Great Wall Motor's brand "Euler Good Cat" is caught in the "core change door" controversy

Through Euler Automobile, we can also see the current situation of the development of the Great Wall Matrix.

Text/Daily Earnings Report Lu Mingxia

Driven by multiple rounds of marketing, now whenever Euler Automobile is mentioned, its "net red" label has been rooted in the hearts of a group of consumers. In addition to the fierce discussion in the automotive circle every time Euler's new car debuts, there are also a number of female consumers calling for it.

However, this car brand, which is known as the "favorite woman", has recently staged a drama of "Tanuki for Prince", which not only caused strong dissatisfaction among car owners, but also a lot of negative public opinion, and even criticized by the official media.

On December 6, CCTV Financial Channel publicly "named" Euler Automobile, pointing out that the brand side "stole chips", played word games or was suspected of consumer fraud. Immediately after, not only the Euler brand itself, but even Great Wall Motors can hardly hide from public opinion.

"Good cat who loves to change his mouth"

Recently, Great Wall Motor's brand Euler was complained by hundreds of car owners. The reason is that the product "Good Cat" under the Euler brand said that the entertainment system uses an 8-core Qualcomm chip when advertising, but it is actually the old 2016 Intel 4-core A3940 chip.

As more and more car owners join the rights protection queue of related events, Euler Automobile has issued two statements, acknowledging that the good cat models on sale are not equipped with Qualcomm 8-core chips, and proposing to give owners a 7200 yuan worth of rights packages, including Free upgrades to CarPlay and HiCar, an extension of two-year entertainment traffic packages, and a lifetime warranty service for the first owner of Sandian.

However, in response to this treatment plan, most car owners said that it was difficult to accept. According to the above response, the "core changing door" has been happening for more than a month, but so far there has not been a specific solution that both sides agree on.

When asked about the "Euler Good Cat" about the Qualcomm chip, the relevant person in charge responded that the Qualcomm chip mentioned in the intelligent service processing platform in the "Euler Good Cat" parameter configuration table is a chip used in the remote control module. In this regard, some netizens expressed doubts, "At the beginning of the promotion of the car machine chip, and then changed to a communication module, and now continue to change to a remote module, what will become next time?" ”

According to Articles 6 and 16 of China's Measures for the Punishment of Acts Infringing on the Rights and Interests of Consumers, the sale of products or services by means of false or misleading product descriptions, commodity standards, physical samples, etc., is fraud.

What cannot be ignored is that for consumers, once the seeds of "deception" are planted, they are likely to grow arbitrarily, and then there will be a crisis of trust. The establishment of brand image and corporate reputation takes a long time, once there is a crisis of trust, the previous efforts are likely to collapse, and Euler even if it is backed by Great Wall Motors, if it can not properly solve the user's doubts, then with the continuous fermentation of public opinion, the difficulty of solving things will become more and more difficult.

Appearance is the opposite of practicality

"Euler Good Cat" is a pure electric model of Great Wall Motor, which has been loved by female consumers for its small and cute design since its inception in 2018, and has established the positioning of "the world's most woman-loving car brand".

Recently, according to the latest sales data released by Great Wall Motor, sales in November were 122,500 units, down 15.65% year-on-year, but the sales of pure electric vehicles accounted for 14.6%, a record high, which was mainly due to the hot sales of the Euler brand. In addition, the Euler brand sold 16,100 vehicles in November, an increase of 39.2% year-on-year, a new monthly sales record; Euler's product "Good Cat" sold 0.88 million units in November, an increase of 12.9% month-on-month, and the cumulative sales volume from January to November was 40,200 units.

It can be said that "people are not popular", such a unique and more understanding of women's "cat" brand, the problems caused by popularity have also accumulated. The Daily Financial Report noted on the black cat complaint platform that there were 385 complaints related to Euler Automobile, the vast majority of which were related to "chips".

According to the feedback of a car owner surnamed Zhu, around October last year, Euler began to promote "Qualcomm chips". However, after getting his car, he found that in 11 months, the car and machine often had navigation stuttering, maps could not be upgraded, and song libraries could not be updated.

At the same time, the owners Of the car, Ms. Gu and Mr. Fan, also experienced the same encounter: when they first picked up the car, the car machine reacted quickly and operated smoothly. In less than half a year's use of the car, Euler Good Cat models frequently have problems such as slow start of the central control screen, serious caton of the car network and voice assistant failure.

In addition, among the more than 800 complaints in the car quality network, "video and audio system failure" is one of the main problems complained by car owners. "On the 19th day of picking up the car, the good cat 360 ° image appeared to splash the screen and stutter, the screen boot speed was very slow, and the desktop could be used normally after a minute or two."

In addition, the enterprise check APP shows that Great Wall Motor has a number of product recall information, and it recalled some Euler IQ electric vehicles on July 16, 2021, a total of 16216 vehicles. There are differences in the consistency of some power batteries mounted on vehicles within the scope of this recall and the BMS software control strategy. After a long period of continuous and frequent fast charging, the battery performance declines, and in extreme cases, the thermal runaway of the power battery may occur, and there are potential safety hazards.

Under a storm of public opinion, some netizens joked: Cats are good-looking and cute, but it is difficult to say whether "Euler is a good cat" or not.

Matrix or entanglement?

In fact, not only the Euler brand has its own embarrassing points, even if Great Wall Motors, which has been established for more than 30 years, is also facing the pressure of "mid-life crisis" in the context of "new four modernizations" and globalization.

For a long time in the past, Great Wall Motors was known for its "focus" strategy. In recent years, Great Wall Motors has chosen to take the multi-brand strategy of "category innovation" to form a six-brand matrix of Great Wall Pickup, Haval, WEY, Euler, Tank, and Salon Zhixing to create a global tide brand and fashion products. Obviously, Wei Jianjun tried to "break the game" through a series of adjustments, but the other side of such an operation, which involves relatively comprehensiveness, does not mean "multi-point flowering".

For example, similar to the development path of "Good Cat", weY, which is also a high-end brand under the Great Wall. From the beginning of the listing, WEY has indeed successfully promoted the brand's popularity through a series of high-profile marketing activities. However, with the passage of time, consumers gradually found that there is a big gap between product quality and imagination, and the decline in reputation has directly impacted sales.

Recalling 2016 and 2017 at the beginning of the landing, the WEY brand has a bright record. However, since 2018, due to the frequent occurrence of quality problems and product update problems, the road of decline has been opened. After entering 2021, the sales volume of the WEY brand continues to deteriorate. So far, the ultra-short life cycle also directly reflects the true recognition of models and brands in the market.

The "Daily Financial Report" also paid attention to the fact that in some auto complaint websites, various abnormal noise problems have seriously damaged the reputation of WEY series products. Some car owners complained that the sunroof sounded during the new car, the abnormal noise when the steering wheel was rotated and no one handled it, and the engine seriously burned oil, which also became a hot spot for complaints.

In general, whether it is the "Euler Good Cat" and "WEY" series as small as branches, or the main body of Great Wall Motors, in terms of development in recent years, marketing means can even be said to be comparable to Internet companies, but there are still obvious loopholes and deficiencies in the brand and technology level. Although its matrix strategy has certain advantages, in the end, the manufacturing industry must still land on the ground to use the product to make a sound, otherwise the larger the matrix of "not high quality", the more it is equivalent to creating more entanglements for itself.