Author: Zhao Zhefeng
What is the car traffic password for 2021?
From a technical point of view, there are automatic driving and super fast charging; from the design point of view, organic A wind, crossover wind and interior triple screen; from a marketing point of view, there are strange model naming and the rise of female consumption.
So what are the traffic passwords in 2022? We can't predict it yet. But what is certain is that there must be "hardcore off-road" in this.
From the new cars in the recent period, it can be found that there are not a few who are positioned as hardcore off-road vehicles or the appearance design tends to be hardcore styles, in addition to the just released Jietu T-X, self-touring NV, and the new BJ212 and Haval Cool Dog that have recently been exposed. Including brands such as BYD and Dongfeng Fengshen, they also previously said that they would launch new hardcore off-road models.
It is foreseeable that in 2022 we will see more "hardcore" models.
The most important thing about hardcore off-road is appearance?
With the increasingly stringent emission regulations and the implementation of the "double integral" policy, today's automobile manufacturers have to abandon large-displacement fuel vehicles. Classic models such as the Mitsubishi Pajero and the Toyota Prado have been discontinued, and hardcore off-road vehicles have gradually faded from people's vision.
Just when we are almost oblivious to the existence of such models, the tank 300 that came out of nowhere in 2020 single-handedly pulled the hardcore off-road subdivision back to the mainstream stage. Since its launch at the end of 2020, the Tank 300 has been in short supply, with sales reaching 85,000 units in 2021, and if it were not limited by production capacity, its annual sales would easily exceed 100,000 units.
In view of the hot market performance, Great Wall also separated it from the WEY brand and established a brand new tank brand. In today's popularity of electrified models, the tank 300 can be called a phenomenon-level product.
Many people think that the reason why the Tank 300 can "break the circle" is because it lowers the price threshold of hardcore off-road vehicles, so that more off-road enthusiasts have a choice at their fingertips. In the forum related to tank 300, you can often see comments such as "can't afford to buy a big G, can't afford a Wrangler, and buy a tank 300 is also good".
But this is by no means the main reason for the success of the Tank 300. Because before the advent of this car, there were already some hardcore off-road vehicles on the market that were relatively affordable, such as the Haval H9 and beijing BJ40, which were not priced higher than the tank 300, but they did not make too much waves in the market. The author believes that there are two main reasons for the success of the tank 300, one is the design, and the other is the household attributes.
In today's promotion of environmental protection and energy saving, whether it is fuel vehicles or electric vehicles, they are increasingly pursuing low wind resistance to reduce energy consumption, so streamlined body design is becoming more and more common. Although such a design is more aesthetic, but it is inevitable to have aesthetic fatigue when you see more, coupled with the fact that major car companies are increasingly fond of "matryoshka doll" design, the difference in appearance between different models is getting smaller and smaller, the most typical example is Volkswagen.
Therefore, the use of tough design style, retro with fashionable tank 300, it suddenly hit the aesthetic point of many consumers, in this era of data and standardization of all things, tank 300 can bring us a long-lost sense of freshness, can meet the demands of some people to highlight their personality. In contrast, the Haval H9, which has a more traditional design, is clearly unable to do this.
This can be seen from the hot sales of the Mercedes-Benz G-class. I believe that everyone can often see the figure of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class in the city, and there is a high probability that there will be a young woman sitting in the driver's seat. Although there is no relevant data statistics, it can be judged from experience that the proportion of female owners of this car is definitely not low. And these female car owners will basically not drive their cars into the barren mountains and mountains for a lifetime.
So they bought this car for the domineering appearance, and the Mercedes-Benz logo. Including some young people who pursue trends, they choose the Mercedes-Benz G-Class for similar psychology. Otherwise, Mercedes-Benz would not have launched the 2.0T G350 for the Chinese market. For those who don't have high-intensity off-road needs and like this look, the G350 is indeed more "real" than the G500.
