Produced by丨Tiger Sniff Automobile Group.
The author is thoughtful.
Header picture丨Visual China.
Thoughtful, what do you think of our car? The staff of Li Auto asked the author.
"Pretty good. But I always feel that when I buy your car, my youth will be over. ”
This conversation took place at the test drive meeting of Ideal Mega in Sanya. As an unmarried and childless car content creator who is 30+ years old, the author deeply understands how to consider when choosing a car when there are one, two, or even three children in the family.
From then on, space, comfort, economy and safety will be the most important decisive factors for car purchase. What kind of personality styling and driving experience have to make way for core thinking.
From this point of view, in China's 30 500,000 yuan** range, the most suitable car for family travel needs may be ideal. And on March 1, the ideal of riding on the track of extended-range hybrid finally released its first pure electric product, MEGA. The starting price in this car is 55In the 980,000 yuan MPV, the ideal has taken the brand's product thinking about the needs and pain points of family travel to the extreme.
But in the author's opinion, its parameters and characteristics also determine that this car may not sell as well as Li Auto wants.
Why do you have to build a pure electric MPV?
At the level of product definition, Ideal is one of the few companies in China that holds the concept of "positive development" to build new cars.
In other words, when the company builds cars, especially new cars such as L9 and MEGA, most of the product points and configurations are defined based on market research (user insight, that is, determining that the developed products are what users need) and demand management (transforming users' real needs into product development needs).
On the contrary, it is "reverse and benchmarking", that is, defining the product based on the existing configuration and selling points of the hot-selling models of the corresponding level and ** segment in the market, and then creating the "so-called cost-effective" models with "low price and high configuration" through cost control.
According to the introduction of the ideal side, the company made it clear at the beginning of its decision to build an electric car that this car should be oriented to the travel needs of large families, which are often accompanied by many elderly people and children. Compared with young adults, the elderly and children have higher requirements for space and comfort in the car.
In this regard, Ideal MEGA chose the pure electric MPV category to achieve the largest possible interior space. On the one hand, the effective space of the MPV (the distance from the driver's pedal to the rear door sill) accounts for the highest ratio of body length, that is, under the same body size, the "EFF" of the MPV is higher. On the other hand, MPVs have a lower floor height and sliding doors that make it easier to get on and off than SUVs.
On the MEGA, the ideal achieves 3791mm of interior space within the body length of 5350mm, and the room efficiency is 7086%。In comparison, the ratio of the Ideal L9 for the mid-to-large SUV is only 663%, the effective space in the car is nearly 330mm less.
As a direct result, this is an improvement in the experience for everyone on the bus, including the third-row passengers.
First, with the help of more interior space, it is ideal to equip the passenger and second row with a total of three seats with comfortable seats with leg rests. At the same time, the first two rows of 4 seats are equipped with ventilation, heating and 16-point massage function (10 on the back + 6 on the cushion), and 50W wireless charging for mobile phones is also available to everyone. For older parents in the second row, the MEGA also offers 270° wrap-around heating including armrests, leg rests, backrests and seat cushions.
Second, in order to ensure that the children in the third row are not depressed and can "sit still", MEGA has specially optimized the "three-seat sofa" in the third row. Among them, the seat cushion length is 530 mm, and the backrest height is 613 mm. In particular, the seat height has reached 350mm, which is higher than the second row of Mercedes-Benz S-class. At the same time, the seat backrests in the third row can be adjusted at a maximum angle of 36°.
Thirdly, the Ideal MEGA achieves a trunk depth of 680mm when the first three rows are seated. In comparison, the Mercedes-Benz V260L is only 358mm, while the Toyota Alpha is only 205mm.
Admittedly, the advantage of space and the comfort of interior seats are an important part of the power of the ideal MEGA product, but this is far from all. After all, in today's Chinese auto industry, making the car bigger and the seats comfortable is not too difficult for Huawei and other car companies.
