Written by / Long Shihui
Edited / Kilig
Design / Zoi.
In contrast to "black swan events", people use "gray rhinos" as a metaphor for high-probability events that are almost inevitable after a series of warning signs and signs. If we turn a blind eye to the great risks that lie ahead, it is like ignoring a gray rhinoceros that is rushing towards us, and the hidden danger is looming.
When automobile companies transform and develop the path of intelligent new energy, it is sometimes inevitable to step on several pits, after all, it is not a casual success to challenge a new species with traditional thinking, pattern and resources. In recent years, the new sub-brands of intelligent electric vehicles incubated by traditional car companies have rarely been particularly brilliant, perhaps everyone is waiting for the day when new technologies, new performance unlocking, hegemony, and popularity, but in the long climbing period of sales reputation, some models that have been pinned high hopes have become the brand's "gray rhinoceros", perhaps, geometric C is.
Time back to August 2020, when geometry C was launched as the second brand new model of the geometry brand, Liu Zhifeng, then general manager of the geometry brand sales company, once revealed a "small goal": "I hope that geometry C will have better performance in the private car market, ranking among the top five, and the monthly sales exceed 1,000 units." ”
According to statistics, since the listing for more than a year, the "small target" of geometric C monthly sales of more than 1,000 can only be achieved in October, November and January and September 2020, in the pure electric compact SUV market with few opponents, it can rank in the top five, but compared with AION Y, Xiaopeng G3 and other models with monthly sales of more than 10,000, it is seriously left behind.
Che Lizi noted that in geely's official November sales report, the use of "geometry A Pro, geometry C, kung fu cattle and other new energy and electrification models, November sales of 16,161 units, an increase of about 137%" to describe the sales of new energy vehicle families, but did not announce the specific sales of the three cars. Looking over the top 30 wholesale volume of new energy vehicles in that month, Geely has not had a model on the list for two consecutive months, making this independent "brother" who sold more than one million in the first 11 months appear passive and embarrassing.
However, if you carefully comb the trend of the pure electric compact SUV market segment in the past two years, it can be said that at the beginning of the birth of geometric C, it was doomed to the "congenital badness" of this model. The most important thing is that at present, the "extreme krypton" created by The geely group is in full swing, and the positioning and direction of geometry today cannot be described as embarrassing.
Geometry C "ZTE" lost
Last year, when Geometry C announced the pre-sale price, Che Lizi had visited this new car in the 4S store, and it should be said that looking at the product strength alone, this car is no problem.
Geometry C positioning young people's first car, the design of the "tide" and the configuration of the "wisdom" are done enough to attract the target crowd, the appearance of the modeling follows the "multi-dimensional mobile life" family concept, quite a bit of geeky taste; interior, from geometric A continuation to geometric C of the interior irregular polygon design style, but also to the market differentiation image, young people like the configuration, like the central control of the big screen, the Internet of Vehicles, OTA upgrades, voice recognition, L2 automatic driving assistance more than one fell, the top with BOSE audio.
As for the mileage of the vehicle, the 2021 geometric C is divided into 5 configuration models (12.98-182,800 yuan) with a total of 400km or 550km of NEDC, of course, if you want to choose the version with a range of 550km, it will take the version starting from 162,800 yuan.
Admittedly, the reason why geometry C is not popular with the market can be said to be the same as the brand's first car, the geometric A - it cannot be effectively distinguished from Emgrand's pure electric model. Whether it is from the body proportion of geometric C, the configuration or the core three electric level, it is an upgraded version of the shell of an Emgrand GSe (10.99-15.99 million yuan).
Compared with the market situation last year and the first 9 months of this year, the pure electric compact SUV segment is not very large, but the potential is not bad. In addition to xiaopeng G3 and Nezha U, other opponents entered the game even later than Geometry C at the same time, but the current sales situation is ideal than Geometry C. More importantly, Chelizi checked the early stage of the listing of Geometry C in August last year, compared with the market share of compact pure electric SUVs in November this year, the market grew slowly from 7.0% to 7.4%, but Geometry C did not enjoy the dividends of growth, from monthly sales of thousands of vehicles to less than 800 units.