Speaking of tank 300, in the launch of this car, great wall officials said that 30% of its first orders came from female users, and great wall later established a tank 300 women's club for this purpose, which shows its attractiveness to women. For women who "face value is the first productive force", the probability of choosing tank 300 is also directed at appearance.
▲Image source: Autohome
Another statistic can further corroborate this, according to Autohome big data, 92% of the tank 300 potential users are attracted to its appearance. And the people attracted by its cost performance accounted for only 1.9%. These three data fully show that the primary factor for the tank 300 to "go out of the circle" is the appearance.
It is precisely because of the success story of the Tank 300 that we see that "followers" such as the Jietu T-X, The Self-Touring NV, the new BJ212, and Haval Kugou have also adopted a similar "hardcore + retro" design style.
The real use of hardcore off-roading
Of course, although the ingenious design can bring traffic, it does not guarantee that its products will continue to sell well. Therefore, this involves the second biggest reason why the tank 300 is "out of the circle", the household attribute.
Manufacturers are well aware that most of the users who choose the Tank 300 are not really off-road, or do not carry out high-frequency extreme off-roading.
Therefore, although this car adopts the non-load-bearing body common for off-road vehicles, and also installs a differential lock on the front and rear axles, it is obvious that it has a richer comfort configuration, intelligent configuration and adjustment that is more suitable for urban driving compared to competitors such as BJ40. In other words, you can use the Tank 300 as an urban SUV.
It is also to see this psychology of consumers, Tank 300 also launched the city version of the model in July last year, canceling off-road configurations such as differential locks, and increasing comfort configurations such as active noise reduction to harvest this part of the market segment with more accurate positioning.
Regarding the household attributes of the tank 300, we can also see it from the big data of the car home. The data shows that among the users who have purchased the tank 300, the most satisfactory parts of the car are fuel consumption, interior, appearance and comfort, which are the product force dimensions that are more important for household SUVs.
From this we can also roughly infer the user group of tank 300. In addition to a small number of real off-road enthusiasts, its main users are ordinary family users, young people who pursue trendy personality, white-collar workers who occasionally travel by car on weekends and holidays, and female consumers who pursue good looks.
The core demands of the above crowds, the tank 300 can be satisfied one by one, such as off-road ability, high appearance, large modification potential, daily transportation comfort, etc., while it is not as difficult to commute in the city as competing models such as BJ40, and there are no other obvious shortcomings, so its audience is extremely wide. The Cyber tank version and the city version pink model are good examples, corresponding to the young trend group and the female group, respectively.
Further down, tank 300 is based on hard-core off-road vehicles as a carrier, integrating subcultures such as trends, modifications, and female consumption, and then gradually forming its own style. Similar to the micro-electric vehicles and pickup trucks that have become popular in recent years, users of these two types of models may not care about the functionality of the car, but instead use it as part of their lifestyle or use it to express their personality.
It is precisely because of the success case of the tank 300 that the follow-up so-called "new hardcore off-road" will copy this set of playing methods, that is, take into account both off-road capabilities and home attributes, and even completely abandon off-road capabilities. Another key point is to have a hard enough look.
Can traffic passwords be persistent?
Despite the advent of the Tank 300, consumers are offered a richer range of choices, as if opening the door to a new world. But whether this traffic password can work for a long time still needs to be a question mark.
There are two main uncertainties, one is the originality of the design, and the other is whether the car company can withstand the increasingly stringent double credit policy.
In terms of design, whether it's the Tank 300, or the just-unveiled Jetto T-X and Self-Touring NV, we can find some "déjà vu" in them. Examples include the Tank 300 and Ford Bronco, Jetway T-X and Land Rover Defender, Self-Touring NV and Range Rover Range Rover.
We can't directly conclude that it is suspected of "plagiarism", but there is indeed a lot of room for improvement in terms of the uniqueness and recognition of the design. For any brand, if you want to continue to gain consumer recognition, you must have family elements that can be remembered at a glance (family design is not equal to "matryoshka doll"), which is the key to distinguishing it from other brands, otherwise it will give people a sense of patchwork, it is not easy to be remembered, and it must be forgotten by the public after getting short-term attention.
