Just like the first press conference in 2018, Li Xiang was still wearing a black shirt, walked quickly to the stage again, and started the first pure electric product launch conference, and 6 years ago proposed how to let families have a lower cost to have a smart electric car, he asked the question, "What kind of MPV do larger families need?" ”
With its precise product definition, Li Auto has created the extended range market, singing all the way, turning from a marginal role to a hot star car company in China; When the pure electric market is maturing, the ideal mega has officially ended, and the body length of this car is more than 53 meters, the width is close to 2 meters, and the height is more than 1The 8-meter pure electric seven-seater MPV has become the first product to enter the pure electric market.
This also challenges the conventional wisdom: in the MPV market, family cars are often regarded as a niche, can such a pure electric MPV that actively abandons commercial scenarios break through the range extension limit back then, step out of the niche market, and grow into a new market category?
But the situation is far more complicated than imagined. In the few days of its debut, MEGA orders were cold, ** lost, and high pricing, aggressive appearance and high-profile marketing fell out of control for the ideal. The stock price of Hong Kong stocks continued to fall sharply, and the market value evaporated by more than 60 billion.
And in the extended-range position of traditional advantages, a crisis is also emerging: the momentum of the question world is like a rainbow, and it is rapidly attacking the city with the high momentum of sending out war reports every day. With the facelift of the L series on the market, whether it can continue to win in the comparison with the question world is an important hurdle for the ideal to keep this year's sales chassis. Faced with the sales target of 800,000 units in 2024, Ideal needs to complete the challenge of attacking and defending at the same time.
MEGA wants to solve the multi-person travel needs of wealthy families
MEGA has sparked many expectations, and Chen Mao is one of them.
He is the owner of the L9 car, and every time he goes out, there are at least 6 people: including parents, wife, children, nanny and driver. Although the L9 was the most capable SUV he could find, it never managed to balance the comfort of the third row with the trunk space: when the trunk was stuffed, the seats in the third row could not be adjusted and were uncomfortable to sit in. Therefore, as soon as this pure electric MPV was launched, he quickly paid the deposit.
After the press conference, Chen Mao and his family went to the store for a test drive. He found that the exterior and interior workmanship of the mega have been improved to a certain extent, and "details such as the soft top and switches can feel the texture" - this is better than he imagined, after all, when the interior was just **, Chen Mao was disappointed to cancel the order.
The driving texture of the driver's seat is also a factor that impresses him. Chen Mao compared the MEGA with his own luxury car, and felt that the chassis texture was close to that of Mai**, which was better than GLS and X5 and Paramela.
But most importantly, Mega really solves the need for multiple people in his family to travel at the same time. "Only MEGA has done that," Chen told Che Yun, "and it's truly a completely family-oriented nanny car." In the process of touching the actual car, he saw that the normal use of the third row and the trunk storage no longer interfered with each other. "Mega doesn't have anything particularly outstanding, but it's a well-balanced pentagonal warrior with a focus on practicality. ”
Chen Mao plans to use the MEGA for urban commuting or short trips, and L9 for extremely long or short trips.
In the process of entering new markets and launching new categories, Li Auto is still firmly committed to promoting the family strategy. On March 1, Li Auto held a spring press conference in the Shanghai World Expo Park, thousands of miles away. Facing the flashing mobile phone lights in the audience, Li Xiang said frankly that the refrigerator color TV sofa was upgraded again, and the family's "living room", "study", "bedroom", "cinema" and "hall" were all moved into the car with mega.
Buying the MEGA is the cost of a car, getting a house at the same time, and giving away a free home theater and full furniture", he declared, "The MEGA is one of the most spacious electric passenger cars on sale in the world. ”
At present, there are many excellent models active in the MPV market. For example, the sales champion in the MPV field, the Denza D9; The traditional king Buick GL8, as well as the rising stars Zeekrypton 009 and Xpeng X9. Compared to them, MEGA wants to be an "extension of home" rather than a business trip.
Some people question that just being a home user will not make it to scale. Li Xiang feels that this is a more imaginative market that still needs to be tapped. At the recent fourth-quarter earnings conference, he reiterated this view, "I think it's a huge market, and today we occupy a very small part of this market, so there's no need to distract ourselves from looking elsewhere." ”
The ideal judgment is that if it is only a market of more than 200,000 family users, Li Auto only needs to eat one-third of the market share in the Chinese market to reach more than one trillion yuan in revenue; If it can still have a good performance overseas, by 2030, in the home user market of more than 200,000 alone, the ideal can be close to the global revenue of the iPhone in the global market.
In fact, from the perspective of the overall market size, more than 80% of the models sold in China, especially MPVs, are purchased by families. Moreover, the more expensive the car, the higher the proportion of family car purchases, which is also our confidence that MEGA can become the No. 1 market share in the market of more than 500,000 yuan**. Fan Haoyu, senior vice president of Ideal, added.
