In this era, because the economy, science and technology and other aspects have reached an extremely developed level, it can be called "rapid change", and the rapid development of science and technology has also led to almost crazy "inner volume" in all walks of life, at this moment, the "survival of the fittest" in the theory of evolution is particularly obvious in this environment.
No matter what industry you are in, as long as you are a little inattentive, you may become an outcast of the entire market and be eliminated by the market, today we will take stock of those luxury brand models that will be discontinued this year, and explore why they will also be eliminated by the market with brand power.
Audi A1, Q2
Audi as one of the world's luxury brand giants BBA brand, in recent years the performance has been unremarkable, in terms of sales and evaluation have been BOLMA and Mercedes-Benz overpowered, and even in recent times many netizens joked that the future luxury brand is not only BB without A.
In fact, the reason for such remarks is very simple, nothing more than because of Audi's weakness in recent years, and the reason why the brand has continuously explored the market in recent years to launch low-cost models, and the two small cars of Audi A1 and Q2 are the products of Audi's market exploration. Luxury brands put down their bodies to launch low-priced models, which may be beyond reproach in the eyes of car companies, but this behavior is criticized by many consumers, even if A1 is not bad in overseas sales, Q2L also has a fairly good performance in China, but this model of reduced brand positioning is doomed to be biased for a luxury brand.
In fact, BMW 1 series and Mercedes-Benz A-class and other models are also the case, but Audi has faced a more severe form in recent years, so it is urgent to save the brand's image and reputation, so in February this year, Audi CEO Mascu Doss said that Audi A1 and Q2 will be discontinued after the end of the product cycle, and will not launch a successor model. In general, the discontinuation of these two models is not because of poor product performance, but for the sake of brand upliftment.
BMW i3 has sold a total of 250,000 units worldwide since its launch in 2013, and the performance of the product in the career is not bad, this car has attracted the attention of many people with its distinctive body appearance structure, personalized door opening and carbon fiber structural design that year, and this car is also a bold attempt by BMW in the brand electrification career. However, although its sales volume worldwide is good, due to its new power layout, shorter endurance and higher price, this car is almost unpopular in China.
With the passage of time, electrification has been fermenting in the entire automotive industry for many years, and BMW has officially entered a new era of electrification, and has also established a special "i" brand as BMW's tram department, and the spokesman of the BMW brand side also said that the BMW i3 will be officially discontinued in July this year, the original production line of bmw i3 will be used for the new Mini Countryman, and the name of the BMW i3 will also be inherited by the new electric 3 series. In general, the discontinuation of the BMW i3 is mainly due to the development of the brand's electrification strategy and the iterative upgrading of the product.
Lexus CT
Lexus' performance in recent years can be described as the best performance among the three major Japanese luxury brands (Acura, Infiniti, Andys), and its Lexus ES also won the annual import car sales championship in 2021. However, it can only be said that the same brand is not the same life, as the cheapest model of Lexus CT200h sales are dismal, since the 2010 debut at the Geneva Motor Show is not too good, even in lexus' largest market in the United States, Lexus CT200h sales can only be described as mediocre, but also in 2017 hastily delisted. Similarly, CT200h's career in the domestic market also stopped in 2020.
According to foreign media reports, the Lexus CT200h will be officially discontinued in the factory in Japan in 2022, which also marks the official end of its service life of this model, and it seems that there will be no successor models in the future.
In general, the reason why Lexus CT200h was eliminated is mainly because of its awkward positioning, first of all, its power is general, the interior design is also unremarkable, and the body size is small, while consumers in the North American market mainly like to buy large-sized vehicles, and there are more and better choices at the same price in the domestic market; at the same time, due to the obvious weakening trend of the hatchback market, Lexus has not invested too much energy in the development of CT200h models, resulting in the lag of this model product. Ultimately, this series of reasons added up to the defeat of CT200h.
Lotus Evora, Exige, Elise
Lotus is a very niche brand today, and if you're not a car enthusiast, you may not know what brand it is, but Lotus was once one of the world's top three sports car manufacturers on a par with Porsche Ferrari, and Lotus has achieved many brilliant results in the last century. However, due to the team's excessive obsession with the "purity" of the vehicle, although Lotus's models are extremely enjoyable to drive and perform very eye-catching on the track, their daily practicality is almost zero, so lotus models have very low visibility on the domestic road, and brand awareness is naturally low.
Not long ago, as Lotus completed the delivery of the last Elise in the Uk, Lotus's Evora, Exige and Elise models were officially discontinued. With the discontinuation of these three models, the future of the new Lotus EVIJIA, EMIRA and TYPE 132 and other models, the new three models in addition to EMIRA are pure electric models, so it is not difficult to see that even the "paranoid" Lotus, in the face of the huge wave of electrification, has to go with the flow, and the biggest reason for the discontinuation of the three classic models equipped with internal combustion engines is presumably also the need for brand transformation electrification.
Write at the end
The reason why the above four brands discontinued models is just a microcosm of the elimination of many models, their decline is mostly because of brand upgrades, the sweep of the wave of electrification, products do not adapt to market demand and product iteration, in general, or that sentence, the survival of the fittest, in the automobile industry is highly developed today, no matter how deep the brand foundation is, if you can not keep pace with the times, help the brand upwards, it will eventually be submerged in the tide of the times.