Sales in April fell below 10,000 units again. Why did BYD Dolphin follow the same path as Wuling Hongguang?

Shocking! BYD Seagull's monthly sales exceeded 10,000!

However, this time it’s breaking 10,000, not that time - in April 2024, BYD Seagull’s monthly sales volume was 9,995 units.

If it were any other brand, they would have held a celebration party, but for BYD, it would be enough to hold a reflection meeting. If it were Great Wall Haval, they might have already posted a self-examination on Weibo.

The reason is simple, the decline of BYD Dolphin is beyond imagination.

Last year, BYD Dolphin sold 367,000 units, with an average monthly sales of more than 30,000 units; after 33 months on the market, the cumulative sales exceeded 660,000 units. However, since 2024, Dolphin's sales have never exceeded 20,000 units, and fell below the 10,000 mark twice in February and April.

So, last year, Donnie Yen was able to fight ten people at once, but why did it suddenly slip this year? What went wrong?

First of all, we need to figure out why the Dolphin car became so popular.

Dolphin is a pure electric compact car with a length of 4125mm. Its cruising range is divided into two types: 302km and 420km. It has a young and fashionable appearance and its basic configuration has also reached a relatively high level.

The positioning of this type of vehicle is very clear: it is a city commuter vehicle, targeting groups such as fashionable young people, mothers with children, and single aristocrats. Therefore, once it was launched on the market, it quickly became the focus of public attention, and sales continued to rise.

Before BYD Dolphin was launched, some manufacturers such as ORA were already eyeing small cars. At the same time, fuel cars of the same level such as Volkswagen POLO and Honda Fit were also quite competitive at the time. But after the Dolphin was launched, these models quickly lost out. Fuel cars such as Honda Fit were vulnerable to the powerful Dolphin, while ORA good Models like the Cat were not strong enough overall, so the Dolphin quickly established its advantage.

It can be said that if consumers want to buy a pure electric commuter car, Dolphin is almost the best choice. For more than two years, Dolphin has occupied a unique ecological niche, with few rivals in the same class, so it has reaped a lot of benefits in the market.

But it should be noted that many small cars and micro cars have had such experiences, such as the Dolphin, the Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, and the early pure electric micro car overlord Chery Little Ant. Looking back, models such as the Honda Fit, Volkswagen Beetle, Volkswagen POLO, and Chery QQ also quickly fell from popularity after being popular for a while.

The main reason is that the Dolphin is a car that looks good, but it can only attract certain users: people who have a car at home, the Dolphin is their second car, have a charging station at home or charging is convenient, and are not sensitive to price. After the first batch of users are harvested, a decline in sales is inevitable.

There is a seemingly reasonable reason why pure electric small cars and micro cars can seize the market: low prices. However, from the perspective of ordinary users, they are not cheap at all and have no cost-effectiveness.

The official guide price of the BYD Dolphin currently on sale is 99,800 yuan, which is only 10,000 yuan cheaper than the Song Pro DM-i, but the latter obviously has a larger space, higher configuration, stronger power, and no range anxiety.

Users can spend 110,000 yuan to buy a Song Pro DM-i, which can meet the daily car needs of a family of five, and can be used for commuting and cross-provincial self-driving tours; but if the same money is used to buy a Dolphin, it can only serve as a daily means of transportation, with small space, short battery life, and weak power. There will be battery life anxiety when traveling long distances, and the highlight is its "single function".

Therefore, we can conclude that consumers who buy Dolphins actually have a relatively high car purchase budget, and their families generally have other models to meet daily needs, so they choose a 100,000 yuan-level car like the Dolphin.

Wang Chuanfu said earlier that more than 60% of Chinese families do not have a car, and pure electric models are not suitable as the first car for a family, so the cost is high, and the problem of range anxiety cannot be solved in the short term. Family users are the main force in the Chinese auto market, but most family users do not actually have the ability to "spend 100,000 yuan just for transportation."

In addition, the launch of other models at the same price is also constantly eliminating the Dolphin's advantage. The most typical example is BYD Yuan UP, a pure electric small SUV that is cheaper than the Dolphin, but has a larger interior space and is cheaper than the Dolphin. For family users, the Yuan UP, which has a wide range of car functions, is obviously more cost-effective.

In addition, the strength of competitors such as Wuling Bingo is also gradually improving. They are not as good as Dolphin in overall performance, but they are cheaper. Since they are all for transportation, how big is the difference between 90kW and 100kW power and 300km and 400km range?

In fact, there is another important reason for the explosion in Dolphin sales in the past two years. That is, there were not many pure electric small cars available on the market at that time. However, after continuous internal competition, now a good new energy vehicle model can be bought with a budget of 100,000 yuan, so consumers naturally have little motivation to buy Dolphin.

If nothing unexpected happens, it will be difficult for Dolphin to return to its peak sales. In the future, it will be good if it can maintain monthly sales of over 10,000 units. This is not because Dolphin's product performance has deteriorated, but because the new energy vehicle market is becoming more and more mature, and consumers are becoming more rational. They know exactly what they need.

For BYD, the continued decline in Dolphin sales is not a good thing. But think about it carefully, aren't the Song and Yuan, which snatched customers from Dolphin, also BYD's? Moreover, after consumers become more rational, they will still buy other BYD models. The market is becoming more and more mature, isn't this what BYD wants?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.