Luxury sedan is not a easy seller category... The easy seller category is range extended SUV. SU7 Ultra is more of a sport sedan than a luxury sedan, in the category of the likes of AMG, M power, Audi RS and Porsche.
New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China
- Thread starter supercat
- Start date
yes and not only that, it has been a category dominated by BBA in the past decade or so. Local Chinese brands have had more success breaking into luxury SUVs.
Huawei is not just competent in AI in the NEV ecosystem. Huawei to AITO is a solution provider rather than a supply vendor. BYD leads in some NEV platform areas as de facto standard, but not regulatory standards, which L3 will be.
Audi for a long time was outperforming BB in China way before Lexus (from 凌致 to 雷克萨斯). It was a recent phenomenon that Audi is slipping further and further in the China luxury car market. But still, in Chinese consumer minds, even today, BBA is first-tier.
Am I the only one who thinks that it is more worrying for China’s EV market if BYD could dominate across the pricing segments? That’s how you make a real monopoly and stifle competition.
Not really. This year is turning out to be more challenging to BYD growth in domestic market, primarily because its lead in 100K-300K segments is not as formidable as 2024 or 2023. As people in China are saying this year: the first phase of China NEV race in electrical platforms is over; now is the phase of intelligent mobility. The most important factor in my book is maturity of China NEV ecosystem, which makes BYD vertical integration not as formidable as earlier years. BYD is doing great in overseas market, but it will be challenging to maintain reasonable growth in China. SAIC 尚界 will be attacking 200k segments, which are bread and butter for BYD profit margins. Even though SAIC lost its lead in the first phase of NEV saga, nobody in Chinese auto business will write down SAIC. So it is going to be an interesting watch.
BYD's efforts in luxury segments turn out be mixed bags. FCB is a success story. But cars and SUVs in 300K ~ 500K ranges are the most significant battle fields, which BYD is not yet an established brand. I am one of those minority who see more challenging years ahead for BYD in China NEV segments.
Yes, BYD had a first-mover advantage and still maintains competitiveness (FCB + U8 + D9 are selling well), but HIMA is the undisputed top brand in the high-end NEV space now. Outside of some initial missteps (Luxeed R7 and S7), pretty much all of HIMA's new models (AITO M9 (2025) and M8, Stelato S9 EREV, Maextro S800) have been selling like hotcakes. They also have the AITO M7 and, potentially, M6, Stelato S9T, Maextro MPV and SUV, Shangjie H5 coming in the next year.
Audi is not first tier anymore based on all the recent sales figures. In fact, its ASP is lower than Lexus. Among BBA, there is a clear ranking where Mercedes is top notched followed by BMW and then Audi.
As for NEV tech, Huawei really isn't leading in anything other than AI. It does well because of its branding, sales and design. But in terms of actual electrical tech, BYD kicks its butt in all the non-ADAS stuff.
Once Geely, Chery and ChangAn develop their own low NEV platform, BYD was never going to continue to dominate the mass market segment as it did in 2023. Especially when other automakers are willing to accept lower margins.
But fundamentally, people don't see the BYD pipeline. Keep in mind that its R&D department only started growing at a rapid pace in 2022. It takes 2 years for a new model to go from design to launch. It takes a year for new people to get comfortable joining a new company. So the actual fruit of BYD's hiring ramp up won't really show up until later this decade. That's what people don't understand.
BYD will face challenging years ahead domestically, because China has the most competitive market.
again, HIMA had the first mover advantage in large SUVs against BYD. The launch date of M9 vs N9 and M7 vs Tang L and M8 vs N8L are public information.
HIMA is definitely not the undisputed top brand in high-end NEV space. Xiaomi was outselling them with 1 model for several weeks before M8 came along. And we will see what happens to M8 sales in a few months. China is a very competitive market.
the only brand in China right now that has no problem selling right now is Xiaomi and that's because it only has 2 models. As soon as you have more models, you are going to have misses.
Because guess what, China has a really competitive market.
I have a different take on BYD vis-a-vis R&D. First, I am not dismissing any BYD advancements in all fields of NEV engineering and manufacturing. But BYD took off primarily due to hiring of Wolfgang Egger as its global design chief and Michele Jauch-Paganetti as its global interior design director who previously worked at Mercedes-Benz. The next deciding factor was BYD betting its farm on LFP blade battery. All other advancements are natural technological progress thanks to its massive scale of efficiency.
As I said before, people are underestimating what Huawei is trying to accomplish, which is way more difficult than it sounds. Two concrete examples that no other global car companies have ever accomplish in such a short-order: (1) AITO M9 (550K) and (2) Maextro S800 (1000K). I personally owned an Audi A6 (C6 gen) 3.0T Quattro for 10 years and my brother owned an S500 for a few years. There are many material or physical factors in a luxury vehicle that people are willing to pay >USD60K for.
One or two years ago I was favoring HIMA for intelligent mobility based on my industrial knowledge and experience. Now I am willing to bet my net worth that HIMA is going to dominate luxury segments of China automobile markets for many years to come. BYD is not even close.
If BYD sales in 2025 reaches 6 million, that will be more than Stellantis and comparable to GM sales.
HIMA strength is its software imo. Similar to Apple if they keep making HIMA better and integrate it with other Huawei products than it creates a strong moat.