Therefore, the ideal needs to add a stronger sense of luxury to the simple needs of the family in the past.
Learn aesthetics from Steve Jobs?
If you simply look at the interior of the car, the difference between the ideal MEGA car and the ideal SUV is not very obvious.
I thought the same way until I got into the car.
In terms of style, Ideal MEGA refers to the style of classic modern furniture designed by EAMES. With a combination of minimalist lines, harmonious colors and delicate materials. In particular, in terms of visual segmentation, MEGA uses more curves than arcs, making the interior of the vehicle look softer.
In fact, the influence of EAMES design ideas is not limited to the furniture industry, it has also deeply influenced the technology industry. In this classic photo of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the two share one of EAMES' most famous lounge chair combinations.
Compared with the three SUVs of the Ideal L, the biggest difference between the MEGA is the instrument panel and door panels. Compared with the latter's direct "sliding down" design, the former adopts a layered design, which improves the sense of quality and extends the vision, making the front row look a lot more high-end all of a sudden.
At the door panel level, whether it is the front row or the rear row, the ideal no longer uses the same color and adopts a dark and light color matching design. This not only enhances the sense of hierarchy and luxury, but also makes the whole car look brighter.
This brings us to Mega's use of light. Compared with luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz, which love ambient lighting, Ideal is trying to use various ways to improve the "brightness" of rear passengers in the scene of multi-person travel on MEGA. In addition to adopting more bright interior colours, the MEGA has also increased the glass area as much as possible, bringing it to a total of 826㎡。
Speaking of numbers alone, you may not have an intuitive concept, but the numbers of Mercedes-Benz Alpha and V260L are 546 and 769㎡。What's more, MEGA lowered the water tangent line of the front side windows as much as possible, so that the second-row passengers really have a view like a high-speed rail car.
At the same time, the car's large sunroof extends over the heads of the third-row passengers. In fact, in order to keep the third-row passengers from feeling too oppressive, the Ideal MEGA's sunshades are opened from the back to the front, which takes care of the experience of the former.
In terms of materials, in addition to using more leather and soft materials to wrap the interior of the car, the biggest change is the roof. The fabric roof, which was ideally insisted on on the L, has finally been transformed into a velvet material filled with foam on the MEGA, which is quite delicate to the touch. Crucially, the thickness of the foam layer of the MEGA's roof wrap is well controlled, giving your fingers a feeling somewhere between soft and firm.
It is the above series of changes that make the texture of MEGA substantially improved compared to L.
Of course, exterior design is also an important dimension to achieve a sense of luxury. But for the shape of the mega, there are comments that are almost black and white in the field. Some people think the car's styling is very futuristic, like a prop car from a science fiction movie. While others argue that the car's lack of edges and lines is too rounded, lacking a sense of design and luxury.
These exterior controversies were not decisive for the car's sales direction. Aesthetics are inherently subjective and subject to change. The acceptance of a car's styling is likely to improve with the increase in sales.
Ideal MEGA, can you sell the BMW X5L?
Some readers may wonder why the author spent a lot of pen and ink analyzing the space and design of the mega, but did not talk about the intelligence and driving quality of this car.
For the former, the hardware carried by the MEGA is basically the same as the newly released 2024 L. Therefore, under the same vehicle intelligent platform, the software and functions of MEGA are not fundamentally different from other models in the general direction, and are still in the first echelon of China's smart cars.
And for the latter question, the author must be honest: for MPV products, the author sits far more than opens, so he does not have much right to speak. So if you want to know about this car, it's best to experience it for yourself.
This car looks really big.
But in terms of ride comfort, this car is indeed stronger than the Mercedes-Benz V260L and Alpha, after all, the Mega is equipped with a combination of dual-chamber air suspension and CDC. In fact, in order to help them understand the essential difference between MEGA and these two million-dollar luxury cars, the ideal test drive team rented a V260L and Alpha in Sanya for a comparative test.
