At 8:00 p.m. last night, Ideal Auto released a message in a low-key manner, confirming that the model code-named X01 was officially named "Ideal L9".
The message is extremely streamlined, not even the picture matches, but it is full of keywords:
During the Beijing Auto Show
Built for families
globe
Smart flagship SUV
L9
The amount of information is enough to make the riders who pay attention to the X01 full of imagination.
The time of the 2022 Beijing Auto Show is April 21-30, about 50 days from now, and the official warm-up news is released at this time, which belongs to the normal marketing rhythm. The positioning of "for the family" is also within everyone's expectations, after all, this is the cornerstone of the success of the ideal ONE. And the new information of "global", "smart flagship" and "L9", as well as the price that everyone pays the most attention to, we can dig together.
01
How much is the right amount to sell?
Li Xiang published an internal letter last February, in which he mentioned:
Adhere to the brand positioning of luxury intelligent electric vehicles, widely covering 150,000-500,000 price points.
In the Hong Kong stock prospectus released later in July, this price positioning range was adjusted to:
Strategically focus on new energy vehicles with prices between RMB200,000 and RMB500,000.
Then as a flagship model, the L9 occupies the highest price range, and it is generally expected to be between 400,000 and 500,000. How much will it be?
The current price range of the ideal ONE is 338,000-348,000, except for the difference in body color, the rest of the configurations are all standard at the same price. Considering the distinction with ONE, a difference of 50,000-60,000 yuan and about 15% of the overall price is necessary, and the lower limit of L9 pricing will certainly not be less than 400,000.
Considering the ideal sales target, if it wants 2 million sales by 2025, whether it can be achieved or not, each of its cars must be a blockbuster. Even if the production capacity is unlimited, the rich people who can afford to buy more than 400,000 luxury cars are limited, and every 10,000 expensive will dissuade a group of potential customers.
It is necessary to have a lower limit of a certain height, but also not to have an upper limit that is too high and a dilemma. Let's first imagine what other vendors will do:
The high probability will give a starting price of close to 400,000, and the price of the most popular configuration model is most likely between 440,000 and 450,000, maintaining a gap of about 100,000 with ONE.
Considering that "starting from the L9 in 2022, all models will have the necessary hardware compatible with L4 autonomous driving as standard", then the software subscription service is also a must.
The entry price only provides L2 level assisted driving, does not open advanced automatic driving functions, and has a trade-off in the smart cockpit; the mid-end price is based on the perfect smart cockpit, with a scheduled subscription of advanced automatic driving functions; the high-end price provides a one-time lifetime buyout of autonomous driving. Adding some paint and exterior options is the most reasonable way I can think of.
However, the ideal will not do this.
According to Li Xiang's product philosophy, intelligent driving does not charge charges, nor does it provide too many differentiated configurations. Under this strategy, it is really curious to balance the price and profit when the cost of autonomous driving and smart cockpit hardware rises significantly, and have a strong price-performance ratio.
But I'm going to make a big guess that the basic pricing under the standard strategy won't exceed 450,000.
02
Focus on China, but don't give up on the world
Ideal mention of globalized markets is not the first time.
As early as the 2020 Q4 earnings call, Shen Yanan said that the ultimate goal of Ideal Car is to become the world's leading leader in intelligent electric vehicles, so there is no doubt that Ideal will participate in the global market competition. At the media briefing in May 2021, he once again said that Ideal Automobile is very serious about studying the model of products and channels in overseas markets, and the team has been established.
At the 2021Q4 earnings call that just ended last week, Shen Yanan said that he would participate in international competition, but focused more on China. At the same time, he also said that he had formed a professional globalization strategy team, the main tasks of this team are:
Find the potential market for the product
Determine the right lineup
Identify business models to achieve meaningful market share when entering new markets
Now, the official announcement that the L9 is a global model means that within the product life cycle of the L9, it will be realized to go to sea, and the L9 is one of the suitable product lineups that Shen Yanan said.
So let's make some guesses about the other two questions – where and how to sell.
New forces going to sea is not a new thing, and many new energy vehicle brands such as Weilai, Xiaopeng, Aiways and Dongfeng's Lantu have successively entered the European market. NIO is still selling directly overseas, starting with infrastructure construction, starting with the delivery of ES8 in the Norwegian market in September 2021, and only registering more than 200 units so far; while Xiaopeng is a dealer cooperation model, in 2021 Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 438 new cars in the local area, of which 406 were sold for the G3 and 32 for the P7.
From the perspective of sales, going to sea with great effort seems to be a loss of money. However, the meaning of drunkenness is not in wine, and the main purpose of Weilai and Xiaopeng going to sea at the moment is to build brand influence and pave the way for the future.
And if the ideal goal is to "achieve meaningful market share" in the first place, it is necessary to find a market with enough market depth to support enough sales.
