Produced by | Tiger sniff car group
Author | Wang Xiaoyu
Recently, CCTV Finance and Economics selected the "6 most willing to spend money in Chinese 2021", of which new energy vehicles ranked first. In the first 11 months of 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China expanded rapidly at a growth rate of 1.7 times year-on-year, and the penetration rate once exceeded 12.7%.
Among them, the popularity of high-end new energy brands has increased unabated. In the camp of new car-making forces, NIO delivered 91,000 vehicles in 2021, and the ideal car reached 90,000 vehicles. The high-end electric sub-brands of the two traditional car companies also opened mass production deliveries last year, with Lantu Automobile, a subsidiary of Dongfeng Group, delivering 3,330 Landu FREE in December, and Geely Automobile's Extreme Krypton 001 in December.
The high-end electric vehicle market has become the "fat meat" that domestic car companies must compete for in 2022.
"81% of the users delivered today come from luxury brands, and 61% of them are BBA users." Lei Xin, CBO of Lantu Automobile, revealed in a previous interview. This means that 61 out of every 100 car owners have abandoned the BBA and chosen to buy or buy an additional Lantu.
Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Weilai, also said: "We often say a word 'NBA' internally, as we enter the high-end, the replacement of high-end mainstream luxury fuel vehicles, I also hope that we should join that rank in the future and turn the BBA pattern into an 'NBA' pattern." ”
In the past 2021, the word that domestic car companies have mentioned the most is high-end. If by 2022, you have not established a high-end pure electronic brand, you are embarrassed to "mix" in the stock market. The so-called "high-end", according to the definition of the association, is divided by the starting market guidance price, which is a high-end car above 300,000 yuan.
But just selling the car to more than 300,000 yuan can you say that you are a high-end brand?
First, Tesla has made a good start
First of all, I want to ask you a question, is Tesla a high-end brand?
Don't rush to answer this question. If you put it in 2014, when Tesla first entered China, the answer is obvious, Tesla is a high-end brand. At that time, the starting price of the Model S was 648,000 yuan, and the Model X launched in 2016 sold for more than one million, which also directly sent Tesla into the ranks of "luxury brands".
Tesla delivered 936,000 vehicles in 2021, of which Model 3 and Model Y sales accounted for 96%. As the price of the Model 3 continues to plummet, consumers have shaken tesla's "high-end" image.
According to the statistics of Jielan Road Consulting, from January to November this year, the average price of Tesla's bicycles was only 285,000 yuan, which was two rankings lower than the domestic brand ideal car. With an average bicycle price of 413,800 yuan, Weilai ranked fourth, second only to Mercedes-Benz's 481,900 yuan.
Of course, this is not surprising. According to the data of the Association of Passenger Vehicles, in the sales ranking of high-end cars from January to November this year, BMW 5 Series and BMW 3 Series firmly ranked first and second. In the sales list of high-end SUVs, the BMW X3 occupies the top position. The price range of these models is generally concentrated in the price range of 300,000-500,000, and even the starting price of the 3 series is as low as 290,000 yuan.
Also on the 300,000 yuan price line, BMW and Tesla who is more high-end? Once the problem is put on the table, it will trigger a new round of heated discussion.
According to foreign media reports, BMW Group CEO Chiptzer once commented on Tesla: "Tesla is not a high-end market, they have achieved very strong growth through price cuts." In addition, he said: "What makes us different is our standards in terms of quality and reliability. We have different expectations for customer satisfaction. ”
The reason for the divergence of views is that the price of the car is not the only criterion for judging whether it is "high-end or not". According to the data of the huge arithmetic "2021 Luxury Car Crowd Survey", consumers are most concerned about the intelligent/safety configuration of the product, the sense of luxury experience, the user's dependence on the brand is no longer as strong as before, their measurement standards for luxury cars are more mature, and the attitude of luxury cars is more through multi-dimensional perspectives, and the brand is measured from the double standards of rationality (intelligent/safety configuration) and sensibility (luxury experience).
The high-end product definition logic followed by BBA is inherited by their predecessors, has been widely recognized by global users, and has a solid mass foundation logic, including material texture, design quality, NVH, driving quality and so on. The definition logic that Tesla follows is based on labels such as smart technology and trendy design. As the saying goes, "You walk your sunshine path, I walk my canoe bridge".
Tesla's new Model X delivered in the United States
But in the same end, Tesla relied on the image of "rich people's big toys" established on the Model S and Model X in the early days, and quickly made the Model 3 and Model Y become the "small toys" that consumers can reach. Essentially, this is the same business path as the BBA, such as Mercedes-Benz, which has millions of luxury cars such as S-class and big G as flagships, and sells three or four hundred thousand entry-level sedans below to make a lot of money.
