The author | Pen Spring and Autumn
Pictures | Internet
Edit the | Orange
If you've ever heard of the Xilix brand, there's probably a good chance that you learned about it from Huawei. During this time, the brand was on fire again.
At the end of 2021, Huawei and Xilix joined hands to jointly create a new brand AITO, and released a new car AITO Q&A M5 in a high profile, featuring the digital cockpit and range extender power solution featuring Hongmeng car machine, which is said to be extremely popular, with orders reaching 6500 units within 96 hours of listing.
However, with the popularity of the new brand, as the "parent brand", Xilis has been exposed to be "cool", and its Cyrus SF5 model announced the suspension of production. This is a bit confusing: ask the world M5 is selling well, why did the Cyrus SF5 suffer from the "discontinuation" crisis?
Owner rights protection: the car is not in hand, the brand is gone?
Recently, some media have successively broken the news, "Xilisi store changed its name to AITO, the owner questioned Huawei's smart choice SF5' disguised suspension of production, there are more than 480 people in the circle of car friends, and there are nearly 300 people in the rights protection group." ”
"It's been less than two months since I picked up the car, and even the rider's car hasn't arrived, and now even the brand is gone." On a complaint platform, a car owner said, "Huawei and Xilis changed their name to AITO in less than half a year and issued a new car to ask the M5." The Xilis service center, after-sales center and official App customer service were all changed to AITO, and the official erasure of the Xilis brand within one day and made it disappear!"
In addition, there are owners who have just picked up the car for a month and found that their car has been discontinued, and they said that they are "the first batch of leeks, but also the last batch of leeks."
Some old car owners also mentioned that some of the promises made before the purchase of the car, such as the vehicle upgrade Hongmeng system, have not been realized until the car is discontinued, and threatened to organize the old car owners to defend their rights to Huawei.
What is even more tragic is that a car owner out of the mentality of "supporting domestic support for Huawei", paid a deposit of 10,000 yuan for Xilis SF5 on December 12, and as a result, after selling his old car, he was told that he could not pick up the car, and now the deposit cannot be refunded, the car cannot be lifted, and he has been asked for twice the compensation by the second-hand car dealership.
The emotional car owners not only wrote a thousand-word long article to "question" Huawei, but even released an "memorial" SF5 meme to vent their anger. At the same time, out of dissatisfaction with Cyrus and Huawei, various complaints about the quality of SF5 have also begun to surge.
In the face of this storm from the owner's interior, Cyrus has issued an announcement announcing that it will provide a lifetime warranty of the vehicle and the range extender for the first owner of the Cyris SF5, and at the same time, the first owner of the SF5 will be able to obtain an additional subsidy of 10,000 yuan in the purchase of AITO brand models within four years.
Honestly, the anger of Cyrus owners isn't hard to fathom. After all, for most car owners, spending more than 200,000 yuan to buy a car is not a small amount, and the reason why most of them abandon the mainstream new car-making forces, or traditional brands, many of them are out of trust in Huawei's platform and support for domestic goods.
But now, the brand that he once trusted the most, but gave up his own old owners, watching his car just landed into an out-of-print goods, and even the 4S store was quickly renamed after the conference, which is really uncomfortable. More importantly, the original new energy vehicles + niche brands, in terms of retention rate is quite not optimistic, and now in the case of such low production and sales, it is also directly "premature", which also means that the future SF5 in the second-hand market may face the embarrassment of blood collapse.
In the face of this situation, some old car owners also helplessly said: "The word "smart selection on the car seems to mock us for buying an IQ selector." ”
Cyrus Cool was expected?
In fact, in the eyes of many people in the industry, the "coolness" of Cyrus has long been expected. From April to August this year, the Sales of Cyrus SF in May was 129, 204, 1097, 507 and 715 respectively. By the end of November, the cumulative sales of the Cyrus SF5 were 6,997 units. It can be seen that even with Huawei's blessing, the average monthly sales of SF5 are only more than 800 vehicles.
It should be known that during the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2020, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, shouted the target of "5 million vehicles per year" at the launch of the Xilix SF5. However, the Xilis SF5 clearly fell short of Huawei's expectations.
Although the title of "Huawei Smart Choice" is added, it seems that consumers can hardly recognize the product value of the Xilis SF5. As a new energy vehicle with a close relationship with Huawei, it is not difficult to understand such a sales performance. The simple reason is that the product is not strong enough!
Dongguan car owners listed eight major problems in the two-month vehicle, Cyrus SF5 full of oil and electricity, the endurance is not 1000 kilometers, only 500-600 kilometers, in addition, there are car machine caton, turning radius is large, key induction often fails, the car runs off and other issues. It can be seen that the quality control of the Cyrus SF5 is not reassuring.
In fact, not only the old car owners complain about the poor quality control of Cyrus products, but even Huawei hates the quality of Cyrus. According to previous insiders, Huawei, which has strict quality requirements, is not satisfied with the retest of the SF5 vehicle test of Xilix, and is subject to Huawei's strict standards in quality control, and the Jinkang factory has faced many shutdowns and rectifications. After all, Huawei does not want to narrow its way into the car because of Xilis.
Will the suspension of Cyrus production affect the sales of the Q&I M5?
In the face of the mess of the market performance of Cyrus SF5, this may also be the reason why Huawei or Cyris relaunched the AITO brand. From the current order point of view, its first model M5 seems to be hot.