According to Chelizi observation, in the pure electric compact SUV market of 100,000-170,000, the marketing positioning is biased towards youth, personality and sports, which is related to the main target group in this section is young people, so everyone is very fierce in the product force "inner volume".
If you take the geometric C and the comparison of these cars, there is indeed a sense of selling point ambiguity, Euler good cat size is the smallest, the pricing is also the lowest in several cars, but with its unique appearance, its ability to attract young female consumers is very strong; Xiaopeng G3, Nezha U are also new forces entry-level SUVs, Xiaopeng intelligent, Nezha is further cost-effective.
Positioning the most like geometric C is AION Y, which is a new energy brand incubated by traditional car companies, and it is also a product that impresses young consumers with personality. But Aian obviously understands the characteristics of the main target group, although the power level is weaker than geometric C, but the AION Y entry price, the main sales area are similar to emgrand GSe, space, control and there is not much provoking place, on the contrary, geometric C from the beginning of the shape, can not escape the connection with Emgrand GSe, 500km are more than 160,000, for the price-sensitive crowd in this range, you can accept to break the hundred speed slower than 2 seconds, but can not tolerate 400km endurance, no qualitative difference is more expensive than 20,000, It's even more the brand's fault.
Private high-end positioning to operation volume
Can't get around the highs and lows?
From the establishment of the geometry brand in 2019 and the listing of geometry A, to the listing of geometry C in 2020, and then to the listing of kung fu cattle this year, geometry is only going at the speed of a new car a year, and sales have not improved, and the distance between high-speed running Aean and Euler has gradually opened up.
The reason, Che Lizi believes, is due to the deviation of Geely's geometric brand positioning and market recognition in the early days.
Back in 2019, when Geometry was listed in Singapore, Geely's ambition was to build Geometry into the preferred brand for pure electric travel for global users, and Geometry A once benchmarked Tesla to be the "best pure electric vehicle in the Eastern Hemisphere". But in fact, Geely did not give the geometric brand a new pure electric architecture, new technical support, only rely on appearance changes, interior and configuration enhancements to define the model, the core chassis and power system is no different from emgrand new energy models, the price is also higher than 10,000-20,000 yuan. Geely uses this "old platform -new brand" fuel vehicle routine to incubate geometry, which sows the embarrassing seeds of geometry A and geometry C".
Therefore, the sales volume of Geometry A in 2019 did not rise, and only 12,000 vehicles were sold in the whole year, far below the brand target of 35,000 vehicles, and less than 1% of Geely's annual sales. By December 2019, Geometry A began to participate in Cao Cao's travel car with high-end operating vehicles, or it was inevitable to take the old road of self-operation and self-sales.
In August last year, when the brand's second model, Geometry C, was launched under pressure, it was quite "ZTE Geometry". It is worth noting that at that time, Liu Zhifeng's positioning of geometry A and geometry C was still a high-end electric vehicle, of which geometry C aimed at the private market, "on the one hand, it emphasizes the strong association between geometry and Geely, on the other hand, it is necessary to create a geometry + co-creation platform, a two-pronged approach." ”
At that time, Liu Zhifeng raised several points, and the market interpreted it as "actively moving closer to the new forces". For example, the geometric channel ecology should be built around the "three e", that is, the central experience store, the shopping mall store and the secondary network channel, and the user experience should be version 2.0, that is, co-creation with users. But looking back a year later, geometry didn't accomplish these plans. Taking Guangzhou as an example, geometry is still only sold in a few Geely 4S stores, basically there is no central experience store or shopping mall pop-up and other activities, and to do the automotive industry's Android - geometry + co-creation incubation project, the website content is only last year.
On the whole, the geometry has experienced three stages in the three years since its establishment, and the geometry of the Zhengzhi period should be "de-Geelyization" to create a new independent high-end new energy vehicle brand image, and the result is excessive marketing to show its drawbacks; the geometry of Liu Zhifeng's period emphasizes the "strong association" with the Geely matrix, and the result is that it falls into price passivity; and this year, with the launch of Kung Fu Niu EX3, it marks that Geometry completely abandons the toss and agrees with the mode of low-end electric vehicle type volume.
Does Geely still need geometry?
Yes, but geometry is a different survival mode.
