I am a science and technology creator, and GAC Aion still continues its own "sales myth".
In December 2023, GAC Aion achieved 4590,000 units, although the sales volume was overtaken by Li Auto, the cumulative delivery volume of GAC Aion in 2023 reached 480,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 778%ï¼›With the advantage of annual sales, GAC Aion has become the "sales champion" of new forces in 2023.
Although the sales data is very bright, GAC Aion's popularity and fame are always not as good as the first place.
Second, the ideal of the third place and NIO.
The reason behind this is that most of GAC Aion's sales come from the car-hailing market, which contains insufficient "gold".
A research institute mentioned in the July 2023 new energy market interpretation report that 41% of GAC Aion's sales in July 2023 were owned by individuals, and according to this, nearly 60% of sales came from the online car-hailing marketPreviously, CITIC** also conducted statistics that from 2020 to the first half of 2021, the "AION S", as the main sales model of GAC Aion, accounted for about 60%-70% of sales in the leasing market.
On the whole, although GAC Aion does not have sales troubles, it is also a fact that the high-end market cannot break through. How to break through the "shackles" of online car-hailing will be a question that GAC Aion must think about in 2024.
The rising sales volume has made GAC Aion the most successful new energy brand among traditional car companies.
GAC Aion was born in November 2018, when GAC Aion, which was still GAC New Energy, released the "AION" series, which was officially launched.
In April 2019, the first model of the Aion series, the AION S, was launched. The model is positioned as a mid-to-high-end intelligent sedan, with an L2 level assisted driving system, with a cruising range of 460 kilometers, which is clearly ahead of its peers at that time, and more importantly, the price is only 13980,000-17980,000 yuan.
With its high cost performance, the "AION S" was an instant hit after its launch. In addition, in order to accelerate the increase in sales, GAC Group has set its sights directly on the online car-hailing market, hoping to quickly open up sales through the online car-hailing market, and has also established the goal of making the Aion series the "king" of the online car-hailing market.
In 2019, with a sales volume of 32,493 units, AION S successfully entered the top 10 of the domestic new energy model sales list that year.
With the continuous increase in sales, GAC New Energy changed its name to GAC Aion New Energy Automobile in 2020 and the GAC Aion brand was officially independent. After tasting the "sweetness" of the online car-hailing market, GAC Aion continued to exert force in the online car-hailing market, and did not hesitate to play the banner of online car-hailing in the publicity, of course, such a strategy is understandable, after all, the online car-hailing market was emerging, taxis were gradually replacing with new energy vehicles, and the demand for new energy vehicles in the online car-hailing market surged.
Up to now, GAC Aion has become a well-deserved "king of online car-hailing", especially in Guangdong.
According to ** statistics, there are currently more than 300,000 GAC Aion models operating in the domestic online car-hailing market, accounting for about 25% of the online car-hailing market. In the online car-hailing market in Guangdong, GAC Aion occupies almost half of the country, becoming the preferred model for many online car-hailing drivers.
Gu Huinan, general manager of Aion, said: Online car-hailing is not synonymous with low-end. Aion also provided 800,000 kilometers of warranty commitment to online car-hailing, proving that only with excellent product quality can it become the backbone of online car-hailing. In terms of external publicity, GAC Aion's dealers even did not hesitate to mark self-deprecating slogans such as "the retreat of middle-aged people who are unemployed".
It is undeniable that focusing on the online car-hailing market has indeed made GAC Aion's sales "grow by leaps and bounds".
However, over-reliance on the ride-hailing market is not without risks, and from the current point of view, GAC Aion has gradually been eaten up by such a approach.
The first is the profitability aspect. Because the online car-hailing market focuses on high cost performance and generally adopts the practice of exchanging price for volume, GAC Aion's sales are good, but its profits are very limited. According to the data of the Guangzhou Equity Exchange, from 2019 to 2021, GAC Aion had a net loss of 62.1 billion yuan, 68.8 billion yuan, 138.9 billion yuan, and the sales volume in the past three years were 4200,000 units, 600,000 units, 12020,000 units, converted, a loss of about 10,000 yuan for each car sold.
Of course, after sales continue to rise, GAC Aion has successfully achieved profitability in the first half of 2023, but at present, GAC Aion has not disclosed specific data, followed by the trend of peaking in the online car-hailing market. Since the beginning of this year, as more and more labor force has poured into the online car-hailing market, the online car-hailing market has now clearly exceeded demand. In recent months, Changsha, Jinan, Dongguan, Wenzhou, Sanya and other cities have successively issued risk warnings for the online car-hailing industry, saying that the capacity of the online car-hailing market is close to saturation, and some cities have suspended the acceptance of online car-hailing transportation permits, which shows that the current national online car-hailing market is about to peak.
For GAC Aion, without the most important incremental market of the online car-hailing market, its sales will also enter a bottleneck period. In fact, GAC Aion's sales growth has slowed down significantly in recent months, and the specific data and GAC Aion's sales in December were 5120,000 units, 4150,000 units, 4150,000 and 4590,000 units, it can be seen that after the sales exceeded 50,000 units in September, GAC Aion's sales have dropped significantly in the past three months.
Of course, GAC Aion is not unaware of the risk of over-reliance on online car-hailing, and this year GAC Aion launched a new high-end brand - Haobo, wanting to break the shackles of online car-hailing with the help of high-end models. However, judging from the sales data, Haobo did not support GAC Aion's "high-end dream", with its main sales model Haobo GT as an example, since its listing for five months, the cumulative sales of Haobo GT are 4133 units, with an average monthly sales of less than 1000 units, of which the sales volume in November is only 100 units.
In fact, it is not difficult to understand that GAC Aion folds the high-end market, after all, compared with the online car-hailing market, the competition in the C-end market is more intense, and Haobo's main sales model Haobo GT aims at the medium and large sedan market, and needs to compete directly with models such as Krypton 001, BYD Han, Leap C01, Weilai ET5 and Xiaopeng P7, whether it is from the competitiveness of the brand or from the configuration of the model, Haobo GT is difficult to gain an advantage in the competition with these mainstream models.
For GAC Aion, it is certainly worth congratulating on becoming the "sales champion" of the new force in 2023, but in the case of the peak of the online car-hailing market, how to break through the "shackles" of online car-hailing will be a problem that GAC Aion has to think about in 2024, and in the fiercely competitive new energy track, GAC Aion should think more about how to break the situation.