"As a high-end brand and strategic brand under Chery, Xingtu is the integrator of technology Chery, the forerunner of Chery technology, and the breakthrough of Chery's upward movement, shouldering the important mission of leading Chery, accelerating change, making upward breakthroughs, and fully embracing the era of green intelligent vehicles!"
At the beginning of 2021, at the press conference of Xingtu Lanyue, Dr. Gao Xinhua, as the general manager of Xingtu brand, once said so passionately. However, the reality is always contrary to the ideal, in 2021, the Xingtu whole brand only ended with an annual sales volume of 37,000 (including exports), compared with the transaction volume of changan and other independent brands as much as two million, even a "fraction" of others is not counted. It can be seen that even with Chery as a backer, Xingtu is difficult to hide the fact that sales are not good.
Awkward product positioning
Admittedly, in the author's view, the key to Xingtu's lack of competitiveness is its vague model positioning.
As we all know, for today's high-end brands, price is an important hurdle, because in reality, most luxury cars basically rely on product premiums to highlight their brand value. Just like the first-line brand like BBA, the starting price of 200,000 or 300,000 yuan can make it look a little different.
And Xingtu also seems to have realized some "routines" in it, and its high-end medium and large SUV Star Moonwind official guidance price created for the luxury market has reached 168,900 to 230,900, and the highest price after landing is more than 240,000, and the entire independent brand is also a very high pricing level. And at the beginning of the listing, Xingtu Lanyue also won the affirmation of the market with a mature and stable appearance and various intelligent configurations.
However, from the perspective of sales performance, the results of Xingtu Lanyue do not seem to be ideal, according to a latest data, the single-month trading volume of the 2021 Series Of Xingtu Lanyue has been hovering around 400 units, of which the highest sales record was created in October, with 438 units. It can be seen that the market's recognition of this product is not high, and it is also far lower than competitors such as GAC Trumpchi GS8 and BYD Tang.
In addition, compared with the Chery Tiggo 8 PLUS of the "same door brother", it is almost difficult to form a competitive advantage. First of all, take the appearance and interior aspects, in this market that emphasizes youthfulness, the mature and stable design style of Xingtu Lanyue is obviously contrary to this era. Among them, the dark wood grain trim plate of the center console part is ridiculed by many netizens: the standard for middle-aged men.
Secondly, in terms of configuration, the engine start-stop, parallel assist, fatigue driving reminder and other technologies equipped by Xingtu Lanyue are not much different from those of Tiggo 8 PLUS. And in terms of price, Tiggo 8 PLUS is 50,000 to 70,000 cheaper than Xingtu Lanyue, and in terms of cost performance, Xingtu has been robbed of its own family.
In addition, not only is the product of Xingtu Lanyue, but its Xingtu Chasing Wind also conflicts with the market positioning of Tiggo 7 PLUS. For users who consider domestic high-end brands, in addition to the value of the model itself, it is more necessary to see a unique identity symbol given by the brand, but from the perspective of the vague product positioning of Xingtu, it is still too "cheap".
The new energy camp is still the biggest vacancy
In addition to the awkward product positioning, the late start in the new energy market has also buried the great prospects of Xingtu.
With the continuous advancement of the two strategic goals of "carbon neutrality" and "carbon peaking" in the mainland in the past two years, more and more traditional domestic brands have begun to join the new energy track. Among them, there are many advanced technology systems such as Geely Raytheon Power and the Great Wall Lemon Hybrid Architecture. For the Xingtu brand, which focuses on the high-end market, it seems that it has not yet found the "rules of the game" in the pure electricity market.
From the current 5 models on sale under Xingtu, only Xingtu Wind Chasing ET-i is a hybrid product, and the rest of the models are fuel vehicles, which shows that its overall level is slightly lower than the market's expectations.
In addition, as a new energy product directly "modified" by fuel vehicles, Xingtu Wind Chasing ET-i is still "changing soup without changing medicine" in terms of appearance and interior, and the overall design style is still simple, and even a lot of Chery's shadow can be seen. For Xingtu, which debuted as a high-end brand, even if it adopts a lower energy consumption power system, it still cannot hide the fact that it is mediocre.
At the same time, in the face of the future, Xingtu's pure electric product planning is also somewhat similar to "paper talk".
In April 2021, at the Shanghai Auto Show, Xingtu brought its pure electric concept car, Yaoguang. The cool appearance and the emotional speech of Ye Lei, deputy general manager of Xingtu Marketing, have attracted widespread attention inside and outside the industry. But with the passage of time, the Star Path Yaoguang gradually disappeared. To this day, the author cannot learn the specific information of Yaoguang mass production vehicles in relevant channels, and all this is like a "cake" painted to us by Xingtu, which is slowly forgotten.
Auto Network Review: Xingtu, How to flaunt the "high-end" brand
Nowadays, when it comes to Xingtu Automobile, I believe it is still very strange to many people. As the luxury brand promoted by Chery, it is reasonable to say that the technical resources obtained by Xingtu will not be too bad, and the mature powertrain and manufacturing process are worthy of recognition.
However, in the author's view, traditional and conservative marketing strategies are gradually eroding The market advantage of Xingtu. As a "high-end" brand, in addition to the necessary product premium, it is more necessary to form a differentiated image with ordinary civilian vehicles. Looking at Xingtu's products, from entry-level chasing wind to the main luxury market, they are too similar to Chery in terms of overall positioning, which fundamentally determines the loss of target users. At the same time, from the perspective of product value, Xingtu may be difficult to support the "idol aura" of a luxury brand, but more like Chery after "shell change".