“Farmers Market Cars and Tower 1977” by verner_oscar™ is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
He Xiaopneg, the CEO of XPeng, predicted that the sales volume of the top smart electric car makers will reach 10-20 million units annually, and their sales will reach $300-500 billion.
Let’s examine the data from 2020 to see how far this prediction fell short.
Toyota
Toyota Group sales for fiscal 2020 are 27.2145 trillion yen (about 1.6084 trillion yuan, $238.494 billion), down 8.9% year-on-year; operating profit is 2.1977 trillion yen (about 129.9 billion yuan, $20.001 billion), down 8.9% year-on-year.
Toyota’s fiscal year 2020 net profit was 2.2823 trillion yen (about RMB 134.9 billion, $20 billion), an increase of 10.3% year-on-year, making it the world’s highest volume and profit car company.
In terms of sales, Toyota’s global sales in fiscal 2020 were 9.92 million units, down 5.1% year-on-year. Among them, North American sales of 2.31 million units, down 14.7% year-on-year, remain the largest market for Toyota in the world.
In addition, sales in China were 2.0 million units, up 29.5% year-on-year, while sales in Japan were 2.13 million units, down 5.1% year-on-year.
Tesla
In 2020, Tesla achieves revenue of $31.536 billion, an increase of 28% year-on-year.
Tesla expected total sales to reach 500,000 units in 2020, with actual sales of 499,500 units, having already achieved the projected target. Meanwhile, production exceeded 500,000 units in 2020, reaching 509,737 units
BYD
In 2020, BYD sold 426,972 units. For the year, 189,689 electric vehicles and 237,283 fuel-powered vehicles were sold, up 2.32%. BYD delivered operating revenue of 156.598 billion yuan ($24.55 billion), up 22.59% year-on-year and higher than market expectations. According to the earnings report, automobiles and related products generated about 84 billion yuan ($13.170 billion).
XPENG, NIO and LI Auto
XPeng’s total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 was RMB 2.851 billion ($437 million), an increase of 345.5% compared to the same period in 2019; of which vehicle sales revenue was RMB 2.735 billion ($419 million), an increase of 375.7% year-over-year; gross margin was 7.4%, a significant improvement compared to -6.6% in the same period in 2019; fourth quarter Net loss was RMB787 million ($121 million), compared to an adjusted net loss of RMB713 million ($109 million). XPENG’s cumulative sales were 27,041 units, up 112% year-over-year, with fourth quarter sales of 12,964 units, up 302.9% year-over-year.
NIO’s full-year 2020 revenue was 16.26 billion yuan ($2.549), including revenue of 6.64 billion yuan ($1.041) in the fourth quarter. In addition new vehicle gross margins are steadily increasing at 17.2%. 2020 NIO cumulative sales were 43,728 units, up 112.6% year-over-year.
LI Auto’s total revenue for 2020 amounted to RMB 9.46 billion ($1.45 billion), with a full-year gross margin of 16.4%. Revenue from car sales in the fourth quarter was RMB 4.06 billion (US$621.9 million), and Ideal’s cumulative sales were 32,624 units.