As early as 2006, Musk wrote this top-down product planning idea in "Master Plan" and published it on his official website. In just a few years, he has explored the path of "first high-end, then the public". You could think of Tesla as a rip-off of the BBA, or Musk doing it on purpose.
Second, the high-end electric market, the opportunity to overtake is coming
It is not too much to use the price vernier caliper to determine whether you have a place in the high-end market.
In the ranking of the average transaction price of Chinese brands in 2021, the top five are Gaohe Automobile's 680,000 yuan, Weilai's 413,800 yuan, Lantu Automobile's 338,500 yuan, Extreme Krypton's 335,000 yuan, and ideal 333,600 yuan. The reason why consumers with a budget of more than 300,000 yuan do not choose BBAs, choose them. It must be because domestic car companies have done something right?
First, start with product differentiation – what I have, what you don't.
In a round of entrepreneurial boom, Chinese is as common as finding a gap in the market. For example, Gaohe Automobile, the concept of "technology luxury" it builds, is more of a way of "stacking high hardware configuration and software-defined functions" to meet the psychological needs of high-end users "I have, others do not". In particular, its folio and wing doors can give users a distinguished experience in the process of getting on and off the bus.
For example, the ideal car is the most special in the high-end electric vehicle market, it is different from other pure electric brands, it relies on the technical route of extended range electric vehicles to open the market, but for a long time, there is no similar bidding model, so that everyone can not accurately position its price. However, whenever there is a long queue at the charging station and the winter endurance is discounted, the advantages of oil and electricity on the extender are highlighted.
When it comes to Weilai, many people will first think of JIANGHUAI OEM, power exchange mode, user enterprises and so on. In fact, Weilai has done a lot of leading exploration in the intelligent cockpit, and the NOMI in-vehicle artificial intelligence system has almost become a function that industry players are scrambling to learn.
High-end sub-brands from traditional car companies also have their own technical moats, especially in vehicle manufacturing experience. Taking Landu FREE as an example, it leaves more of an engineering challenge for itself and less anxiety for users. For example, the two technologies of range extender and pure electricity on the same platform test the ability of body counterweight and three-electric layout. Equipped with air suspension on the 300,000 class models, the ability to control supply chains and manufacturing costs is tested.
Again, starting from the user relationship - what you don't do well, I want to do well.
For BBA, doing direct sales channels is a big challenge. Because in the face of the huge dealer system, the establishment of a sales channel for through train enterprises is obviously to "cross the river and tear down the bridge". The disadvantages of the dealer model are too many, just pick a few, high cost and low profit, consumer feedback is not direct enough and so on. The advantages of the direct operation model are, first, price transparency, and second, direct connection of users.
If the dealer model of the car company can make up for the shortcomings in these two aspects, in essence, there is no need to abandon the dealer model. BMW, for example, has served more than 6 million Chinese customers and now has more than 3.4 million registered users and more than 1.4 million monthly active users through the My BMW App. However, it is more difficult to achieve price transparency, involving the interests of users, dealers and car companies.
For a new brand, direct access is the only way to go in the early stages of development. Because compared with the dealer model of traditional car companies, it has accumulated a sufficient user base, and everything for the new brand is starting from scratch. The key to success is not to rely on advanced products and technologies to "eat into fat people in one bite", but to adopt a meticulous operation model - fully tap the needs of users, and meticulous and efficient satisfaction.
So why get closer to the user?
In the past, car companies needed to obtain feedback from users, and 4S stores and dealers were responsible for collecting, and car companies were responsible for handling these feedbacks, but the process of passing this information usually took months or even longer. Even if the opinion is adopted, it will only be left to new users who have changed or replaced the model to enjoy. However, in the era of smart cars, the iteration speed of software is accelerating, and the iteration space is broader.
Many people know that Weilai is the first to propose the concept of user enterprises, users are its moat, and this moat also has the ability to evolve, because Weilai has an independent and vivid individual, rather than a chaotic user portrait. It is precisely because of the consideration of the needs of each real user that there are more mature product forms of WEILAI ET7 and ET5.
Now every domestic high-end car company is talking about user co-creation, which is certainly a good start. On October 17, 2021, on the second day of Lantu's first user night, Lu Puti, CEO of Lantu Automobile, gave an example of "personalized delivery parking spaces" when talking about user needs in an interview - "When the first batch of cars were delivered, a Hunan user bought a car to prepare as a birthday gift for his wife, hoping to do some personalized delivery, hoping that there could be some patterns on the parking space, we felt good after trying, and then it became standardized." ”
In fact, in the early stage of mass production and delivery of products, car companies first opened up bridges to establish communication with users. As the scale of delivery increases, it is possible to more smoothly obtain feedback from users and improve the efficiency of OTA upgrades and subsequent product iterations. "As a new brand, we are not going to educate users, we want to meet the needs of users, give user experience, and pull in the distance with users." Lu Fang said.
