author
Luo Chao
One step away, but it is the end of the world, lost a millimeter, but it is a world of difference.
Responsible editor 丨 Cui Liwen
Edit 丨 Chic
"Which company that has completed the 0 to 1 does not climb out of the ICU multiple times?" This is the most core test for entrepreneurs, and it is also the growth that is difficult to buy. ”
Before the New Year, Li Xiang, who was "proud of the spring breeze", was very interested and shared his "entrepreneurial experience" on social media. In three years, after experiencing the premature death of SEV, tasting the hardships of financing, and crossing the transformation of the ideal ONE, on this road, Li Xiang is like standing on the edge of a cliff dancing, walking on the edge of life and death.
The initial construction of the company's strategic organization, the in-depth exploration of product value, the vertical development of the technical system, and the continuous improvement of service capabilities... As long as there is a slight difference in any link in this value chain, it will be destroyed immediately.
Li Xiang's ideal is full of a sense of crisis, and even the thick 53-page risk warning when he first went to the United States to go public seems to be insufficient to include Li Xiang's broken heart. During the period when Li Bin was called "the most miserable person", Li wondered if he had tasted the cold and warmth of the world.
In the past year, whether it is the ambitious "internal open letter" at the beginning of the year, or the products and marketing events that appear every three to five years, or the "amazing words" that Li Xiang himself often shouts, the ideal has frequently appeared on the "hot search" and set off a round of words and swords.
But even if the wave of doubts follows, the accelerated layout of the self-research system, the timely solution of the production capacity problem, the ideal ONE is like a bamboo, the ideal last year's plot is still eye-catching, it is a car company that cannot be bypassed in the gushing new energy market.
01
"Don't win first, then win"
The ideal growth rate may be beyond most people's imagination, including Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan. "Thanks for the encouragement, continue to work hard", last November, the ideal ONE exceeded 13,000 units in a single month, refreshing the delivery record of more than 300,000 autonomous luxury models.
Li Xiang not only paid the promise of "bicycle breaking ten thousand", but also teased Feng Sihan on social media who was not optimistic about the technical route of the extended range, quite a thirty years of Hedong and thirty years of Hexi, do not bully the young poor posture.
On New Year's Day, Li Xiang was also the first to post "showing off" the sales data of 2021. In December, Ideal delivered a total of 14,087 Ideal ONE units, an increase of 130.0% year-on-year; in the fourth quarter, Ideal ONE delivered a total of 35,221 units, an increase of 143.5% year-on-year; ideal ONE delivered a total of 90,491 units in 2021, an increase of 177.4% year-on-year.
From the perspective of market segmentation, ideal ONE is currently the only self-owned brand model positioned in the 300,000 high-end SUV market, with an average monthly sales volume of more than 10,000 and a cumulative sales of more than 120,000 vehicles. From the perspective of sales alone, it has surpassed traditional giants such as Highlander and Tuon and become the benchmark model of six-seat SUVs in the minds of many consumers, which is unique in the previous competitive landscape.
The ideal ONE is undoubtedly successful and complex, and it is supported by an ideal internal clear and efficient manufacturing mechanism and a penetrating understanding and analysis of the Chinese market.
The ideal of "living a hard life" exercises the ability to make full use of existing resources, and after in-depth investigation of the user's actual car pain points, the right medicine is prescribed, and the system integration and optimization are carried out efficiently and accurately.
For example, after systematic market research, it was found that the actual market demand for 7-seat SUVs was not large, and ideally changed the direction of product layout in time when the mid-term redesign was made, cutting off the 7-seater model and focusing on the 6-seater, opening up a spacious aisle for rear users.
In fact, such product changes do not require too much technical strength and engineering capabilities, but put forward higher requirements for realistic product attitudes and rapid and effective market response mechanisms.
If the various systems on the ideal ONE are separated, the electric drive technology, the degree of intelligence, the marketing model... Each system is not enough to achieve the strength of the head product, but it is the integration of the system above each average level into the ideal ONE, coupled with the ideal response to the market in time and the adjustment of the product structure of the market, which makes the ideal ONE become the "person who appears in the right place at the right time".
It can be said that the hot sale of the ideal ONE is the result of localization, the victory of logical thinking, the crystallization of system engineering, and the mapping of the market environment.
"From 0 to 1, the company's strengths are the most important, the manager's professional expertise is the most important, and the goal of obtaining 3% of the market segment is to grow and verify quickly."
In Li Xiang's cognition, in 2021, the ideal not only effectively exerts its own product value advantages, has achieved a market share of 3% in the market segment, but also further improved the internal management system, allowing managers to go deep into the details and grasp the big and not the small, which has contributed to the successful completion of the verification period of the ideal.
The reason why many industry leaders are struggling in the transformation of the industry is because they do not want to go through the stage from 0 to 1 again. "First do not win, then win", this is the main strategic idea of the ideal verification period, that is, to compete with their own growth rate first, and then they can participate in the competition of the market.
02
Become the target of public criticism
Yes, the transformation of traditional forces is undoubtedly painful, the pain of relying on a path for a long time and then changing tracks, and the pain of seeking a balanced development between inherent advantages and rebuilding the system.
However, when the new forces represented by ideals are lightly armed, continuously strengthen their own value attributes with flexible and effective product operation strategies, and pass the verification period, even if this process is painful, traditional car companies are also changing the previous "compromise" Warm Tun change model.
"Death also requires change, if you don't change, you have to die, and you don't hesitate to die." Wei Jianjun spoke like a ship, to some extent, representing the complete awakening of traditional car companies in the process of transformation.
