AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)02/17 Report--

On Feb. 16, a FAW Toyota dealer tweeted that bZ4X offered a time-limited discount of 60, 000 yuan. It is understood that the official price of FAW Toyota bZ4X is 19.98-284800 yuan, and it is expected to be 13.98-224800 yuan after limited discount. Prior to this, Guangzhou Auto Toyota announced that its bZ4X launched a time-limited purchase activity, guiding the price to drop by 30, 000 yuan, while FAW Toyota officials did not adjust the price of the bZ4X. As of press time, the dealer has not deleted the tweet, as to whether FAW Toyota will follow the price reduction, we will continue to pay attention.

It is understood that FAW Toyota bZ4X officially launched on October 25, 2022, the new car positioning medium-sized pure electric SUV, based on e-TNGA architecture, providing front-drive and four-wheel drive two forms of power. In terms of size, FAW Toyota bZ4X is 4690/1860/1650mm in length, width and height, and 2850mm in wheelbase. In terms of power, GAC Toyota bZ4X front version motor maximum power 150kW (204Ps), four-wheel drive version before and after the motor maximum power is 80kW (109Ps).

Compared with domestic electric vehicles, joint venture electric vehicles are not popular in the end market. According to the data of the Federation of passengers, among the TOP20 models on the domestic new energy sales list in 2022, except for Model Y and Model 3, the other models are all domestic models, of which Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has the highest sales, with 404823 vehicles sold in the whole year. In addition, the highest-selling joint venture model is FAW-Volkswagen ID.4 CROZZ, which has annual sales of 46261 vehicles, ranking 27th on the list, while Qichen D60 EV and Microblue 6 are 41214 and 39315 respectively, ranking 32nd and 33th respectively.

In 2022, the overall performance of pure electric models launched by joint venture brands in the domestic market was not good. Honda launched two electric cars this year, the e:NP1 (listed in June 2022) and the e:NS1 (launched in April 2022), with annual sales of 5180 and 3608. Nissan launched Ariya (which went on sale in September 2022) this year with a price range of 27.28 to 342800 yuan, with a cumulative sales volume of 1205 vehicles in three months.

Or for sales reasons, starting from the second half of 2022, joint-venture electric cars have started to reduce prices one after another. Nissan Airiya has dropped as much as 45000 yuan in just half a month, while Honda's e:NS1 and e:NP1 also have 20, 000-30, 000 discounts. On February 9, Guangzhou Auto Toyota officially announced that the bZ4X factory will drop 30, 000 yuan for a limited time, and its price threshold will be lowered directly to 169800 yuan, which is even cheaper than some domestic pure electric models of the same class, such as the BYD Song PLUS EV and zero-running C11 models.

Chen Shihua, deputy secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said in a media interview: "this wave of price reduction so far this year is mainly affected by Tesla's price reduction. After Tesla's price reduction, many car companies have to reduce prices in order to maintain product competitiveness and increase sales." Industry insiders believe that under the circumstances that Tesla and other car companies are cutting prices, joint ventures such as Toyota will still attract some attention in the industry if they adopt the strategy of reducing prices.

It should be noted that the joint venture brand does not seem to have much sense of existence in the new energy vehicle market, and whether price reduction sales can effectively drive the market still needs to be seen step by step. Market research shows that consumers' attention to new energy model brands is on the decline. Compared with choosing brands, consumers are more willing to consider the product power, intelligence, after-sales service, driving experience and so on. Therefore, whether price reduction can drive the market or not can not be generalized. Some analysts believe that GAC Toyota's bZ4X sales drop of 30,000 yuan is indeed tempting, and its price is basically the same as that of fuel vehicles, but consumers will also have certain concerns about the value preservation rate of electric vehicles. If there is no proper appeasement for old users, the market behind will be more difficult, and Toyota will also lose the "pricing power" of the market.

In the era of fuel cars, Volkswagen and Toyota may be outstanding, but in the era of electric cars, the advantages of these international car companies are also slowly fading. At present, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen and other brands are still in a weak position in the electric vehicle market. In the face of increasing market competition from other brands, if they are still unable to come up with competitive products, then there will be few advantages for established automakers.

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