On May 25th, Great Wall Motor issued a statement, reporting that some of BYD’s hybrid car products were suspected of substandard pollutant discharge. In response, BYD responded that the company’s products meet the standards and oppose unfair competition. Compared with pure electric technology, hybrid technology has higher technical requirements and more complicated design for car companies. Great Wall Motor and BYD, as representatives of senior independent brands in China, have profound technical accumulation in this field.
Nowadays, the sales volume of BYD’s hybrid series products has been in the forefront of the sales list of new energy hybrid vehicles. Brands such as Great Wall Motor and Chery Automobile have also increased their investment in this track, and the market competition has become fierce, which has prompted the price of hybrid vehicles to continue to decline and boosted the consumption demand in the hybrid market. Release.
● Our reporter Jin Yidan
Peer report
According to the statement issued by Great Wall Motor, on April 11th, Great Wall Motor submitted the report materials to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the State Administration of Market Supervision and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and reported the problem that BYD Qin PLUS DM-i (product model: BYD7152WT6HEVC2) and Song PLUS DM-i (product model: BYD6470ST6HEV2) used atmospheric fuel tanks, which was suspected that the vehicle evaporation pollutants were not up to standard.
BYD clarified the contents of the above report for the first time. BYD said that according to the situation mentioned by Great Wall Motor, the test vehicles were purchased, kept and arranged for inspection by Great Wall Motor, and the China Automobile Center (Tianjin) carried out tests on related projects according to the requirements of Great Wall Motor.
BYD said that strictly speaking, the test vehicle does not meet the inspection status required by the national standard, that is, it should be sampled, kept and sent for inspection by a third party, and it is required to complete the 3000-kilometer running-in test, while the mileage of the vehicle sent for inspection by the Great Wall is only 450 km -670 km. In view of the above, we think that its test report is invalid and Great Wall Motor cannot take it as a basis.
BYD also said that our products and related tests meet national standards and have been certified by national authorities. We welcome relevant departments to come to investigate, collect evidence and test at any time. He also said that he resolutely opposes any form of unfair competition and reserves the right to legal proceedings.
It is understood that BYD Qin PLUS DM-i and Song PLUS DM-i are BYD’s hot-selling hybrid models. According to the data of the Federation, from January to April, BYD Song ranked first in the retail sales list of new energy SUVs with a cumulative sales volume of 174,000 vehicles, with a market share of 20.5%; From January to April, BYD Qin ranked first in the retail sales list of new energy cars with a cumulative sales volume of 131,000 vehicles, with a market share of 14%.
According to the data, on February 10 this year, BYD Qin PLUS DM-i 2023 Champion Edition was officially listed, with an official guide price of 99,800 yuan-145,800 yuan, and the starting price dropped below 100,000 yuan. As the second model of BYD’s DM-i hybrid series, Song PLUS DM-i was launched on March 25th, 2021, with a price of 146,800-169,800 yuan.
The rise of hybrid track
Pure electricity and hybrid are two main technical routes of new energy automobile industry at present. Recently, the sales of hybrid vehicles are rising rapidly, relaying the pure electric market and supporting the growth rate of the new energy vehicle market in 2023. According to the data of the Federation, from January to April, the sales volume of pure electric vehicles was about 1.255 million, a year-on-year increase of 19%; The sales volume of hybrid vehicles was about 586,500, up 94.2% year-on-year.
The Federation said that from the perspective of user demand, the electric hybrid has obvious value to users because it has no mileage and no endurance anxiety. When pure electricity is trapped in the pain of charging and replenishing energy, electric hybrid has obvious advantages and the market is promising in the next decade.
The rapid development of the hybrid market is inseparable from the increase in market supply, and the pace of layout of car companies in the hybrid and extended range is accelerating. In particular, traditional car companies have strong technical advantages and accumulation in hybrid tracks.
BYD officially launched the DM-i super hybrid technology in January 2021, and released three new cars equipped with this technology: BYD Qin PLUS DM-i, Song PLUS DM-i and Tang DM-i..
According to BYD, DM-i super hybrid is a hybrid technology based on super electric hybrid system and mainly based on electricity. It consists of core spare parts such as Xiaoyun-plug-in special 1.5L/1.5T engine, EHS electric hybrid system, DM-i super hybrid special blade battery and AC/DC vehicle charger.