In contrast, the V260L, which uses a truck chassis, and the Alpha, which does not have air suspension, are not comparable to the MEGA in this respect. Not to mention, the MEGA is equipped with dual front and rear motors that can achieve 50 to 100 km/h acceleration time of 5 seconds to 100 km/h. When I drove the Alpha again, I was amazed at how the latter achieved the phenomenon of "the engine is howling, but the acceleration is not at all".
After analyzing the product, let's go back to the ideal side's sales expectations for MEGA. Li Xiang, founder, chairman and CEO of Li Auto, claimed at a press conference on March 1 that MEGA would become the company's next hot product, "becoming the No. 1 product with sales of more than 500,000 yuan."
However, in the author's opinion, if the MEGA car wants to become a popular product in the market segment like the ideal SUV product, I am afraid it will be difficult to achieve.
First of all, we must be aware that driving a 5A 35-meter car is not an easy task. Especially in the core business district that needs to be parked into underground parking spaces, it may be difficult to find a suitable parking space for MEGA, which is 5350*1965*1850mm in length, width and height respectively.
This is not alarmist. According to the "Code for Garage Building Design" (JGJ100-2015) issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China in 2015, the minimum length of vertical backward and forward parking spaces is 53 meters, mega is exactly 05 meters.
And if the parking space belongs to two rows of parking spaces adjacent to each other, the minimum parking space length is only 51 meter. As you can imagine, if you park your MEGA in such a space, you won't even want to open the rear tailgate.
However, it should be noted that the "Code for Garage Building Design" (JGJ100-2015) was implemented on December 1, 2015, and the parking lots built before this time only need to implement the old standard of smaller parking space size requirements. In fact, in real life, even in a top-notch shopping mall like Beijing SKP, parking spaces are also in this style:
The 5305mm Bentley Bentayga on the left is noticeably more than that.
Not to mention, the track that this car wants to enter is not so acceptable to whether it is new energy or MPV.
In 2023, among the models with a transaction price of more than 500,000 yuan in the Chinese market, the BMW X5L has the highest sales. In the Chinese market, the largest model with a starting price higher than this ** is the domestically produced BMW X5L, and the average monthly sales of this car in the past year are about 8,000 units. In other words, if you want to achieve the goal that Li wants to set, MEGA must also reach this number.
What is this concept? For the whole year of 2023, the list of new car sales with a transaction price of more than 500,000 yuan in China is as follows:
Among them, we can see that in addition to the Alpha and Mercedes-Benz S-class, these cars are more of a "car owner buys and drives" type. In particular, luxury SUVs are relatively compact in length, basically not exceeding 51 meter, and there is not even a new energy vehicle. It can be seen that most of the wealthy people who buy luxury cars first please themselves and their small families. Among them, how many high-net-worth families with more than 2 children are willing to buy a 5 for the travel needs of the whole familyThe 35-meter pure electric MPV is really not good.
Perhaps, MEGA will be able to catch up with the monthly sales of the BMW X5L by relying on the accumulated order volume in the first few months of delivery. But in a longer period of time, if the car's steady-state monthly sales can reach the level of 3,000 units and surpass the Mercedes-Benz GLE, it will be a great achievement for Chinese car brands.
Written at the end: In the promotional video of Ideal Mega, the company depicts a family of car owners: the male and female owners live in a large villa with three young children and the parents of one of them, and the whole family has a stable need to travel together.
Obviously, three-child families are the core target users of Ideal MEGA. Among the 9.56 million people born in China in 2022, the proportion of three children will reach 15%. According to statistics, these three-child families are mainly distributed in Guangdong, Guangxi and Gansu provinces. However, in terms of urban sales of new energy vehicles, people living in Guangxi and Gansu are not the main car buyers.
Therefore, whether the three-child families in Guangdong and several other first-tier cities can generally recognize the product strength and quality of MEGA determines whether the ideal can beat the BMW X5.
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