After selling Qoros and Kaiyi Automobile to Baoneng and Wuliangye successively, Xingtu became the biggest shortcoming of Chery Group. Although 37,155 vehicles (including exports) were sold in 2021 at a growth rate of 121% year-on-year, as a high-end brand of Chery's main brand, this performance obviously does not match the status.
And the brand upward is Chery's biggest long-cherished wish in the past ten or twenty years, why can Geely's Lynk & Co and Great Wall's WEY stand out, but why can't Chery's Qoros and Xingtu? Interestingly, there was no high hope for the shortcut, but in the past two years, there have been continuous breakthroughs, and sales in 2021 have reached 154077 vehicles (including exports), which can basically support the scale of a brand to truly achieve independent operation. In contrast, Xingtu has become the biggest shortcoming of Chery's vehicle business sector.
Could it be that the entire huge management system that Chery has built over the years can only cope with competition in the low-end market?
Why build a sub-brand?
Once upon a time, Chery in the field of independent brands can also be regarded as a manufacturer with a place, the early Chery QQ, Fengyun, Qiyun, Tiggo and even the Son of the Orient and other models although deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but they built up a brand image is not tall, especially Chery QQ, in a long period of time is synonymous with cheap cars.
Chery's management, led by Yin Tongyue, is naturally aware of this problem. Therefore, as early as 2009, Chery laid out and implemented a multi-brand strategy and established two high-end sub-brands of Ruiqi and Weilin. The most expensive car is the Ruiqi G6, which sold for 259,800 yuan. At that time, if the management did not have a certain determination and courage, it would never dare to set such a price.
▲Ruiqi G6
It can be said that Chery at that time was still very thoughtful.
For the two new sub-brands of Ruiqi and Weilin, they all used publicity methods that seemed unconventional at the time. They sent the Ruiqi G5 to Germany, and after a small modification and enhancement, the car created the lap speed of the first Chinese car in New North. Although the lap time of 8 minutes and 56 seconds is mediocre today, it was not much slower than the 8 minutes and 53 seconds of the Golf 5 GTI.
▲ Ruiqi G5 in New North
On the side of the Weilin brand, it has joined hands with the domestic rally star Lu Ningjun to compete in the Dakar Rally for two consecutive years. As we all know, the Dakar Rally is the most difficult and cruel car race in the world (you can click on the article we posted a few days ago to learn about this event, Portal: "Dakar is such a brave game, why is there no one in China to pay attention?"). "), the people who can stand in the Dakar departure area are the warriors. With the help of this event promotion, car companies can convey the positioning of the model to the outside world very well.
Although the market later slapped Ruiqi and Weilin twice, consumers obviously have little interest in the self-brand models with high positioning, but they cannot deny Chery's efforts in brand upgrade strategy, and can only say that the time and place are not favorable, after all, at that time, the independent brands were not convincing in terms of brand image and technical background.
It's just a pity that the two sub-brands of Ruiqi and Weilin are lackluster and do not let Chery continue to invest firmly, so we see a bunch of models under the Ruiqi brand that are pulled and replaced by Chery brand products, and the broken cans are broken. Soon in 2012, Chery announced the discontinuation of both sub-brands.
Later Qoros is actually adhering to Chery's ambition to make achievements in the high-end market, but the market has once again hit Chery in the face, but they have not learned the lessons of the past, and as far as today's Starway is concerned, it is still repeating the old road of the past - the two sub-brands of Xingtu and Jietu plus the Chery brand, the three brothers do not seem to have their own duties, more and more chaotic, is still the old-fashioned multi-child fight plot, such a background, it is obviously difficult to cultivate a high-end brand, In comparison, Qoros' model would have been more promising.
Let's take a simple comparison of the three cars of Xingtu Lanyue, Chery Tiggo 8 PLUS and Jietu X90 to see the problem.
Yes, these three brands do have a clear distinction in design language, but it's really hard to say which of them is more advanced, more expensive, or that they don't reflect a big difference in image. That being the case, does the significance of the independent operation of sub-brands still exist?
The ambition of "Lingyun" and "Moon"
Although Starway currently appears to have four car series on sale, it can actually be seen as only two.
In 2019, Xingtu launched TX and TXL as the "vanguard" of the brand, but it has been exposed from the name, and the biggest difference between the two is "L" - the difference between body length and wheelbase is 85mm. Other than that, there is no essential difference, so it is reasonable to think of these "two cars" as two wheelbase versions of one car series. What is unreasonable is that these two cars have pulled the positioning pricing apart through the wheelbase difference.
▲ TX and TXL, except for the difference in the length of the back door, there is really no difference
These "two cars" were obviously not enough for one brand, and soon after, the official launch of another LX.
In fact, when the brand debuted in 2018, the name LX was used in a concept car, but this concept car is based on Chery's 2017 Tiggo Coupe concept car "pullpy".
