In 2021, there are two "well-known" misjudgments, the second is the prediction that the ideal ONE sales will also sell 3,000 or 4,000 vehicles per month, and the first is that wuling Hongguang MINIEV's monthly sales of 30,000 or 40,000 vehicles are unsustainable. The result, of course, is a slap in the face.
In the past year of 2021, Wuling Hongguang MINIEV series sold 426,400 vehicles, of which Sales reached 55,729 in December, winning the top spot in China's new energy sales for 16 consecutive months. And Hongguang MINIEV has sold more than 550,000 units since its listing, which can be described as the largest new energy vehicle unit in the Chinese market. At the same time, in the past year, Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has become the world's largest monthly sales of new energy vehicles five times, surpassing Tesla's explosive model 3, and this is only a market achievement in China.
When interpreting "why Hongguang MINIEV is successful", we have no way to refer to it with any previous model, especially this micro-electric vehicle is always completely "deviated" from the new forces that the media pays attention to: there is no intelligent configuration on the tall, there is no endurance of five or six hundred kilometers, and there is no automatic driving that sounds good... This car has opened up a blue ocean in the mini car market that has been abandoned by other families.
So why was Miniev so successful? If you think about it, you'll see that the car feels a lot like Coca-Cola, or the Jobs-era iPhone.
What is Coca-Cola? No matter where you are in the world, you can always buy a bottle of Coca-Cola with the same taste, and even the price will not be too different. The same is true of the iPhone of Jobs's era, every iPhone in the world is the same, and there is no difference in experience between rich people and the iPhone you use. This product that achieves "consumer egalitarianism" is what we call: Coca-Cola culture.
Wuling Hongguang MINIEV is China's contemporary "Coca-Cola", no matter what class of people, whether in Shanghai or in Zhumadian, Henan, can get the same experience, the key is to bring the same emotional value is also the same, in the travel to achieve equal value. This has also created the sales myth of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV.
The next question is, how did Wuling Hongguang MINIEV become the "Coca-Cola" of contemporary China?
Turn cars from tools into a trend
Wuling Hongguang MINIEV's ability to create a consumer culture similar to Coca-Cola's is not accidental, but SAIC-GM-Wuling has insight into the actual travel needs of Chinese urban residents, so that supply and demand have the same frequency resonance.
Wuling Hongguang has always been known in the Chinese market for the product image of "national car", this micro-bus type is not only the means of production of many families, but also a tool for them to travel. It is precisely because of the "people-oriented" gene of Wuling that SAIC-GM-Wuling has always been iterating around the goal of low threshold and travel transportation when testing the water in the field of new energy. From the earliest Baojun E100, to E200, E300, have not been separated from these core needs, and now iterated out of the lower price, more space, more practical Wuling Hongguang MINIEV.
Since this micro-electric vehicle has completely separated from the trend of intercity travel, long endurance and highly intelligent driving advocated by the mainstream of the market from the beginning, it has avoided the parameter involution of those high-end products at the product level - the latter often piles up more batteries, larger screens, stronger assisted driving, and finally exchanges for larger sizes and higher prices.
Wuling Hongguang MINIEV is to be very clear to do itself, 2920mm body size, more than ten degrees of electricity, more than 100 kilometers of cruising range, minimalist to the extreme experience, and low to no opponent price. Wuling has focused the core competitiveness of this car on everyone at a glance.
It provides practical and feasible transportation solutions for the majority of people and opens up a blue ocean market for scooters.
According to the statistics of SAIC-GM-Wuling, the short-distance travel within 20 kilometers of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV accounts for 95% of the users, which has been deeply integrated into various scenarios of users' daily short-distance travel. Therefore, SAIC-GM-Wuling never emphasizes any parameters of this car, but emphasizes its use scenarios and crowd characteristics.
This significant and clear product positioning has largely liberated consumers' choice anxiety disorder. If you choose other electric vehicles, you will think about how long the battery life is, what kind of intelligence you want, what kind of scenes to meet, and now when you see Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, you will know that it is to help you complete the short-distance needs of commuting to work every day and picking up and dropping off children. You will not have too many requirements for this micro-electric vehicle, but it can provide point-to-point travel in the city at any time, unlocking the travel needs of the largest number of consumers in China, and naturally becoming a trend.
The second reason why Wuling Hongguang MINIEV can become a consumer product attribute is that this car is not simply instrumentalized, but mostly self-use, transforming the tool attribute into the concept of consumer goods. This is like "Coca-Cola will give birth to a consumer culture, but the same price of mineral water, pure water can only quench thirst" is a truth.