At the same time, for the ideal L9, there is one more constraint than the above brands, that is, it is not a pure electric model. Europe's extreme environmentalism and car culture does not seem to be suitable for this full-size extended range model.
Full size + fuel range + consumption capacity, then the L9's "global" burden is afraid to fall on the shoulders of North America. How to fight the ideal global battle is also a good play worth looking forward to.
03
How many abilities are there to call a flagship?
As a model of the concept of family cars, the sales crown of new energy SUVs, the lethality of the ideal ONE in this field is close to the full level. The L9 certainly doesn't dare to call itself a flagship without two brushes.
On last week's 2021Q4 earnings call, Lee wanted to mention:
For the X01 model, on the one hand, we can meet the needs of users that cannot be achieved on the ideal ONE model, on the other hand, we will create some new needs, which are not realized by all the new energy models on the market today.
We believe that many users can't express it, but after using it, they will say that this is what I want, which is a core concept of our product.
The concept of being responsive to the needs of the user will be interpreted in the X01.
The ideal ONE can't achieve the requirements, plus some brand new requirements, this should be the L9's two brushes.
Combined with the statement in the previous Hong Kong stock recruitment book that "from 2022 onwards, Ideal Automobile will take the necessary hardware for self-developed L4 level automatic driving compatibility as standard", the L4 level automatic driving ability should be regarded as one of the needs that could not be realized before, it is a flagship must-have, and the improvement of various hardware is definitely a highlight.
At the same time, in terms of cockpit intelligence, the ideal ONE is still more restrained and traditional. Combined with the description of the cockpit space in the previous internal letter that Li wanted:
This space has the atmosphere and design we like, plenty of power, super computing power, and the best VR and AR environment.
It is a space for entertainment, a space for socializing, a space for work, a space for families. Smart electric vehicles will become a more valuable exclusive space than a home.
We have every reason to believe that there will be a disruptive flagship experience for cockpit intelligence on the L9.
In addition, what can be the new demand? Combined with the price point of L9, potential passengers with 500,000 yuan of model consumption power will like in the family car scene? If this scope is expanded to the global market, what will be the common needs of potential customers at this level around the world?
All I can think of is the specific scene of a family outing. It's a big guess that the L9 may have a lot of innovative features for this particular scenario, such as porting some motorhome features to SUV, providing an outdoor experience that the average SUV can't provide.
04
From ONE to L9, the name changes a bit
From ONE to L9, this naming idea is really surprising. The specific brand naming idea, at present, may only be the ideal of their own marketing department people to understand the inside story, but we may wish to guess.
First of all, I went to the trademark office to check the recent trademark registration records of ideals, and it can be found that the "ideal L9" was applied for the first time on December 9 last year, and then the L7, L9, M7 and M9 were applied for on the 21st.
Now that the X01 has been named the L series, it can be speculated that the M series may be reserved for the MPV series. The ideal MPV model has been rumored for a long time, according to previous news, the Whale platform corresponds to the MPV model, and space is preferred.
It should be confirmed that the ideal naming of the current L9 was determined relatively late. On August 31 last year, Ideal registered the LX, LM and LS series from 1 to 10, which shows that at that time it was still named after the X, M and S series, which may roughly correspond to SUVs, MPVs, and small SUV and Cross models.
However, it is now named in the L single letter series, but the complete trademark sequence is not registered in advance for trademark protection, which makes people scratch their heads.
If the L series is used for SUVs, the ideal ONE of the next generation is likely to be the L7, which occupies the range of 300,000-500,000. Considering the brand positioning of 200,000-500,000, it can only accommodate one SUV model further down, and I am afraid that the L series can only be L5. Now that Ideal is not continuing to register downwards, we venture to speculate that Perhaps Ideal does not have any SUV smaller than ONE in the short term.
05
Write at the end
The same is the benchmark of new forces, Weilai has launched 5 models, Xiaopeng has launched 3 models, and the ideal is now ushering in the 2nd model, the rhythm can be described as late.
But from the perspective of bicycle sales performance, the ideal is the most successful. Specific to the L9, it doesn't actually have any competitors at the same level. Looking at the entire passenger car market, full-size SUVs that can sell for less than 500,000 are not available. Moreover, this is also a range-extender that will have a great intelligent experience.
But isn't the market for full-size SUVs very narrow?
Two years ago, Zhang Xiao, the head of ideal automotive products, said this sentence when communicating with Garage 42:
Segment can't determine sales, sales are a very comprehensive problem, IF the BMW X7 sells for 500,000, what do you think it will sell?
If you carefully taste this sentence, perhaps we can predict that L9 will become the mystery of the explosion.
The end of the article also warmed up with you, next we will continue to release more X01 wonderful content in the 42nd Garage Ideal Community and App, welcome to the community or scan the QR code at the end of the article into the group to discuss and interact with us, next week the second article of the "Garage X01" series will be online, stay tuned ~
Written by: Pigeon No. 42
Edit: Reinhardt
These are also worth reading