According to the statistics of the Association, geely's total sales of new energy and electrified models from January to November were only 81,000 units, an increase of about 33% year-on-year. Compared with the total sales of the group in the same period of 1.16 million units, but the sales of new energy vehicles accounted for less than 10%, which is still in the context of the wholesale volume of new energy passenger cars this year reached 2.807 million units, an increase of 190.2% year-on-year, Geely's current electrification situation is lagging behind the overall pace of the market; as early as November 2015, "Blue Action", it was mentioned that "new energy vehicle sales accounted for more than 90% of Geely's overall sales in 2020". Li Shufu said earlier this year that "the historical time is not ripe" to describe Geely as "getting up early and catching up late" in the electrification process.
So after the formation of two "Blue Geely Action Plans" in February this year, in October this year, Geely Automobile Group released the "Jiudalongwan Action" in Hangzhou Bay, which can be seen as the action goal of China's comprehensive electrification stage by 2025, and Che Lizi noted that in Geely's "2025 total group sales target of 3.65 million vehicles, Extreme Kr accounted for 650,000 vehicles, geely group geometry brand 300,000 vehicles. ”
"Led by Extreme Krypton and supported by LeiShenzhiqing hybrid technology, we will achieve full electrification and achieve the first sales volume of the mainstream market segment of hybridization," said Gan Jiayue, CEO of Geely Group. Obviously, Geely in the electrification layout core to the extreme krypton, and the hybrid is empowered by Geely's "Thunder God Intelligence", and according to the official reveal, there will be a "new power exchange travel brand" in the future, plus geometry, Lynk & Co brand also has related new energy vehicles, the main low-end maple leaf car, high-end performance pole star Polestar Polestar, and Geely and Daimler joint venture SMART electric vehicle, then the "live" brand or category of Geely territory should be the most abundant in the car company.
It is true that Geely's eagerness to catch up on the electrification track can be understood, but will the products with a hundred flowers cover the market segment, and will it give less living space to geometry? At stake here is the issue of Geely's "repositioning" of geometry.
First of all, the geometric high-end road has been "sealed" has undoubtedly been, Geely's new pure electric company - extreme krypton (ZEEKR) importance has been "mentioned", of course, the rising star of extreme krypton has avoided all the original geometry stepped on the pit, has its own new SEA "vast intelligent evolution experience architecture", has its own three electric technology, supply chain system construction and user ecological construction, and the first model of the performance route, extreme krypton 001, is indeed different from all geely's previous products, in comparison, The positioning of Extreme Kr is more like the playing style of high-end new forces, and Extreme Kr 001 has more strength to impact the "best pure electric vehicle in the Eastern Hemisphere".
Within the internal group, the status of geometry has been "downgraded", in April this year, the former general manager of the geometry brand sales company Liu Zhifeng left for personal reasons, after Liu Zhifeng left, the organizational structure of the geometric brand did not have a general manager, but directly reported to Lin Jie, general manager of Geely Automobile Sales Company. On the Geely website, geometry is positioned as "the new energy pure electric brand under geely automobile group".
It can be seen that Geely still needs geometry to complete its electrification transformation task together, we only see a description of geometry in the Longwan action, "Geometry brand from 2022 onwards, successively launched more than 5 star products newly created by pure electric architecture (including Haohan architecture), covering the mainstream pure electricity market"; clearly, geometry is also on the SEA architecture, gradually washing the hat of "oil to electricity", but it is still unclear whether "covering the mainstream pure electricity market" is still branded with the shadow of "Emgrand New Energy"? After all, throughout 2021, Geometry only released a kung fu cow EX3, a low-end "oil to electricity" mini car, in the "surging tide" of new energy market, it is difficult to see the power of a mainstream brand.
Write at the end
In three years, the marginalization of the geometry brand is as rapid as its rise, which shows that the maturity of China's new energy vehicle market is much higher than the market's expectations, looking back at the situation since the listing of geometry C, everyone seems to be more willing to see it as a "trial and error" model; and now we can also see Geely's general repositioning of geometry, if the future geometry new models can get rid of the shadow of "Emgrand New Energy", then with Geely's strong endorsement, geometry will have a comeback.
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