For example, Extreme Kr, although the early days because of the problem of vehicle system and production capacity was controversial, you can see geely automobile president and CEO, Extreme Kr CEO An Conghui personally involved in the communication and co-creation with users, and continued to hold "co-creation communication meetings" in major cities to communicate with users on an equal footing, which led to the realization of 342 optimizations of the concept car compared to the extreme krypton 001.
In Luo Zhenyu's New Year's Eve speech, Lantu put the names of 1,700 users on the screen
Inside Lantu Automobile, all employees will be required to be in the APP, including CEO Lu Fang, who will follow up on user feedback at any time. Even Jiang Tao, COO of Lantu Automobile, will contact users one by one after two or three months of picking up the car to ask how they feel about using the car. This is the first OTA push, and more than 60 upgrades have been made to Lantu FREE involving the whole vehicle, perception, safety and other aspects.
The core of the direct sales channel is not only the change of the sales link, but also the transformation of the organizational mechanism of the car company to the "user-centered" architecture. The localization operation advantages of domestic car companies are an excellent opportunity to start the high-end electric vehicle market first. According to Lu Fang: "Understanding the high-end is actually understanding the needs of users." ”
Third, the window period is accelerating the closure
There has always been a chance to overtake in a corner, but in the past, after overtaking, it will be overtaken. Therefore, throughout the past 10 years, the market share of Chinese brands basically belongs to the state of "continuous decline and intermittent recovery".
From 2011 to 2014, the market share of Chinese brands fell for four consecutive years. In 2015, the SUV boom was seized, and the market share began to continue to rise, reaching 42.7% in 2017, the highest point in nearly 10 years. However, when the joint venture brand began to increase its efforts to lay out the SUV market, the market share of Chinese brands fell again for three consecutive years, falling to the lowest point of 35.7% in the past 10 years in 2020. But this time we rely on new energy vehicles and brands to move up.
In 2021, the penetration rate of new energy passenger cars rose from 5% at the beginning of the year to 19.5% in November, and new energy vehicles have become a consumer trend in the Chinese market, and sales growth has surpassed that of fuel vehicles. The new car-making forces led by "Wei Xiaoli" and the traditional car companies led by BYD, GAC E-An, and Great Wall Euler have worked together to pull the market share back to more than 40%. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, recently told the media: "Independent brands account for 80% of sales in the new energy market, Tesla accounts for 14%, and joint venture brands only 6%."
But beware that the window period of the high-end market is closing at an accelerated pace.
In 2021, Great Wall Motor released the high-end sub-brand Salon Car and unveiled its first model, the Mecha Dragon, at the Guangzhou Auto Show, priced at 488,000 yuan. In addition, Changan Automobile, a high-end brand jointly created by Ningde Times and Huawei, recently unveiled its first model, Avita 11. Of course, there are also BYD, which has repeatedly revealed the new high-end brand plan, and the high-end brand AITO car that was unveiled at Huawei's winter conference some time ago.
As the "keeper" of the high-end market, BBA will naturally not give up the product launch of the incremental market of new energy vehicles. Taking BMW as an example, in 2022, BMW will present 5 pure electric models in China, including the innovative BMW iX, the innovative BMW i4, the pure electric BMW 3 series long wheelbase and a pure electric luxury car (most likely the pure electric version of the 7 series).
Mercedes-Benz, in 2022 in China will have EQA, EQB, EQC, EQE, EQS five Mercedes-Benz pure electric models on sale. On the Audi side, the products currently unveiled are e-tron GT, A6 e-tron, Q4 e-tron, Q5 e-tron, including the existing Audi e-tron, which is also 5 high-end pure electric vehicles released in China.
It is foreseeable that 2022 will be a year of "product scuffle" in the high-end electric vehicle market.
Write at the end
Amazon founder Bezos once said that he is often asked a question: What will happen in the next decade? But he is rarely asked: What will remain the same for the next decade? He thinks the second question is more important than the first because you need to base your strategy on things that don't change.
If placed in the car industry, the fastest change is undoubtedly technology, this year's use of batteries, laser thunder to reach next year is likely to lag behind. What's the same? Looking back, the direct operation model or the direct user connection model will become a long-term trend. True high-end brands should discover user needs earlier than others, meet user needs faster than others, and even create needs for users.
When Luo Zhenyu mentioned the "relationship between enterprises and users" in his New Year's Eve speech, he said this: "The relationship between users is managed as a real relationship between people and people, and the highest state of this relationship is not that I am satisfied with your service, but that I am proud of this relationship." ”
It is true that more and more consumers now buy cars, on the basis of meeting their own needs, they will not blindly choose a brand, or choose a product, but choose a true heart - who is more willing to serve users sincerely.