After all, xilis SF5 can only be regarded as the product of Jinkang, and Huawei is more based on production and marketing relations, AITO Q&I M5 is different, it can be said that Huawei is hands-on, deeply involved in the development, design, and manufacture of AITO Q&D M5, and once it is released, it has attracted people's attention. Up to now, Huawei sales revealed that the AITO Q&I M5 has more than 7,000 units of national orders, and the hot sales situation is extremely clear.
From the perspective of the parameter configuration of the two, the AITO Inquisition M5 is 4770mm long, 1930mm wide, 1625mm high, and has a wheelbase of 2880mm, while the Xilix SF5: 4700mm long, 1930mm wide, 1625mm high, and 2875mm wheelbase. Can't say exactly the same, but if you don't look closely, you really can't see where the difference is, and the overall shape looks like a twin.
Take a look at the main highlights of the AITO Q&A M5: the acceleration of the extender, the 40-degree battery + 1.5T four-cylinder range extender, the four-wheel drive 4.4 seconds, the rear drive 4.8 seconds.
However, for AITO, power is not the biggest selling point, and Huawei-enabled all-scenario intelligence is the concept it wants to talk about most. Different from the participation of Huawei technologies separated by Cyris SF5, AITO's products will be equipped with Huawei's latest Harmony OS smart cockpit, which will cover intelligent driving, intelligent networking, intelligent cockpit, intelligent car cloud and intelligent electric in one whole, and the interactive logic and content presentation can more reflect Huawei's genes.
More importantly, since Huawei was involved in the early development of this car, it can implant its advantages in communication architecture. We all know that smart cars need an electronic architecture for high-bandwidth communication, to achieve communication, information transmission and data processing between different functional domains in the car, and also to accommodate the data reserves of the vehicle OTA. These will be the advantages that Huawei gives to AITO.
The focus is on its smart cockpit with Harmony OS, which can bring a refreshing interactive experience from the car to the entertainment. At the beginning of the release, the Xilis SF5 said that the car is equipped with Huawei's DriveONE three-in-one electric drive system, As well as Huawei's HICAR function and in-vehicle WIFI.
In short, AITO Q&I M5 has been deeply involved by Huawei, and it is indeed too much to compete with the SF5 in terms of product strength. What is more worth mentioning is that in the process of building the AITO brand, Huawei participated in the construction of sales and service links. And this is also the reason why the M5 order is hot.
However, the order is not equal to the final sales, in the face of the suspension of the production of Xilis, it is bound to greatly affect the potential consumers who have been ordered, or wait and see whether to order quickly, or consider other models, after all, no one wants to be a leek.
Huawei is not a panacea
Huawei does not build cars, but Huawei helps car companies build good cars! This is the slogan that Huawei has shouted many times, rather than becoming a car company, Huawei is more willing to become China's "Bosch"!
But has Huawei really helped car companies build good cars? In addition to the failed Cyrus SF5, the Polar Fox, which is also bound to Huawei, has not ushered in a highlight moment.
In October 2020, the first model of the Jihu brand Alpha T was listed, and in April 2021, the second new car Alpha S was listed, and the two models currently on sale, the former has been listed for nearly 9 months, and the monthly sales have been stable at the level of 100 vehicles, as for the Alpha S equipped with Huawei's full set of intelligent driving solutions, the monthly sales have also failed to break through three digits.
Different brands, the same dismal sales, it seems that Huawei is not the "panacea" of car companies. However, the two failures have not dispelled Huawei's ambition to become the head brand in the automotive industry.
At the M5 conference, Yu Chengdong said that AITO aims to become the world's top 3 brand of new energy vehicles within five years. However, such bold words, netizens obviously do not buy it. Some netizens said, "First stabilize the sales volume at 3,000 per month and then start dreaming!" It is ridiculous to mention the first few days of the world now. ”
Some netizens pointed out, "Huawei is very good in the field of communications, but it is indeed inexperienced in making cars, the art industry has a specialty, this time M5 is based on Cyrus SF5 to build, the main upgrade point is only equipped with Hongmeng cockpit, is a specific intelligent technology application, not as complex as everyone imagines." ”
The comments of netizens are very poisonous, but the truth is so ruthless! Since Huawei announced its entry into the automotive field, "Huawei" and "Hongmeng System" have made the outside world full of expectations. However, judging from the average monthly sales of Xilisi and Beiqi Blue Valley Polar Fox this year, the average monthly sales of Xilisi and Beiqi Blue Valley Polar Fox are only three figures, and Huawei's blessing has not made the two brands soar. Even the Xilis SF5, which is stationed in Huawei's terminal marketing channels, its sales volume is disappointing.
With the dual blessing of technology and marketing channels, Huawei's entry into the automotive field has not brought the desired results. As the saying goes, "nothing is too much", the appearance of AITO and Q&I M5, even if Huawei boasts about Haikou, has not dispelled the doubts of the outside world.
Answer observation
According to Huawei's previously announced targets, annual sales will reach 200,000 vehicles in 2022. Judging from the sales of Beiqi Blue Valley Polar Fox and Xilis, it is obviously impossible to complete.
This time, can the new brands AITO and Q&C M5 launched in doubt turn the situation around? Only time will tell.