Apple founder Steve Jobs once said this:
Some people say, "Consumers give them whatever they want." "But that's not my way. It's our responsibility to figure out one step ahead of their future what they want. I remember Henry Ford saying, "If I had asked consumers what they wanted initially, they would have told me, 'Want a faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you put it in front of them. That's why I never rely on market research.
Although most companies can't launch revolutionary products again and again like Apple, we can also understand a truth from this sentence: the mouth of consumers, the ghosts of deceit, do not blindly follow consumer research. At this point, BMW has a deep understanding.
Believing that consumers chose the 3 Series for manipulation, BMW did not begin to lengthen until the previous 3 Series, code-named F35. At that time, some netizens questioned why Brilliance was lengthening, and only 41.92% of the votes launched supported the lengthening.
But the result? After the lengthening, sales of the 3 series are rising steadily. The wheelbase of this generation of the 3 Series has even been extended to 2.96 meters, which is longer than the A4L and C-class, and the sales volume has directly dried up both. To know the sales of the 3 series before the extension, there is no qualification for A4L shoes. BMW thought to itself: it has been fooled by consumers for so many years, and it has already made money by lengthening early.
It wasn't just BMW that was lame, but also the Ford that Jobs mentioned.
The four years from 2012 to 2016 were the period of the fastest growth in Ford's sales in China, during which Time Ford introduced a large number of models that were highly demanded by consumers and "must buy out", such as Fox ST, Fiesta ST, Fox RS and so on. Ford brought not only sports models, but also the F-150 that domestic pickup truck owners dreamed of.
In February 2016, after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Relaxing the Pilot Project of Lifting The Restrictions on Pickup Trucks Entering the City and Promoting the Consumption of Pickup Trucks", Ford brought the second-generation F-150 Raptor (Raptor) of the pickup truck model at the Beijing Auto Show more than two months later, and announced that it would be listed in the form of imports in the first half of 2017.
The official sales of the F-150 Raptor were not particularly good, with a total of 488 units sold from February to June 2017. However, after the F-150 Raptor was listed, the 4S store had a price increase of 100,000 to pick up the car, so some consumers attributed the poor sales to the price increase, as well as the need to paste reflective strips and other policy reasons for pickups at that time.
Originally thought that the F-150 would withdraw from the country silently, but recently Ford announced that it would open the pre-sale of the third-generation F-150 Raptor in the first quarter of next year.
In order to avoid the past price increase, the sale of the F-150 Raptor adopts the online direct operation model, which can only be booked in the WeChat Mini Program of "Ford Pickup Camp". However, although the direct operation model can avoid the situation of dealer price increases, it is also possible that the tank 500 speculation will be reserved, so if you have the intention of buying a car, I recommend that you book in advance.
In addition to the online direct operation model, another good news is that in 2018, the requirements for body spray writing and reflective strips were cancelled; in 2019, the "double certificate" requirements for the road transport certificate and driver qualification certificate for ordinary freight vehicles with a total mass of 4.5 tons and below were abolished; this year, in addition to Yunnan, Hubei, Hebei and other major pickup provinces, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Anhui and other provinces have also begun to gradually open up the restrictions on pickup trucks entering the city.
But it's not all good news, because due to the shortage of chips, the current $80,000 F-150 Raptor is already in a state of needing a $30,000 markup in the United States. It is said that thousands of new cars without chips are parked in the parking lot of Ford's Chicago plant.
Finally, let's talk a little bit about the model itself.
When the second generation of F-150 Raptor was introduced to China, it was castrated, and the horsepower was reduced from 450 to 421 horses, and after the implementation of the national VI, it was reduced to 381 horses. This generation of F-150 Raptor overseas version is equipped with an EcoBoost 3.5L V6 twin-turbo engine, matching a 10AT gearbox, but the parameters of the engine have not yet been announced, and the probability of entering the country will also be strict maximum horsepower.
In terms of price, benefiting from the identity of pickup truck utility vehicles, the displacement of 3.5L will not make the price of the F-150 Raptor too exaggerated, you can refer to the price of the second generation of 52.38 ~ 61.28 million.
But compared to the price, I am more concerned that if I drag a shelf-resistant fruit, such as coconuts, does that mean that I can apply for a green pass from Sanya to Harbin, thus eliminating the high-speed toll?