"Sunset industry" this half year: the era of making money by selling cars is over.

In the past half of the difficult year of 2020, the auto giant barely announced its financial report for the first half of the year. The car market, which was already going downhill, suffered an epidemic and its performance was even more ugly. However, some car companies with poor performance can at least "throw" the pot to the global epidemic, instead of "hammering" the bleak road ahead with data.

It is precisely because an epidemic has affected the supply, production and sales of the automobile industry that the performance differentiation among automobile enterprises is obvious. On the contrary, it has made the whole industry see one thing clearly: the automobile industry can no longer make money by selling cars alone.

Volkswagen "big brother is no longer"

The most important goal of Piech Times Volkswagen Group is to surpass Toyota and become the first in the world. Looking back now, whether it is modular platform integration, high-end brand harvesting or global market expansion, every measure has proved to be successful in pushing the public to the position of "boss".

By the end of 20 19, Volkswagen Group has been the world's automobile sales champion for four consecutive years, with the annual sales of new cars exceeding100000, and the market share exceeding 1 1%, maintaining a year-on-year growth of 2%. Among them, the China market contributed the most sales volume, and the North and South Volkswagen sold more than 4 million new cars.

Effective cost control measures enabled Volkswagen Group to achieve a profit growth of 65,438+02.8% in 2065,438+09, and the profit from automobile sales was 6.7%, which was 4-6% higher than the industry average.

The automobile business has contributed absolute income to the Volkswagen Group. This also caused the Volkswagen Group to suffer serious losses in the first half of this year. A few days ago, the financial report for the first half of 2020 released by Audi AG showed that the sales revenue decreased by 23% year-on-year during this year 1-6, and the profit loss was as high as1400 million euros.

How does the loss of 654.38+04 billion euros reflect the situation of Volkswagen this year? In the same period last year, Volkswagen achieved a profit of 9.6 billion euros, which laid the foundation for the annual profit growth.

As Volkswagen's most important market, China "contributed a lot" to the decline of its performance: except Audi, which increased by 4.9% year-on-year, other brands all experienced different degrees of decline, especially SAIC- Volkswagen, which decreased by 34%, and Skoda, which decreased by 58%. Among them, the negative impact of Passat incident can not be ignored.

The China market, which recovered the fastest from the epidemic, is still the same, while the European market, which is still facing the epidemic, will make it inevitable that Volkswagen will continue to lose money in the second half of the year.

Insufficient release of new cars is one of the reasons. Volkswagen ID 3, which was originally scheduled to be listed one after another this summer, has been hesitant on software issues. As an important year for the transformation of mass electrification, sales fluctuation is inevitable. In the China market, after Volkswagen intensively launched a variety of new SUV cars last year, the only thing worth looking forward to this year is the brand-new golf that just rolled off the assembly line.

Volkswagen's semi-annual financial report shows that the sales of all brands in the group have declined, and it is impossible to boost the sales of new cars in the short term. At the same time, the field of research and development has also been affected. Volkswagen's research and development expenses in the first half of this year decreased by 4.8% compared with the same period last year.

Ford was overturned by Argo.

Ford, also a former automobile giant, had a hard time in 20 19 years. People who eat melons may wonder, doesn't a global car brand have a profit of 100 million a year? For some people, 100 million is just a small goal.

Yes, Ford's 20 19 financial report data shows that the annual operating income was159.9 billion US dollars, down 3% year-on-year, and the net profit was only 47 million US dollars, down 98.7% compared with 3.7 billion US dollars in 20 18.

Of course, the China market is the "culprit". The sales volume of Changan Ford, which once enjoyed unlimited scenery, decreased by 565,438+0%, making it difficult for the new and old models to connect smoothly during the transition period. However, this is not the whole story. Even if Ford owns the top three F 150 series in the world, its profit is as low as 50 million yuan, which is mainly related to Ford's production line problems and rising maintenance costs last year.

As Aston mentioned in the article "Although the United States has not given up cars, its attitude towards cars has changed dramatically", the room for profit growth in the automobile manufacturing industry is getting smaller and smaller, and 4-6% is normalized. Therefore, once there is an accident in a certain link, the weak profit will continue to be cut, such as Ford's production line problem last year, and Volkswagen will continue to fill the hole for the "emission gate" this year, and so on.

At the end of last year, the automobile industry predicted that Ford would turn over in 2020. One of the reasons is that Ford has introduced many brand-new models in American and China markets, such as last year's Sharp World, this year's Explorer, and domestic Lincoln Flyers and Adventurers.

In fact, several new cars did show a good growth momentum in the China market, but the biggest contribution to Ford's performance in the first half of the year was not selling cars.

Today, Ford announced its second-quarter financial report, with a net profit of 1 1 billion dollars. It is not easy to get such a net profit in the case of serious epidemic in the United States, Ford switching to medical supplies, and the closure of overseas factories. To this end, Ford had predicted that the loss of profits would reach 3 billion euros.

Unexpectedly, a large amount of revenue comes from non-vehicle business, but Argo, a self-driving startup that Ford had previously invested in, brought it an investment income of 3.5 billion yuan. If you don't count the money, Ford's car sales loss in the first half of this year is still as high as 654.38+0.9 billion yuan.

On the one hand, Volkswagen injected capital into Argo in June this year and bought hundreds of millions of dollars of shares from Ford. On the other hand, Argo has gradually promoted autonomous driving technology solutions in commercial fields such as long-distance transportation and distribution. Even though the cooperation between Ford and Argo in the field of Ford's autonomous driving is still unclear, this investment has obviously brought benefits to Ford.

Tesla sells software to make money.

In this global epidemic, luxury brands have shown a certain ability to resist risks, such as the year-on-year growth of Audi in China. However, compared with the new forces of building cars, traditional car companies are still relatively weak because of their size and structure problems.

After the announcement of Tesla's financial report in the second quarter of this year, Tesla has completed four consecutive quarters of profit, completely getting rid of the bankruptcy risk in the early stage of Model 3' s capacity climbing.

The financial report shows that Tesla's revenue in the second quarter of this year exceeded 6 billion US dollars, an increase of 65,438+0% over the first quarter, exceeding market expectations. Gross profit was $65.438+0.2 billion, up 38% year-on-year, and net profit was $65.438+0.29 billion. While all profit indicators are increasing, the financial market also expressed its confidence in Tesla with the stock price rising by 7%.

It is worth noting that although Tesla experienced a factory closure during the epidemic and barely maintained its production capacity, compared with the same period last year, sales still declined. The main contribution to the profit growth for two consecutive quarters was the sales of self-driving kits: the deferred income of fully-automatic driving kits in the second quarter was $48 million. On the one hand, the price reduction promotion of the whole vehicle, on the other hand, the price increase of the self-driving kit and the optional charging pile, both of which are making money.

This is the advantage of smart cars. Different from the traditional car sales model, software sales can bring lasting benefits to Tesla, which will cover the whole life cycle of a car. Even in the traditional manufacturing field, after Tesla completed a series of "money saving plans", the gross profit margin of the whole vehicle has reached 25%, which is higher than that of many traditional car companies.

Similar software-driven hardware models have also been accepted by other new forces, and unpredictable sustainable benefits are considered to be the potential and imagination of companies like Tesla. Of course, unlike Volkswagen, Toyota and other car companies, Tesla believes that it is not a simple car brand, but a technology company covering solutions such as chips, hardware and energy.

Just as Ford can make a profit by investing in autonomous driving companies, giants such as Volkswagen are easily knocked down by an epidemic. The era of selling cars to make money in the traditional automobile industry has passed.