The pricing exceeded the public's psychological expectations
But in the three days following the press conference, the ideal was uncharacteristically silent. There are no large orders, no war reports. There is no further clarification about MEGA.
Worries and speculation spread through the market, and rumors spread. Sun Shaojun said in the live broadcast on the weekend, "MEGA's orders did not break 10,000", on March 4, Hong Kong stocks opened on Monday, the ideal stock price fell sharply, the largest decline was close to 13%, and the market value evaporated 36 billion yuan, that evening, a data disclosure from a new channel, 72 hours after listing, 3,218 orders nationwide, and more than 10,000 unsubscribed orders; On March 5, the 72-hour sales data of car fans showed that the average order of Ideal Mega was 8 to 9 units per store, and the cumulative small order of 60 to 70 units per store was between 60% and 70%.
The pricing exceeds psychological expectations, which is the direct cause of the cold of large orders. There is only one Max version of the Mega, which is priced at 55980,000 yuan - with a ** higher than market expectations, MEGA will further delineate high-net-worth individuals among family users; At the same time, MEGA doesn't offer a low-spec version, which leaves those on a budget with no more options.
We've also thought about whether we need to add a few more configuration combinations. But after reaching this level, in fact, the user is not very sensitive to one or two thousand, and he is sensitive to whether he can get the best product at one time. Fan Haoyu explained the pricing logic in the interview, the ideal needs to ensure a very reasonable gross profit in addition to the cost, which can make the company continue to develop, "all users also hope that we can continue to provide OTA to everyone, as well as 5 years of long-term service." That is, the ideal still wants to maintain a high level of profit and earn this money decently.
An ideal investor commented that as a pure electric flagship product, the more important significance of MEGA is to create a sense of yearning for ordinary people and drive the sales of M7, M8 and M9. And this also determines that its pricing cannot be too low. He expects that the MEGA should be the ideal "iPhone moment", "uncover the real unmet user needs and disrupt the existing pattern", and "before the iPhone, who would have predicted that a company would have a 20 to 30 percent share of the market with a single phone?" ”
But for now, there are no signs of widespread ripples in the market.
A Dading user bluntly said that after seeing **, there will still be some hesitation in turning Dading, "54."The ** of 980,000 will make me feel better, and 52980,000 is in line with the psychological price of more people. ”
55.The pricing of 980,000 is becoming a watershed, quickly shrinking the user base into a defined range.
Those high-net-worth individuals who choose models from top to bottom, such as Cheng Mao, "the ideal is to afford the lower limit of the choice of Alpha car owners", "too cheap will affect my choice"; For users who want to jump up, the only way to do this is to turn to other models or brands.
Some people complained on social platforms that they had been waiting for the listing of MEGA, but this somewhat high ** made him buy L9; A cycling enthusiast pedaled to the store to inspect and finally placed an order for Xpeng X9. There are also a number of posts in Xianyu that transfer large orders.
The overflow of MEGA traffic is going to other brands. Sun Shaojun of car fans analyzed not long ago that after the launch of the ideal MEGA, it was basically determined that Xiaopeng X9, Denza D9, Wenjie M9, Lantu Dreamer, and Zeekrypton 009 would bring significant returns. These returning customers have several characteristics, "focus on MGEA, but there is a demand for **, once it is too high, they will directly look for alternatives; Business attributes account for a significant proportion. ”
Among them, DENZA D9 was the biggest winner, with more than 1,700 new orders over the weekend, and the number of orders doubled; The Xpeng X9 ushered in a big explosion in store volume, with "face-to-face" marketing, low ** and comprehensive configuration, its order growth rate was at least 40% more than the steady-state weekly**. In the past week from February 26 to March 3, the X9 topped the list of new energy MPV terminals, with 1,202 units sold.
Re-understanding the pure electric MPV market
In 2017, due to the overall immaturity of the pure electric market, Li Xiang deviated from the original intention of building a pure electric model and chose the unpromising range extension technology instead. As a result, relying on 4 range extender products, Li Auto has become a hot star car company in China. In 2023, Li Auto's annual revenue will be 12385.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17348%；Net profit more than sixfold to 1180.9 billion yuan. On February 27, Li Auto's Hong Kong stock price soared 25%.
It is no wonder that he was able to proclaim at the press conference in a high-profile manner, "We are the No. 1 Chinese car company in cash reserves".
With the popularization of charging piles and other energy supplement construction, and the continuous maturity of market education, Li Xiang waited for the best time to return to the pure electric market - he said at the end of last year that lithium carbonate fell below 100,000, "In order to support us to sell pure electric models next year, lithium carbonate is also fighting." ”
The glamorous car company has once again returned to the battlefield it once abandoned, determined to use a pure electric MPV to demonstrate to the market how to sell pure electric products well - the mega will become the first in sales of more than 500,000 units, with annual sales of at least 70,000 units.
