategy will be formulated according to the market and raw material prices.”
Weilai is not the only car company facing cost pressure. Both ideal and Xiaopeng, who are “new forces in car making”, also said that the cost is “under great pressure”.
“The increase in battery costs in the second quarter was very outrageous,” Li Xiang, CEO of ideal automobile, said in an interview He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng automobile, said publicly, “the price rise of power battery is beyond imagination.”
“The prices of raw materials have been rising recently, especially the cost of lithium carbonate may be 3 Tianma Microelectronics Co.Ltd(000050) 000 yuan, but it has increased dozens of times now”. Li Xiang is “very helpless” about the rise of raw material prices. “If new energy vehicles continue to develop, lithium carbonate will form an important futures market in the future, which is likely to have serious speculation”.
Zhongxin finance and economics noted that at the beginning of 2021, the price of lithium carbonate, the raw material of power battery, was only about 50000 yuan per ton, but recently it has soared to about 500000 yuan per ton. The price of nickel, another raw material of power battery, also soared after the epic market. Lun nickel futures has risen from about US $20000 to about US $33000 per ton.
Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the China Travel Association, judged that lithium mine production is season related. In summer, the output of lithium mines in salt lakes is large, and the demand is relatively stable. Therefore, the price of lithium carbonate will not continue to rise in the near future.
strange phenomenon! Price rise, sales volume still doubled
Before Weilai, since 2022, new energy vehicles have generally ushered in price increases. Tesla, Byd Company Limited(002594) , Xiaopeng and other auto enterprises have successively announced price increases, or even more than one round of price increases, ranging from thousands of yuan to tens of thousands of yuan.
However, at present, the price rise has not affected the strong sales momentum of new energy vehicles.
On April 11, the passenger Federation released data showing that in March 2022, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 445000, a year-on-year increase of 137.6%. In the first quarter of 2022, China retailed 1.07 million new energy passenger vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 146.6%.
Why did sales double when prices rose? Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the passenger Federation, said that the sales mode of new energy vehicles is order sales. At present, there are more orders in the hands of vehicle enterprises before the price rise, resulting in the digestion of early orders from March to April.
At the same time, Cui Dongshu also stressed that consumers of new energy vehicles have the characteristics of strong rigid demand, relatively low price sensitivity, and small price changes will not significantly affect consumers’ demand for new energy vehicles.
However, some insiders believe that the soaring price of raw materials will affect the overall development of the new energy vehicle industry chain. Cui Dongshu said, “from the perspective of upstream and downstream industries, measures such as standardizing market behavior have become the consensus of the industry.”
Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also said that in order to ensure supply security, effective measures should be taken to crack down on hoarding, so as not to affect the sales of new energy vehicles this year. At the same time, he predicted that the balance between supply and demand of lithium resources may return to normal after 2-3 years, and there may be periodic overcapacity of power battery in 2025. (end)
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