At present, the sales volume of BYD hybrid vehicles has surpassed that of pure electric vehicles, which has become the main driving force for its sales growth. In April, BYD sold 209,500 passenger cars, up 98.59% year-on-year and 1.6% quarter-on-quarter. Among them, the sales of pure electric vehicles reached 104,400 units, an increase of 81.81% year-on-year; The sales volume of plug-in hybrid power reached 105,100 vehicles, up 118.64% year-on-year.
On March 10th this year, Great Wall Motor officially released a new intelligent four-wheel drive electric hybrid technology Hi4, which contains two powertrains with a system power of up to 340kW, covering A-C class vehicles. At the same time, the core components of its technical module cover two hybrid special engines of 1.5L/1.5T, which can achieve the highest engineering thermal efficiency of 41.5% and reduce fuel consumption by 6%-7%; The transmission efficiency of the front drive module assembly can be as high as 98%, and at the same time, it can realize gear shifting without frustration and intelligent switching of working modes.
At the end of 2022, Great Wall Motor carried out a large-scale new energy transformation reform for its brands. As the largest vehicle section of Great Wall Motor, Haval brand announced a comprehensive transformation to new energy in August 2022, and hybrid vehicles became an important starting point for the transformation of Great Wall Motor. In September of that year, the third generation H6 DHT-PHEV (i.e. hybrid vehicle) was officially launched, equipped with the Great Wall Motor hybrid technology lemon hybrid DHT, and entered the new energy hybrid market with a starting price of 159,800 yuan.
Dongguan Securities said that independent brands continue to increase their research and development efforts on hybrid technology, and apply hybrid technology to their respective mainstream models to promote the comprehensive electrification transformation of independent brands. Plug-in hybrid vehicles are expected to continue the high-speed growth trend and accelerate the replacement of traditional fuel vehicles. The incremental parts of plug-in hybrid vehicles, such as hybrid special engines and transmissions, are expected to open the blue ocean market.
Cost problem to be solved
Recently, Great Wall Motor and BYD have successively launched new hybrid SUV cars with similar price ranges, and the two established car companies ushered in a head-on confrontation at the hybrid track.
On May 25th, BYD’s brand-new Song Pro DM-i Champion Edition was officially launched, with the price ranging from 135,800 yuan to 159,800 yuan. It is powered by 1.5L super hybrid technology and has a comprehensive battery life of 1,090 kilometers.
On May 15th, the Haval brand of Great Wall Motor officially launched the new energy product Haval Xiaolong series, with the official guide price of 139,800-179,800 yuan. Among them, Haval Xiaolong MAX is equipped with three core technologies: Coffee OS intelligent cockpit system, coffee intelligent driving system and intelligent four-wheel drive electric hybrid technology Hi4.
In addition to the above two car companies, a number of car companies are accelerating their efforts to mix the track. On February 27th, Chery Automobile released the Mars architecture-super hybrid platform, which was developed based on hybrid power under the Mars architecture. Its first model, the Tiggo 9, was unveiled simultaneously and listed in the second quarter of this year.
The "New Plan for 2025" previously announced by Beijing Hyundai shows that by 2025, Beijing Hyundai will fully mix fuel vehicles, and in the next 3-5 years, it will build a mixed product matrix of one MPV model, two cars and three SUV models, achieving an annual production and sales scale of 300,000 mixed products.
Compared with fuel vehicles, the cost of hybrid vehicles is high, which restricts their rapid loading to some extent. For example, Volkswagen’s classic models such as Magotan, Passat, Tiguan and Tanyue have all launched plug-in hybrid versions, and the price of bicycles is basically more than 200,000 yuan, which is higher than the fuel version of the same brand.
Cui Dongshu, Secretary-General of the Association, said that before, the cost and price of plug-in hybrid vehicles were 60,000-70,000 yuan more expensive than the price of the same fuel vehicle, or even higher. The iteration of BYD hybrid technology has promoted the development of domestic independent brands in this field. At present, all major independent brands are deployed in the field of hybrid vehicles. If low-cost technologies cannot be introduced quickly, some market share will be lost.
Changjiang securities said that at present, the hybrid products in the price range of 100,000-150,000 yuan are most favored by consumers, accounting for 32% of sales. With the maturity of technology and cost reduction, by 2030, it is estimated that hybrid vehicles will have a cost advantage of 10,000-20,000 yuan compared with pure electric vehicles. In addition, considering that some hybrid vehicles have cancelled the traditional gearbox, and with the decline of subsidies for new energy vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles no longer pursue high-energy batteries for subsidies, the cost advantage of hybrid vehicles will be further improved, which will be transformed into price and configuration advantages.