The impression that low-end electric vehicles have never been able to get rid of is cheap, online car, etc., and the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, which has a shorter battery life and a lower price, is naturally desensitized because it is difficult to meet the requirements of these tool cars. In this way, every user will not have the problem of "losing face", whether it is ordinary wage earners, or young white-collar workers, or even consumers who do not lack money at home but only want to have a scooter, will take this micro-electric vehicle into account.
At the same time, the lower entry threshold has attracted more young urban consumers to buy, and these young people in turn do not particularly care about the price, and most of the sales in the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV are currently concentrated on the higher price and more exquisite product macaron version. This consumer trend of pursuing a sense of refinement has further strengthened the personal consumption attributes of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, helping this micro-electric vehicle to break the stereotype of cars in the market.
Third, Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has stimulated the enthusiasm of young consumers to create together, from tidal creation to fashion makeup, so that Chinese automobile consumption has its own cultural phenomenon.
SAIC-GM-Wuling said that Hongguang MINIEV macaron's post-90s users account for 75%, so the young consumer group has a natural "consumer equalism". For this young group, the real trend and real value are not reflected in the price of this car, but more concerned about the "eye-catching" released by this car, and they continue to add creativity to it to make it a "display window" for their own personality.
For example, if you click on Taobao to enter "Hongguang MINIEV car stickers", you can turn to dozens of hundreds of pages of various stickers; if you enter modifications, as small as the logo of this car, to the seats in the car, the dashboard luxury, all kinds of needs can be met. Young car owners are willing to dress up Wuling Hiromitsu MINIEV in a variety of ways, and their favorite anime characters, their favorite racing car liveries, and those styles that appear in the manga have all been moved to the body.
The unique creative space of Hongguang MINIEV has inspired more and more young people to consume, from buying a car to buying a trend, anyway, this car is not so expensive, but it can make its own unique more eye-catching. Therefore, it is said that every hundred Hongguang MINIEV, 72 will be modified, the proportion of vehicle appearance and interior modification is more than half, truly become the "street red car".
Turning the sale of cars into the sale of fashion items
If you really want to explore, Coca-Cola itself is also a sweet carbonated drink, in the entire beverage market it does not have a deep moat, but Coca-Cola's marketing wizards have packaged this sweet water into a consumer culture, making it a kind of "magic water" that stimulates inner desire, thus establishing Coca-Cola's unbreakable moat.
It is also similar to Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, this micro-electric vehicle is not essentially a product with a deep enough moat, so it is not predictable to say that it can continue to sell 30,000 or 40,000 vehicles a month. Importantly, however, SAIC-GM-Wuling captured the shining point of the Hongguang MINIEV, transforming it from an automotive product into a fashion item that awakens the inner emotions of young people. This also created an opportunity for it to become the "Chinese version of Coca-Cola".
In fact, many automotive products hope to be able to attach a cultural attribute to it, such as the elegance of Mercedes-Benz, the driving of BMW, the technology of Audi and so on. However, the traditional practice of traditional car companies is to add on automotive products, and SAIC-GM-Wuling's marketing concept on The Hongguang MINIEV is completely different, completely abandoning the logic of selling cars, but to selling fashion items - like a pair of sneakers, a jewelry - the basic function of the vehicle itself has not changed, but the core competitiveness has become "how to resonate with young consumers".
One of the most typical examples, when Wuling Hongguang MINIEV first went public, its main saying was "people's scooter", attracting buyers with an ultra-low price of 28,800 yuan. However, when SAIC-GM-Wuling found that this micro-electric vehicle was loved by more and more young female consumers, they began to focus their marketing on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, so that Wuling Hongguang MINIEV showed a different sense of youth on young social platforms.
With the breaking of the circle of young market, SAIC-GM-Wuling quickly launched an iterative model, first launched the Hongguang MINIEV macaron version in April, providing three colors of white peach powder, lemon yellow and avocado green, and the more cute design shape quickly caused the girls to scream. Later, in early September, Hongguang MINIEV Macaron continued to launch two new autumn car colors, Merlot Blue and Raw Coconut White, following the popular colors to continuously encrypt their fashion genes. Later, in November, Wuling launched the Hongguang MINIEV macaron filling, the interior is fully exclusively upgraded, presenting a more exquisite trend style.
In such a process, the brand image and consumer portrait of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV are also constantly changing, and SAIC-GM-Wuling was surprised to find that the sales of Hongguang MINIEV were not affected by the launch of high-configuration models, on the contrary, the more refined and higher-priced macaron attracted more and more female car owners to choose, and the female users of Hongguang MINIEV macaron have exceeded 78%.
