New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

Disappointing May sales numbers for Nio and Xpeng. They seem to be losing steam.

Sokon Seres (5440 units) is surprising. I thought their SF5 would have been replaced in sales by the Aito M5.

GAC Aion at 21k is doing quite well though, alongside Leapmotor and Neta who are also doing fine.

supersnoop said:

I'm a bit confused by this sentence, are you asking why people would buy the Toyota-BYD over a BYD-BYD?

Considering the long history of badge engineering, I don't think it's a big deal. Most people don't know the details of a car platform, just the brand. Even something like more enthusiast oriented like the Supra is just a Z4 badge job, and probably the people buying it know it, but don't care.

This is why it's a win-win for BYD in my opinion.

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May be a win-win for BYD, but not for China.

All Toyota is doing is invest their brand name in China, and not much else. No capital injection, no manufacturing facilities, little if any technology injection. That means that if one day Toyota wants to quit, they can just walk away and lose little, other than the market. It looks to me that Toyota is preparing for the day that Japan decides to sanction and decouple from China.

This is economic exploitation and not integration.

Rettam Stacf said:

May be a win-win for BYD, but not for China.

All Toyota is doing is invest their brand name in China, and not much else. No capital injection, no manufacturing facilities, little if any technology injection. That means that if one day Toyota wants to quit, they can just walk away and lose little, other than the market. It looks to me that Toyota is preparing for the day that Japan decides to sanction and decouple from China.

This is economic exploitation and not integration.

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It's more like BYD can walk away from Toyota at any time.
Toyota is the one which is behind in electric vehicles.

Rettam Stacf said:

May be a win-win for BYD, but not for China.

All Toyota is doing is invest their brand name in China, and not much else. No capital injection, no manufacturing facilities, little if any technology injection. That means that if one day Toyota wants to quit, they can just walk away and lose little, other than the market. It looks to me that Toyota is preparing for the day that Japan decides to sanction and decouple from China.

This is economic exploitation and not integration.

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I don't see how you arrive to such a conclusion...

If BYD is making money, the natural step will be expanding their own facilities.
Toyota also has facilities of their own in China anyway, so if it is successful for BYD, then it is likely it is successful for Toyota. They would want to improve those existing plants into EV production.

If Toyota wants to quit, then probably their business is failing.

Rettam Stacf said:

May be a win-win for BYD, but not for China.

All Toyota is doing is invest their brand name in China, and not much else. No capital injection, no manufacturing facilities, little if any technology injection. That means that if one day Toyota wants to quit, they can just walk away and lose little, other than the market. It looks to me that Toyota is preparing for the day that Japan decides to sanction and decouple from China.

This is economic exploitation and not integration.

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This is a really strange argument. Toyota needs BYD to be competitive. If Toyota leaves China, they loose huge amount of profit because the Chinese market is a lot larger than Japan and all the Chinese automakers can just take the market share they leave behind. The biggest concern for Toyota right now is if Chinese automakers flood ASEAN/Latam markets with better cars and they lose all their customers. Japan without its auto industry is in big trouble.

The problem for Toyota is that BYD by itself is very successful. BYD is not motivated to help Toyota. Toyota relying itself on BYD is a huge gamble.

Testing driving NIO ES8 the luxury SUV and its battery swap station in Norway. They seem to like it a lot.

tphuang said:

Initial May delivery figures are out. This is the one that surprised me. Huawei AITO M5 PHEV did better than I expected. You will see it's not that far off some of the better known ones.

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Leapmotor at 10,069
NIO at 7,024
XPeng at 10,125
LiAuto at 11,496
Neta at 11,099
Zeekr at 4,330

So, this is my concern with NIO. They are putting more focus on export market before they even get production and supply chain situation fixed up.

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carnewschina had a nice review of ET5. NIO makes really great cars, but they need to figure out how to ramp up production.

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Looks like BYD confirmed on their Weibo account that the African lithium mine news is true. It's a big deal, but given BYD's current expansion plans, they will need to secure more lithium access.

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Just my own conjecture, for NIO, I think this is almost a reverse marketing situation.

If you can take on the European companies on their home turf and be successful, then it will prove to the home market how strong the brand is. Certainly has been tried even by many companies in the past, Cadillac, even Proton.

Of course it didn't work out for either one, but EVs are a totally different situation.

supersnoop said:

Just my own conjecture, for NIO, I think this is almost a reverse marketing situation.

If you can take on the European companies on their home turf and be successful, then it will prove to the home market how strong the brand is. Certainly has been tried even by many companies in the past, Cadillac, even Proton.

Of course it didn't work out for either one, but EVs are a totally different situation.

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That would be a valid strategy. The problem is that NIO hasn't had as much success in the oversea market either. I've seen the May Norway auto sale numbers. BYD Tang is 14th on the list with 210 deliveries. Doesn't sound like that good until you consider that Model Y only sold 228. And the second on the list Hyndai Ionique only has 339 deliveries. #1 is VW ID.4 with 574. Tang is probably the most expensive model in the BYD brand. So, BYD is doing pretty well there despite putting in not that much effort in the European market. In the same list, NIO only had 48 deliveries of ES8 and Xpeng had 33 deliveries of 3 models.

At this point, NIO has created a great brand and some great models, but it's definitely not there in terms of manufacturing. There is just something missing.

weig2000 said:

Testing driving NIO ES8 the luxury SUV and its battery swap station in Norway. They seem to like it a lot.

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The 2021 Nio ES8 scored a 5-star in the EURO-NCAP crash test.

NIO should seriously get rid of naomi AI robot. It’s so intrusive and feel like a spy cam looking at you. Sooner or later NIO should set up their own manufacturing plant. They can easily raise funds for making or buying an established car manufacturing company. Even Xpeng has overtaken NIO in numbers of car delivered.