A few days ago, I talked about the star path (portal: "the star path has become the biggest shortcoming, and the brand has become a spell that Chery can't break?"). "), today we will continue to talk about the shortcut.
At the Jietu brand night on January 10 this year, the official release of the hardcore SUV concept car T-X attracted a lot of attention. It can be said that this is one of the few major brands under the chery Group in recent years (although it is a concept car, it is quite close to mass production in this form) can be praised by the industry and the outside world.
"This car is so handsome, I have never seen such an eye-catching Chery (Jietu), they finally have a breakthrough in the product image." This is a comment I saw in our rut fan base, followed by several people who said +1, which is rare for a group that is used to "spraying".
So the question is, why was this car born in the product matrix of Jietu and not Xingtu? According to the current market conditions, Xingtu needs a model that can really go to boost the awareness of the entire brand and the confidence of the sales channel.
In the article of Xingtu, we said that the products made by the three passenger car brands under the current Chery system are too conservative, and there is no obvious distinction between them in terms of products and brand image.
This time Jietu released this T-X, and to a large extent, as we said before, Chery needs to make something different from before, or something less conventional. This is necessary regardless of which brand it is placed under, and as to whether it is appropriate to put it under the Jietu brand, we will discuss it in more depth later. Before that, let's explore the question: Is the Jetway T-X a plagiarized product?
We see a comment like, "Isn't that learning tanks?" Chery this is obviously looking at the fiery tank 300 eyes red, he also drummed up a 'tank 300' Ah, plagiarism is shameful! Not to mention the shameful quadratic party that has already copied someone else's! ”
This question should be put aside from the perceptual factor and viewed from a rational and objective point of view.
I have to say that Tank 300 is a phenomenon-level product in its own brand, not because of how prominent it is in terms of product strength, or how suitable it is for most people's car scenes, but Tank 300 has taken a road that others (referring to other independent brands) have not traveled much before, and has also opened up a market that can be called a blue ocean, and has achieved great success, and tanks have naturally upgraded to an independent brand.
There is no doubt that the success of tank 300 is indeed easy to make other independent brands envious and jealous, so they "can't fight and join". Among the people who bought the Tank 300, some of them went for functionality, some of them went for the shape, and the Jietu T-X and its series of products were probably aimed at the same group.
▲ Ford Bronco family
But if we want to talk about plagiarism, we don't quite agree with this statement, including the tank 300, and some people have said that it copied the Jeep Wrangler, Ford Bronco and other models.
It has to be said that the imitation traces of the tank 300 are relatively obvious, especially the vehicle form is closer to the Wrangler.
However, to tell the truth, the shape of playing "wild" is also inseparable after all, and the straight body lines and round elements are indispensable, and the combination is probably such an effect. Besides, isn't it precisely the appearance of such a styling style in the products of independent brands that makes consumers refreshed?
As far as the Jetway T-X is concerned, the score is two levels.
First of all, in terms of product attributes, it properly belongs to the "can't fight and join", step after the tank, want to share a piece of the tank. But in terms of product design, if you say that it has no imitation traces, you must be speaking with a clear conscience, and from the side rear, you can think of the car from Chery's partner , the Land Rover Defender.
But it seems to have fewer imitation marks on its body than the Tank 300. Or rather, the Jetway T-X has its own ideas in the handling of details.
For example, the shape of the headlight group (it is not known whether the mass production version can follow such a headlamp shape), the window line on the side of the body, the wheel arch line, etc., but the two-door door design revealed by the position of the hidden door handle will most likely not appear in the mass production version.
Does the market need N "Tank 300"?
The popularity of the tank 300 is indeed unexpected, and even the Great Wall itself did not expect it to be so hot, sold for more than a year, and the current pick-up cycle is still as long as several months. In this way, it is indeed possible to accommodate another tank 300 on the market.
It's just that jietu T-X will take a while to officially launch the mass production version, and the fastest time to officially go public will be in the second half of 2022, and it is not ruled out that it will be delayed until 2023 (no way, Chery is indeed slow half a beat).
In addition, we have also heard that there are other independent brands are also playing the idea of hardcore off-road market segmentation, although Chery may not be able to become the strongest spoiler, but it is foreseeable that the good days of tank 300 may end at some point in time.
For the overnight popularity of this type of model, I am actually quite confused, not because I do not play off-road, but because most people do not play off-road, to put it more accurately, that is, at least half of the people who bought the tank 300 do not play off-road.
