One wrong step, one wrong step? The most profitable new forces are laying off employees, and it is difficult to be "ideal"!

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2024-05-17 20:12Posted in Hubei Automobile Creator

Recently, a number of media reported that Ideal launched a new round of employee optimization plan after the "May Day" holiday, and the overall optimization ratio will exceed 18%. According to Li Auto's 2023 financial report, Li Auto has nearly 31,600 people, and according to the optimization ratio, this round of optimization may involve more than 5,600 people.

Once because of the "4-8 months of year-end bonus" and envy the ideals of a group of workers, but now they want to lay off more than 5,600 people, the surface of the lively automobile market, but now the inside is full of cold, 24 years of ideals seem to be difficult to "ideal".

In fact, there are early signs of ideal layoffs. At the beginning of April, it is suspected that an ideal employee broke the news that the approval of all new offers has been suspended, and the entire budget has been reduced by more than 30%, and the next step will be layoffs.

Although Ideal denied the information at the time, judging from the current news, the rumors at the beginning were not groundless.

It is worth noting that in this layoff turmoil, there are three departments that are "hard-hit areas". They are the sales and service operation department, the recruitment department and the intelligent driving department. Among them, the intelligent driving team, which expanded by nearly 50% last year, will be reduced to less than 1,000 people.

As we all know, intelligent driving has always been an ideal shortcoming. Some time ago, there was even an ideal L9 that mistook the billboard on the highway for a real car after turning on assisted driving, and braked sharply until the rear-end collision. At the same time, the plan for the ideal city NOA to land in 100 cities by the end of the year in April last year is also progressing slowly. The move to cut the self-driving team may also be a re-planning of the research and development path of autonomous driving technology.

If the failure in the field of intelligent driving has made the ideal a little broken, then the fiasco in the pure electric field may be the real fuse for the ideal layoffs.

On March 1, Li Auto officially released its first pure electric product, Li MEGA. This model, which was praised by Li Xiang as "the next explosive product of Li Auto" and "confident to become the No. 1 in sales of more than 500,000 people", has not announced its orders after its launch.

Later, on the second-hand platform, there were also a lot of transfer orders about Ideal MEGA, and Ideal MEGA was also caught in a period of cyberbullying because of its shape, and the stock price of Ideal Auto also declined.

Later, Li Xiang also issued a letter to all employees, reviewing and reflecting on the problems of Ideal MEGA, thinking that the MEGA turmoil would be settled, but he did not expect that the day before the layoffs were exposed, Li Auto was recently sued by investors for securities fraud to the court.

In this lawsuit, investors allege that Li Auto has exaggerated the end market demand and its own operational capabilities when launching its first pure electric MPV, the Ideal MEGA, and gave unrealistic sales expectations that could have a material negative impact on the company's finances and stock price, so Li Auto was accused of being materially false and misleading.

The shadow of layoffs and lawsuits hangs over Li Auto, and this 2024, Ideal is destined to have an easy time.

The ideal for 2023 is a year full of highlights, with a total of more than 600,000 units delivered throughout the year, successfully topping the sales list of new forces. At the same time, it also ushered in the first profitable year, relying on one year's profits to make up for the accumulated losses of the previous five years, envying a number of new power car companies.

However, entering 2024, it has been taken away from the sales title by the question industry for three consecutive months, coupled with the failure of the first pure electric product, which has caused the reputation of the entire ideal brand to plummet.

Perhaps fearing that the L series would be affected, Ideal started its first official drop in April this year, and also lowered its sales target for this year from 800,000 to 560,000-640,000 units.

But fortunately, the listing of L6 has helped Ideal save some face.

During the 18-day first sale period from April 18 to May 5, the ideal order volume exceeded 41,000 units. In April, the Ideal L6 also delivered 2,381 units. Therefore, in the first two weeks of May, Ideal won the sales championship of the new forces unexpectedly.

Despite the improvement, the pressure on ideals has not abated. In the extended range market, the impact of the question is obvious, and Xiaomi's next SUV model has also been revealed to be a range extension model. As more competitors join the equation, the challenge of ideals is growing.

Write at the end

This large-scale layoff does not mean that the ideal is completely in crisis, at least in terms of sales, the ideal is still the "king of the mountain".

As for the intelligent driving team, at the end of last year, it was revealed by the media that Li Auto had enabled the autonomous driving company Qingzhou Zhihang as the intelligent driving supplier to assist in the implementation of high-end intelligent driving functions in the Pro version of the model. The reduction of the intelligent driving team seems to have become reasonable.

But what is being done so far is not the optimal solution for ideals. How to impact higher sales and face the involution of the market are all ideal problems that should be considered.

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