The ideal ONE, which was originally "lonely", inadvertently looked back and found that it was already full of competitors who were ready to go. The call for "comprehensive hybridization" of traditional car companies has been shouted to the earth, new forces have quickly deployed heavy troops, and the technical route and living soil on which the ideal ONE depends for survival are encountering layers of impact.
Especially traditional brands, after years of exploration, they have gradually found a clear development trajectory, with the high-end market as the goal, with "electrification + intelligence" as the means, under the escort of strong capital reserves and strong cost control capabilities, it will burst out of the transformation acceleration force that all startups are difficult to look forward to.
Lynk & Co 09, Mocha DHT-PHEV, Xiaopeng G9, Ziyoujia NV and other models are eager to move, rushing towards the ideal ONE, the wind at the top of the market segment is blowing colder and colder, when the huge body of the traditional forces begins to rotate, the new forces fierce product offensive produces its own inertia, then the ideal ONE is bound to become the target of the public.
At this moment, it is particularly important that the upcoming new flagship model, the X01, can continue to maintain and expand the advantages of the system established from the 0 to 1 verification period.
From the perspective of product strength, compared with the ideal ONE, X01 has achieved a substantial upgrade in terms of vehicle size and texture, or in the innovation of the power system, or in the iteration of the automatic driving assistance system.
As the ideal flagship model, the mission of the X01 is to single-handedly break through the market defense line guarded by top luxury models such as Mercedes-Benz GLS, and efficiently coordinate with the ideal ONE to bring about the market effect of 1+1>2, so as to further demonstrate the ideal core value advantage, sharpen the brand image, realize the brand premium, and become the most solid bridgehead of the ideal.
In a previous prospectus, Ideal had described the importance of X01 as follows: "Due to its high dependence on individual products, if the product is not well accepted by the market, sales volumes may be materially adversely affected, which in turn may have a material adverse impact on performance and financial condition." ”
The key point is that due to the convergence of positioning, once there is no effective price and value gap between X01 and the ideal ONE, in the process of the ideal from 1 to 10, these two pillar products will not only face external problems at the same time, but even "kill each other", which is definitely not good news for the ideal of "achieving 1.6 million sales in 2025".
Of course, the pain of left and right hand fighting, Weilai and other new forces are also difficult to avoid, compared to "choking on food", rhythmical expansion of product lines, so as to orderly increase the brand market share, is their more concerned about the problem.
03
From 1 to 10, how to make up for the shortcomings
This also brings two direct questions, one is whether the ideal follow-up product layout has lagged behind; the other is how to use limited resources to maximize the effective completion of the system replenishment.
According to the ideal model plan, ideal will only start to launch high-voltage pure electric models from 2023. However, two years later, Weilai and Xiaopeng have already built an airtight product matrix in the two core markets of cars and SUVs in the field of pure electricity, and have played a synergistic advantage between products and continuously explored penetration.
Not only that, in the past two years, the new energy offensive of traditional giants such as Toyota, Ford, and Volkswagen will continue endlessly, one wave after another, and Krypton, Salon, Avita, and those "barbarians" who suddenly break in will also be laid out in a big way. Throwing away the slightly flattering differentiated competition point of the extended range, the embattled ideal will have to face the step-by-step killing machine of the pure electricity market, and it is not easy to make up for the shortcomings of pure electricity.
"Compared with Xiaopeng, ideal in terms of automatic driving, is stepping up make-up lessons" Li Xiang once frankly admitted his backward status in the field of automatic driving technology.
It can also be seen that at present, Ideal is vigorously recruiting technical talents to try to achieve full-stack self-development of the AD advanced driver assistance system, including software and hardware for automatic driving, self-developed perception, planning, decision-making algorithms, and the development of automatic driving real-time operating system Li OS and development tool chain.
The ideal "carefully calculated" business model is successful and effective in the phases, but in order to make up for the shortcomings of research and development, the ideal increase in investment in the later stage will be inevitable.
What tests the effective rationing of ideal resources is not only R&D and manufacturing investment. At present, Ideal is accelerating the expansion of channels, at the end of December, Ideal has 206 retail centers, covering 102 cities, after-sales maintenance centers and authorized sheet metal spray centers 278, covering 204 cities, in the channel service capabilities to further improve at the same time, sales costs will inevitably increase.
Moreover, with the layout of pure electric models, the system problems encountered by Weilai and Xiaopeng before, the ideal will also be experienced, the supplement of channel capabilities, the construction of the service system, the improvement of the energy replenishment mechanism, and a series of problems that the ideal will try to avoid in the early stage will emerge at the same time.
According to He Xiaopeng, after the competition pattern of the new car-making forces entered the 'Warring States Era', each company was committed to storing more 'grain and grass'. New car manufacturers need about 20 billion yuan in the early stage of development (0 to 1 stage), and enterprises need more than 30 billion yuan in the long-term development stage (1 to 100 stages). In this way, the ideal has enough "ammunition" in its hands, and then it depends on how it can get rid of the passive situation of "always one step behind".
Li wants to be a competitive person, "I can not like, but you must be able to be the first in this field, because it is a very painful thing to be the third in the past." The rules are all made by the boss. "From the very beginning, Li wanted to either become one of the best in the industry or lose a clean and tidy plan.
"From 0 to 1" said that when change comes, the first-mover advantage is important, but laughing at the end is king. From the current point of view, Li Xiang seems to be only one step away from laughing at the end, and it is only one step to slide from the top of the tide to the bottom of the abyss valley, sometimes a step away, but it is the end of the world, and the loss of a millimeter is a world away.
As for the result, the ideal way forward paves countless possibilities, whether it is flowers or bricks, and the market needs to wait.
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