From the hardware specifications, this is obviously a car born for off-road, not for off-road and buy a tank 300, that is for this hard school of shape. The Great Wall is also very clear that not all people who buy tank 300 are playing off-road, so they later launched the city version of the tank 300, that is, the front and rear differential locks were canceled, replaced by a set of intelligent four-wheel drive system, and some more "civilized world" configurations were added.
In this regard, Jietu T-X also has countermeasures. The reason why we said above that the T-X will be a series of products is because chery layout has a high probability of not just a car. According to relevant information, T-X this series will cover 1.0T, 2.0T, 3.0T fuel, hybrid, pure electric multiple power forms and specifications, there are load-bearing and non-load-bearing body structures, four-wheel drive forms also have mechanical four-wheel drive and electric four-wheel drive forms, may also be derived pickup models, wow...
It seems that Chery seems to want to show its skills in this direction, at least the lineup will be much more comprehensive than the product matrix of the tank brand on the Great Wall, the Great Wall Gun series and the Haval Big Dog model combined, in short, it seems to be able to meet the needs of consumers with more segmentation. It's just that at this stage, we are not good at commenting on anything, and we have to wait for the T-X series of products to officially land to know whether what they think and do is different from what they say now.
Why Shortcut?
Let's answer the question that was asked at the beginning of the article.
Judging from the tone of the T-X series, Chery hopes to move towards high-end, but they have placed T-X in the Jietu brand instead of Xingtu. This is rather puzzling, after all, the higher-rated but poor star path needs a product like the T-X to boost morale.
Of course, the current performance of Jietu has also made Chery raise its expectations for this brand, and the T-X series will have a more winning attitude under the Jietu brand. In addition, the more important point is that as the volume grows, Jietu has also stimulated the upward demand of the brand.
The goal of Jietu's release at the brand night is to sell more than 200,000 vehicles in 2022 and 1 million vehicles in 2026. It should be known that the total sales volume of the entire Chery Group in 2021 is "only" 961,900 vehicles, which is a trend, and the Jietu brand cannot support such a sales target without becoming bigger and stronger.
In order to match the brand positioning of Xingtu, Chery will definitely make a good plan for the product sequence of its high-end brand in the next few years. So here we may also wish to boldly guess, is it possible that after the T-X series is successfully listed under the Jietu brand, Chery will have another wave of "routine operations", label the T-X with the Logo of Xingtu, and graft several of these models into the Xingtu brand?
Chery and high-end insulation?
Although T-X currently only has a stroke of the eight characters, Jietu does give people some hope. It's just that Chery's past has always made people less optimistic about the prospect of T-X going to the high-end, because the high-end is like a spell for Chery.
If the failure of Ruiqi and Weilin is doomed in the context of the big era, then the inaction of Qoros largely confirms that Chery does not have the operational ability of high-end brands.
It should be known that Qoros's large-scale recruitment and R&D investment in 2013 launched by Qoros 3 in 2013 were on par with or even surpassed the best players of the joint venture brand at the same level at that time. However, at that time, the positioning of high-end compact cars was unbearable for independent brands (even now it is not very feasible), coupled with the style of heavy products and light publicity, Qoros 3 became a standard "you buy I recommend, I buy I don't buy" car, the Internet shouted loudly, and the high-end exhibition hall was very quiet.
In fact, Qoros, whether it is the product style or level, is quite similar to the later Lynk & Co, but Qoros' approach is not as smart as Lynk & Co,, and the car is a good car, but the bet car does not work in the Chinese market, and it is difficult to sustain.
To sum up, in the past, Chery had two types of practices in going to the high end, one of which was that Ruiqi, Weilin and even the current Xingtu had established sub-brands with a higher tone, but the commonality of these sub-brands was that they did not do more high-end in brand and product image. The second is that the joint venture to establish Qoros attempt, Chery did not realize that "good cars are not equal to the cars needed by the market", lack of accurate sense of smell for market demand, and deviated.
This time the Jietu T-X can be said to be a different attempt than before, to tell the truth, we hope that Chery will succeed, at least, this time they are based on the existing similar models on the market to take the same product route, at least to ensure that there is such a piece of market demand. Then what remains is the technical research and development capabilities and the work of publicizing packaging. After all, as we said in other articles before, high-end positioning of automotive products not only to take care of the physiological needs of consumers, but also to consider psychological needs.
When other independent brands have their first taste of victory in the high-end process, there is indeed not much time left for Chery. The mission of Jietu T-X is not limited to the jietu brand.
Issue 1825
Author: Chen Houze