With a full allocation of 777,700, plus purchase tax and insurance, the proper landing price is close to 900,000. SAIC Audi A7L has not only become the most expensive domestic Audi brand model, but also set the highest price for joint venture cars so far.
With such a high price, for SAIC Audi, what A7L wants is not a sales carnival, but a re-establishment of the brand's premium ability, and a crazy pursuit of profits by SAIC Group. Therefore, the 3.0T Audi A7L is not the main model after all, so on January 1, 2022, SAIC Audi released the 2.0T version of the A7L.
The price of 45.97-519,700 yuan, the threshold is only 40,000 yuan higher than A6L, which seems to be sincere, but will consumers pay?
As we all know, the core "soul" of Audi A7 is the "Sportback" style, and its smooth and moving back design is one of the spiritual manifestations of this coupe's "never compromise", which is also known as "the most beautiful Audi". Nowadays, the domestic A7L has abandoned the slip-back design and hatchback tailgate, which is equivalent to "castrating" the core selling point of the A7 model, which is difficult for many consumers who pay attention to this model to accept. Some netizens even said: "SAIC Pays Attention to the Soul, but Personally Destroyed the Soul of the Audi A7."
Since its debut to the listing, this "group mocking" voice has not stopped, rather than calling it A7L, it is better to call it "sports A6L". However, in the eyes of some people, it is still ideal to spend tens of thousands of yuan to buy frameless doors and sporty shapes, but from a rational point of view, it seems that A7L is still difficult to impress.
At first glance, the A7L is to increase the audience, but in fact, it makes the core selling point of the model become very vague, so that people who like A7 complain, and people who value cost performance do not buy. After all, A6L, whether it is for home or in some business occasions, is a good choice within this price, A7L on this basis can bring users not much novelty, on the space and configuration, A6L has done enough, A7L has not seen any obvious advantages, so let consumers spend more money to choose A7L reasons or not enough.
More importantly, in the eyes of many people, isn't buying an Audi A6L just a cost-effective figure? The terminal discount of 70,000 or 80,000 yuan makes the Audi A6L become the "top card" of luxury medium and large cars, but SAIC Audi has chosen the sales channel of "physical + e-commerce": consumers have to go to FAW Audi's 4S store to see the car, pick up the car, and repair the car, and order cars online, and unify the model and price nationwide. Jia Mingdi, general manager of SAIC Audi's marketing business, is very confident: "We are re-entering the automotive industry with a new force with strong traditional offline capabilities. This is not an empty phrase, compared with the traditional BBA and the new forces, we have the advantages of both. ”
Will the result be as Jia Mingdi wishes? The reality is not optimistic. You know, Tesla, Weilai and other new forces can play direct operation, provided that all products in the exhibition hall are "non-negotiable". What about SAIC Audi? In the showroom of FAW Audi, in addition to the SAIC Audi A7L, the rest of the models have a lot of preferential margins. Even in the face of the flexible card A6L, A7L perfectly plays the price anchor of A6L, and the brain makes up the dialogue scene: "A6L is 100,000 cheaper than A7L, the same platform and technology, A6L is more cost-effective."
In short, SAIC Audi's channels are constrained by FAW Audi, and the advantages of the A7L are also flattened by the A6L, which is an asymmetrical competition, and the defeat is doomed from the beginning.
Of course, when you think of SAIC Audi, you will naturally think of SAIC Volkswagen, and what performance SAIC Volkswagen is doing now, I believe everyone knows. Since the 2019 China Insurance Research Institute Passat collision incident, word of mouth has fallen sharply, and then Tiguan L has sprinkled a handful of salt on the wounds of SAIC Volkswagen, which has been severely damaged, and with the penultimate result, it has once again pushed the quality problem of SAIC Volkswagen to the cusp. At the same time, in terms of sales, it can also be seen that the overall year-on-year decline in 2021 is 17.50%, which is the third consecutive year of sales decline of SAIC Volkswagen. In this context, the prospects of SAIC Audi are undoubtedly overshadowed.
I have to say that SAIC Audi's products have no obvious advantages, innovative business models have exacerbated their own inferior position, and there are still doubts about quality, for Jia Mingdi's goal of "50,000 annual sales in 2022", it is obviously difficult to add, in the future, if Jia Mingdi fails to lead SAIC Audi to change, "looking at" the gradually lonely Skoda, I am afraid it is only a matter of time.