In addition, as the "new hardcore off-road" becomes a trend, more players will enter the game in the future. If all brands move in the same design direction, the so-called "hardcore" and "retro" in the end will eventually become synonymous with "bad streets".
Like now, we're hardly interested in any designs like "split headlights" and "through-the-end lights." If you don't have your own design language, you can only go with the flow, and then drown in one wave after another, and then repeat.
About the double credit policy.
Like the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles, China's double credit policy is also being adjusted year by year. However, the role of the former is to encourage consumers to buy new energy vehicles, while the role of the latter is to restrain car companies from producing high-fuel-consuming fuel vehicles. Therefore, when the new energy vehicle market is changed from policy-driven to market-driven, subsidies can be reduced, while double integration can only become more and more stringent. Because we must first cut off the idea of car companies "continue to make money by selling fuel vehicles" from the supply side, in order to keep up with the continuous transformation of the demand side.
From 2019 to 2023, the proportion of credit requirements for new energy vehicles in China will increase from 10% to 18%, with a fixed increase of 2 percentage points per year, and car companies that do not meet this requirement will face fines.
Moreover, not only the requirements for the credit ratio of new energy vehicles have increased year by year, but the difficulty of obtaining new energy credits has also increased year by year.
For example, in June 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a revised version of the "Double Integral Method", which lowered the integral mileage coefficient of pure electric passenger cars from 0.012 to 0.0056, lowered the upper limit of pure electric points from 5 points to 3.4 points, and lowered the upper limit of plug-in hybrid passenger car points from 2 points to 1.6 points.
With the rapid expansion of the new energy vehicle market, some car companies can calmly cope with the changes in the double integration policy, such as BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling, etc. However, two conditions must be met at the same time, one is the growth of new energy vehicle sales, and the other is the decline in sales of fuel vehicles (especially large-displacement fuel vehicles).
But some car companies are not so calm.
Taking Great Wall Motors as an example, due to its long-term product composition based on SUV, pickup trucks and other high-fuel consumption models, even if its new energy brand Euler has achieved good sales results in 2021, Great Wall is still saddled with about 350,000 points of integral "debt".
Image source: Electric Vehicle Watcher
In addition, with the changes in the supply and demand relationship of the integral market, the price of new energy integrals is also rising. According to the statistics of China Automobile Center, the average transaction price of new energy credits is about 2100 yuan. According to this calculation, if Great Wall Motors wants to pay off its "liabilities", it is expected to lose about 735 million yuan, accounting for about 15% of Great Wall Motors' net profit in the first three quarters of last year.
Therefore, for the hot sale of the Tank 300, the Great Wall's own mood should also be complicated, and it is also a problem that other brands that launch hardcore off-road vehicles must face.
Models like the Tank 300, although the fuel consumption is not as exaggerated as the prado, Pajero and other pure hardcore off-road vehicles, but it is still much higher than the ordinary home SUV, which will cause a lot of points burden to the company.
For example, Great Wall's best-selling Haval H6 has a NEDC fuel consumption of between 6.6-7.1L/100km, while the NIDC fuel consumption of the Tank 300 is as high as 9.3-9.7L/100km.
What is even more unoptimistic is that the standard value of fuel vehicle fuel consumption in the double integration policy (above which fuel consumption will receive negative points) is also decreasing year by year, and will be reduced to 4.0L/100km by 2025, which will obviously further limit the living space of hardcore off-road vehicles.
On the other hand, unlike BJ40, Wrangler and other pure hardcore off-road models, the potential users of "new hardcore off-road" such as tank 300 are not limited to the niche group of "off-road enthusiasts", but to grab the market share of ordinary home SUVs, the growth potential is extremely high, when the proportion of sales increases year by year, the negative points generated by it are not a small burden for enterprises. Whether it can quickly complete the new energy transformation of hardcore off-road vehicles is the key to determining its future development.