As for the mass-produced version of the LX, it can be said that it has nothing to do with the concept car, but the more ingenious thing is that it has a close pull-up relationship with the Tiggo 7 at that time, which is in line with the LX concept car.
▲ Starway LX concept car and Chery Tiggo Coupe concept car
It wasn't until 2021 that Xingtu finally launched its own mid-size SUV, an early model named VX that used "MoonLight" as the official name when it was finally launched.
At this point, other models of Xingtu have gradually changed their naming method - TXL changed its name to "Lingyun", LX changed its name to "Chasing the Wind", TX is still TX (it is the abandoned one, the official website home page has no figure of it, but it can be found in the top tab).
Benefiting from the 400T power version launched by the two cars, Lanyue and Lingyun, Xingtu's sales have improved. As the former "head independent brand", in fact, Chery has a hand in technical reserves, this 261 horsepower, 400Nm 2.0T engine is mounted on Lingyun, which can run out of 7 seconds to break the hundred.
However, the positioning of the brand is vague, the personality of the model is not distinct, and the overall marketing cannot keep up, and it is difficult to pull the breakthrough of the entire car series and even the entire brand with an engine alone. Moreover, although Chery's 2.0T engine is very fierce, opponents have been playing hybrids this year, from BYD to the Great Wall, as well as Geely and Changan, which have basically come up with more practical hybrid technology.
In fact, the star path is not without hybrid reserves. In August 2021, Xingtu released the M3X Mars architecture PRO, which includes a SREV hyper-extended range power technology, but so far we have not seen any substantial progress in this power system except for PPT. However, recently at the brand night of Jietu, we saw that they brought a new Kunlun architecture, which seems to be more practical and comprehensive than the previous Xingtu Mars architecture PRO, and it is not known whether the two architectures of the two brands will have a technical fusion. But at least it can be confirmed that Xingtu, as one of the high-end positioning, is even inferior to the little brother Jietu in terms of brand promotion and promotion.
In addition, when it comes to marketing, let's share another honey operation of The Star Way.
I don't know how many people have found several "long-endurance" models that appear in the car series of the Moon? As a fuel car, what is the strength of the long endurance?
In fact, the so-called long-endurance version compared to the previous version is to increase the fuel tank volume from the previous 50L to 65L, so it seems that this "long-endurance version" is described as no problem. However, as a brand new model that was just launched in March 2021, a version with a large fuel tank was added three months later, that is, in June, which is also confusing as a fuel vehicle. Why didn't you start with a fuel tank of 65L? After all, this is a medium and large SUV, and I can't figure it out. One has to wonder that there is no internal communication process between The engineering department and the sales company of Xingtu.
In the past, Chery was said to be "technology Chery", and now the outside world has rarely mentioned the previous fixed term, because as far as the packaging of technology brands is concerned, whether it is Xingtu or Chery, in fact, it is far from enough, unlike Geely and the Great Wall, which can promote the platform concept as tall and incomparable.
Why doesn't Chery copy homework?
Many people are curious, since Lynk & Co and WEY are already successful, and the brand strategy behind their models is not so complicated, why can't Chery copy back the homework to Xingtu?
In terms of product attributes, in fact, some of Lynk & Co and Geely's products are relatively close, but in terms of design and marketing, Geely has made Lynk & Co's audience group clearly distinguished from Geely's other brands.
Although the tank was separated from the WEY brand after the great success of the first product, the tank 300, it is precisely because the tank 300 car has a clear distinction from WEY and even all the products of the Great Wall Group that it has achieved such a large market level success. Even the Great Wall Group is already quite familiar with this set of practices - such as their newly launched salon brand and mecha dragon model, the whole country is scolding him ugly, but the quota has been sold out, you know that the scary guy asked for 480,000.
To put it bluntly, Chery's approach is still too conservative, sub-brands like Xingtu and Jietu are not out of the circle, do it, and not completely do it (Jietu has recently let us see some new actions, and the T-X concept car released on the brand night indicates that Chery is seeking change), of course, it may also be as we mentioned above, there are problems in the connection of Chery's internal systems, and the business departments have not really twisted into a rope to form a centripetal force to make the brand really do it with heart.
Write at the end
Three years for a new car brand should be able to test the stage of the results of the time, no doubt, The development of Xingtu so far, whether it is the product lineup, or market sales, it is difficult to relate to the four words of "merit consummation". Even now, there may be many people who do not know what brand Xingtu is, even if they see Xingtu's car on the road, they do not know what it is.
Chery, as the light of its own brand in the past, is hindered in the process of upward exploration today, and the reason is also obvious. If you do not convert from the previous old ideas, then the establishment of multiple star paths, and then multiple sub-brands, they will only be the embodiment of Ruiqi and Weilin.
Issue 1824
Author: Chen Houze