It is precisely because of this phenomenon that Wuling began to become more and more bold, constantly adding fashion and fun to this product, not only adding some colors and decorations, but going deeper into the daily life of these girls. For example, Wuling and "ELLE World Fashion Garden" magazine took cute hard photos of Wuling MINIEV; did IP offline parties and interactive parties with Fangte of Guochao Paradise; joined hands with Hema and Liuzhou's well-known food "Snail Powder" to create snail powder flavored rice dumplings, and created three macaron IP ice creams of "Berry Troubles", "Cannida melon" and "True Peach"...
In front of Wuling MINIEV, it seems that everything is not limited, and all kinds of quirky and fun-filled joint actions make Wuling Hongguang MINIEV begin to create a new IP.
"They enjoy the fun of dressing up and decorating, DIY fashion makeup travel, and enjoy exquisite travel accompanied by Hongguang MINIEV when they commute, shop, or girlfriend gatherings, picnics, and punch card Internet celebrity attractions, and are keen to share their fashion personality propositions, forming unique content in social networks, leading the colorful fashion makeup culture, and then deriving an IP user image 'Wuling Girl'," SAIC-GM-Wuling said of Wuling MINIEV. Therefore, wuling also did a "Wuling Girl Fashion Makeup Party" in the internet celebrity city of Changsha and Perfect Diary, creating fashion trends with the celebrities who opened Wuling.
Of course, for female consumers is the IP of "Wuling Girl", and for the entire young market, Wuling Hongguang MINIEV emphasizes its "Chaochuang Culture" IP. SAIC-GM-Wuling is more adept at encouraging the fermentation of user tide-created content on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, making Hongguang MINIEV popular throughout the network as a "net red car" and achieving circle-breaking.
This kind of marketing strategy that stimulates young consumers to dare to show themselves has allowed Hongguang MINIEV to get rid of the long-standing class nature of automobile products, from the vehicle attributes of the car to the window of self-display, breaking the traditional thinking of car size, configuration and price, which also does not exist in the so-called consumer contempt chain, so that young people are willing to buy and willing to buy.
And in this transformation process, the Wuling brand has also achieved the goal of brand transformation to a large extent, attracting more and more young consumers of the new generation, jumping out of the shackles of the brand class of the automotive industry, and also jumping out of the infinite involution between products, realizing the long-cherished wish of Wuling brand renewal.
Small cars, and bigger worlds
The success of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has divided the entire new energy vehicle market into two poles - the mid-to-high-end new energy vehicles represented by Tesla and the A00-class electric vehicles represented by Hongguang MINIEV have jointly led the industry to flourish.
"Micro, economic vehicles can better meet the travel needs of low- and middle-income groups, and there is a very strong demand in third- and fourth-tier cities and rural markets." Wang Binggang, head of the national new energy vehicle innovation project expert group, believes that in the future, China's new energy vehicles will develop to the two poles of luxury cars and economic small cars, and compared with luxury cars, the market space for micro and economic cars is broader.
However, the essence of the truth is by no means so simple, and it is not just because Wuling Hongguang MINIEV sold cheaply to achieve its annual sales of 550,000 vehicles. It is also because of the "consumer culture" it has pioneered, which has driven a "tide market" that may reach a scale of up to 10 billion, transforming the car from a tool into a consumer product in life, and making the category of "car" glow with new charm. It's like Tesla modeling the Model 3 as a "smart tech product," not just because it's an electric car.
Due to the consumer product attributes of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, SAIC-GM-Wuling has announced that this year they will also build a real mass-produced convertible on the basis of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV. This news has once again aroused the enthusiasm of young Chinese consumers, who are shouting that this will be the first convertible of their Generation Z, and the price is only one-tenth of that of foreign brand convertibles, which is bound to make people excited.
Wuling Hongguang MINIEV cabriolet this bold jumping play, undoubtedly greatly expanded the imagination of this mini car space, then will there be a travel version, pickup version, off-road version, the formation of a huge MINIEV family? In this way, the annual sales of nearly 430,000 vehicles will not be the ceiling of this car, and it will not let 40,000 yuan become the ceiling of Wuling micro-car. Henceforth, Wuling Hongguang MINIEV will open up a larger sky.
Another place worth thinking about is that if we look at car sales in Japan and Europe, there is still a huge share of scooters in those markets. For example, in Europe, electric mini-cars such as renault ZOE also have a scale of nearly 100,000 units, and the Dacia Spring produced in China can easily win tens of thousands of orders in Europe. This also shows that the demand created by Wuling Hongguang MINIEV is not only the demand of the Chinese market, but also the demand of the global market.
For Hongguang MINIEV, its success in the most competitive Chinese market also means that it can be competitive in the global market, and Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has created more possibilities for Chinese brands. Once Wuling Hongguang MINIEV can also make a breakthrough in overseas markets, then China's "Coca-Cola" is really none other than him!
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