In 2020, Tesla will surpass the combined sales of the three new self-made car companies, NIO, Xpeng and Ideal, with only one Model 3 domestic car. At the beginning of the new year, Tesla continued to encroach on the electric vehicle market by slashing the price of its second domestic model, the Model Y.

The industry generally believes that the domestic Model Y will continue to cut prices.

On January 6, Wu Hui, general manager of the research department of the Ivey Economic Research Institute, said in an interview with a reporter from China Business News that Tesla’s Model Y is using LG Chem’s ternary lithium battery, which has a 77-kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery. ) battery pack version, it is expected that different new versions will be launched in the future. If the lithium iron phosphate battery pack version is launched, the price can continue to drop. The lithium iron phosphate battery pack is about 0.2 yuan cheaper per watt-hour than the ternary lithium battery pack. Based on the capacity of 77 kWh, once the Model Y version of the lithium iron phosphate battery pack is launched, the cost of the power battery alone can be reduced by 15,000 yuan or more.

The first financial reporter found the relevant information of the focus model Tesla’s domestic Model Y from the “Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products Announcement” (batch 338) released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to the declaration information, the domestic Model Y is equipped with a ternary lithium-ion battery pack.

Previously, Tesla’s electric vehicles were equipped with Panasonic’s ternary lithium batteries, and then two new power battery suppliers, LG Chem and CATL, were added last year.

Regarding whether Tesla Model Y will use Ningde era lithium iron phosphate batteries and how much the related costs will be reduced, the relevant person in charge of Ningde era said in an interview with a reporter from China Business News that this involves the trade secrets of both parties, and it is inconvenient to discuss this response.

However, the reporter learned from other sources that CATL has supplied lithium iron phosphate batteries to Tesla since last year, which is one of the reasons why the price of Tesla Model 3 domestic cars can be reduced to less than 300,000 yuan. The overall design of Tesla’s domestic Model Y adopts the same design as the Model 3. This small SUV is built on the same technology platform as the Model 3 sedan. The two cars share about 75% of the parts. , and will further reduce costs by accelerating the expansion of sales in the future.

Gu Huinan, general manager of GAC Aian, also said in an interview with a reporter from China Business News on January 6 that after the localization of all imported cars, the prices will be greatly reduced. This is a normal phenomenon, because tariffs, shipping and warehousing costs, The cost of parts, etc. has been reduced. However, there is still room for price reduction after the Model Y is made in China. Now its price is still more than 300,000 yuan, while the Aian V with the same performance configuration sells for 200,000 yuan.

Gu Huinan said that cost is a comprehensive indicator of all businesses, and cost control is a very complicated thing, and it is also the real skill of a company. Compared with some self-owned brand electric vehicle companies, Tesla has not yet prevailed in terms of cost. For example, Tesla’s overseas R&D costs are still higher than the R&D costs of independent car companies in China. On the other hand, GAC Aeon draws on experience from Japanese car companies, adopts a management model that eliminates all waste, saves costs in R&D, procurement, manufacturing, sales, etc. In the supply chain, relying on the scale advantage of GAC Group’s annual production and sales volume of 2 million vehicles, it can achieve resource sharing with the Group in many parts suppliers, and can also borrow from GAC Group in terms of channels. For Tesla to control costs, it is bound to work hard to expand its sales scale and speed up the process of localization of parts and components.

Gu Huinan also said that although GAC Aeon still has an advantage in cost, it still has a gap with Tesla in terms of brand power, and it takes a certain amount of time to improve brand influence, so it is necessary to speed up the improvement of core competitiveness such as technology research and development , in order to fight against Tesla, whose prices continue to drop.

Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, believed at a media conference recently that if Tesla is priced at cost, the Model Y should be less than 300,000. He believes that according to Tesla’s style, the price will drop after the production capacity keeps up. In the future, the Model Y may continue to reduce the price, and Tesla’s starting version may drop to more than 100,000. It is Tesla’s goal to become Volkswagen and Ford, and Weilai will still stick to its own positioning and benchmark with the pricing of BBA (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi) fuel vehicles.

At present, Chinese component companies such as CATL, Xusheng, Top Group, and Sanhua Zhikong have entered Tesla’s supply chain. As the pace of China’s electric and intelligent technology upgrades will further accelerate, more Chinese component suppliers are expected to further increase their market share globally. In order to seize the Chinese electric vehicle market with a faster and more cost-effective supply chain, automakers such as Tesla will continue to increase the domestic production rate of their components.