Memorable appearance and fast recharge are two of his main focuses in the new product.
As always, Li Xiang needs to solve the pain point of energy replenishment when traveling. He plans to use the 5C charging pile as a "range extender" for pure electric models to achieve the effect of charging for 500 kilometers in 12 minutes. At present, Ideal is building more than 300 charging stations in high-speed scenarios, and it plans to use 6 billion yuan to build more than 5,000 directly operated 5C supercharging stations in the future.
However, one problem that still raises the concerns of users is that the use of MEGA in urban areas requires users to replenish energy through home charging piles or ordinary charging equipment. Just a few days after the press conference, there was also news in the market that the ideal would speed up the construction of charging stations in urban areas.
The speed of laying the energy supply system greatly affects the sales growth, and the ideal needs to race against time. And the malicious attack caused by the appearance is almost the biggest damage to the brand at the moment.
Later reported that the previous product appearance was more concerned about not making mistakes, and when designing MEGA, Li Xiang asked the styling team to be "radical, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and different from others." ”
All the MPVs in this world look like that, only the mega is completely different. Li Xiang said that the L series should be recognizable from 100 meters away, and the MEGA is an ideal product to be remembered just by its appearance.
Since the inception of the MEGA, the appearance and marketing communications have complemented each other, and together they have boosted the popularity and attention of the new car.
From a faint arc in the initial poster, the "inadvertent" leakage of the manuscript of the former Porsche designer, to the camouflage car that was encountered by chance outside the ideal headquarters, every wind and grass before the official ** of MEGA can tease the nerves of the market and bring huge traffic onlookers. In the first half of last year, Li Xiang commented on an ideal MPV model picture rendered by a blogger, "If it is really designed like this bird, I will kill the design team and jump off the building by the way." "But in fact, it's almost the same as the actual car.
The suspense and expectation are like the inflating balloon floating higher and higher, until the teardrop-shaped nose to achieve the lowest drag coefficient is officially **, until the two-hour press conference that is still triggering the stock price ** officially ends.
Excessive traffic marketing eventually backfires. On the Internet, a large number of people who attack the appearance of mega abound, and wanton spoofs with the theme of "coffin" also affect the direction of ** and the user's mind.
Ideal wants to once again prove its control over the market, even in the field of pure electricity, it can still accurately hit the hearts of users. However, those opponents who continue to step on the pit and wrestle have also improved significantly. When Li Xiang constantly emphasized the "big, bigger, super large" interior space, Xpeng unexpectedly seized the definition of MPV products with a move of rear wheel steering; At the same time, the active "face-to-face" marketing also gives the X9 the upper hand in the market.
All kinds of out-of-control situations once again show that "pure electricity is a pit, and everyone has to step on it once", even if this person is Li Xiang.
The double challenge of attacking and defending
The turmoil in the pure electric market is still unsettled, and the ideal needs to usher in real challenges. In its main camp, the battle with the question world is approaching match point.
The facelift of the L-Series was officially launched this month. The L7, L8 and L9 start at 31980,000 yuan, 33980,000 yuan and 42980,000 yuan. In a market that has been declining, the ideal still adheres to the level close to the old model, which is enough to see its confidence and adherence to the market share of more than 200,000.
But in this upward ** belt, it is also imperative to ask the world. Almost at the same time as the Ideal press conference, Wenjie released a poster to celebrate the M9's mass order exceeding 50,000 units in 62 days. It is reported that as an SUV with an official price of 470,000-570,000 yuan, the average transaction price is more than 550,000 yuan. The same anchors the high-income group.
And the M7, which is in direct competition with L7, also rose fiercely. In the 170 days since its launch, deliveries of the new M7 have exceeded 100,000 units. In February, Wenjie once again overwhelmed the ideal and ranked first in the list of new forces. In the latest week's data, the question world still maintains a leading trend. In this extended range market, which was dominated by it in the past, Ideal finally has to fight this real opponent.
The L series is also about whether the ideal can go further. This year, Li Xiang has set a sales target of 800,000 units. Ideal deliveries will exceed 50,000 units in March, 70,000 units in June, and monthly sales of more than 100,000 units by the end of the year. The facelifted L series continues to be the main driver of sales.
At the beginning of the press conference, Li Xiang once sighed that "2023 is the year with the most pressure and right and wrong", as if he was responding to the past. And whether it was expected or not, with the end of this press conference, the pressure and challenges of the new year are also surging; The traditional main business is threatened, and the new battlefield has not yet been successfully opened.
For Li Xiang, who is in the eye of the storm, can he win another chance to win an ideal one?