If you want to say that this year's hottest car, GAC Toyota's Sai Na should not be absent.
With its excellent record in North America, as well as the popularity of domestic parallel imported cars, coupled with the domestic two-child and three-child policy, Xena from the initial exposure of domestic models to the subsequent price prediction, attracted the attention of countless consumers and media, which can be called the top of this year's car circle.
The continuous high heat has also doubled the confidence of manufacturers and dealers, and regards Xena as the second "Highlander". So much so that the markup, which should not be put on the table and said, has become a matter of course and grandeur here in Xena.
When Xena first released the pre-sale price, the market price increase of 30,000-50,000 yuan was already released, and after the release of the final guidance price, the price increase of the Xena terminal was increased to 50,000-80,000 yuan. Most critically, this has become an acquiescence of the manufacturer.
However, a full two months have passed since the official launch of Xena on October 27, and Xena's market performance has not been as good as everyone thinks. A screenshot of a circle of friends seems to illustrate some problems:
In the description of the sales of a Guangfeng store that did not give a name or location, Xena's markup fell for two consecutive months, from a price increase of 45,000 at the time of its initial listing, to 28,000 in November, to a 14,000 increase in December. But even so, sales are far less popular than predicted, the store ordered 8 units in October, 11 units in November, and only 3 units in December, so that the salesman lamented that the Chinese have become rational.
Of course, a circle of friends message that does not know whether it is true or false is not necessarily the real market performance of Xena. However, if combined with the sales data announced by Guangfeng official, it may be possible to prove that the above circle of friends news is not false.
Interestingly, neither the production and sales data released by the Association nor other platforms can find the sales data of Xena. GAC Toyota also did not officially announce the sales of Xena. However, from the official sales poster released by GAC Toyota, it can be seen that GAC Toyota sold 85,000 vehicles in November, and the sales data of the hot-selling Camry, Leiling, Willanda, and Highlander are listed. Excluding these hot models, Guangfeng's remaining models sold a total of 8,320 units.
Then through the association can be queried to get November Zhixuan sold 4624 vehicles, C-HR 2454 vehicles, Zhixiang 731 vehicles, it is not difficult to calculate, the remaining 511 vehicles should be the actual sales of Xena in November. Although the figures calculated in this way may not be accurate, combined with the news from the previous circle of friends, we can probably see the general outline of the performance of the Xena market.
Of course, the first few months of a new car's launch will inevitably experience a ramp-up in production capacity, coupled with the impact of the lack of cores in the entire industry this year, it seems understandable that Xena's poor sales are not good. But only 511 units were sold a month, and the degree of collapse was indeed a bit large. Although the lack of cores affects production capacity, if Xena's orders are really hot, Guangfeng can reduce the production capacity of non-hot models and coordinate more production capacity and chips to support Xena, but this is obviously not the case at hand.
Perhaps, as the salesman of the 4S store said, users are becoming more and more rational. But rather than being rational, GAC Toyota has made mistakes in both Xena's products and pricing strategies.
The first is to misestimate the heat of the market demand for MPV. The continuous advocacy of the two-child and three-child policy has led everyone to mistakenly believe that the demand for MPV by users will increase significantly, but the actual fertility rate tells us that people's demand for MPV is still a pseudo-concept. At present, MPV, especially medium and large MPV, is still only a niche market option.
The user's initial pursuit of Xena has made Guangfeng and dealers become blindly confident. In fact, the reason why public opinion was enthusiastic about Xena in the early stage is entirely because the previous parallel import of Xena has a good reputation in the user base, and consumers believe that the domestically produced Xena will be more attractive in price than the parallel import of Xena. The success of Highlander's perennial price increase has made Guangfeng more confident about its own products. In fact, when the price and configuration of Xena come out, rational consumers will find that Xena's cost performance is far less than imagined, not to mention the price increase.
And today's MPV market is no longer what it used to be, far from the few models of Odyssey and GL8 for consumption choices, and Xena cannot be as lonely as Highlander in the medium and large SUV market. In the past, in the field of parallel imports, Xena may have no competitors, after all, with the identity of import, most consumers will not take an imported model and a domestic model to make a comparison choice.
But once domestically produced, Xena will compete with various domestic competitors in the same latitude, Kia Kahua, Trumpchi M8, SAIC Maxus G20, SAIC Volkswagen Weiran, these products that are also positioned as medium and large MPV can meet the needs of consumers in different price brackets, and Xena in addition to Toyota's golden signboard and hybrid technology, there is little superiority left.
Many years ago, GAC Toyota once tested the MPV market with a compact MPV Yizhi, and the result was dismal. After many years, when trying to impact the mid-to-high-end MPV market with Xena again, it will be a great opportunity to play because of a series of riotous operations with high pricing and blind price increases. It's time for GAC Toyota to reflect on itself and think about how to do a good job in the MPV market in 2022. Hopefully, Xena won't follow in the footsteps. (Text/UVIS Auto Old Cannon)
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