The amount of delivery is cut off, the brand high-end is blocked, can Lantu still take advantage of the "East Wind"?

Lan Tu (taken by Du Ge)

Author | Moons

Source | CarVisibility

Lantu, known as the "zero anxiety high-end intelligent electric brand", has fallen into new anxiety after entering 2022.

As a representative of another extended-range electric vehicle after the ideal ONE, Dongfeng Group's Lantu Automobile has been selling steadily since its delivery last year, and once ranked fourth in the sales list of high-end electric SUVs in December. However, the good times were not long, in 2022, Lantu automobile sales took a sharp turn, delivering 1553 vehicles in January, down 53.36% from December last year; February fell by more than 50% month-on-month, only 740 vehicles were delivered.

Sales have fallen sharply, what happened to Lantu, which carries the upward mission of dongfeng group brand? Lu Fang, CEO of Lantu Automobile, once said that it would become a new benchmark for "domestic products". Can this vision still be realized now?

01 Sales "waist chop"

Born in 1976, Lu Fang is two years younger than Li Bin. His experience is very different from Li Bin's. At the end of 2018, Lu Fang, who has a strong technical background, came from FAW Group to Dongfeng Motor thousands of miles away. Came the East Wind. And subsequently, he gradually took the helm of Lantu and served as CEO.

Lantu Automobile is a high-end intelligent new energy brand under Dongfeng Motor, founded in 2018, positioned as a "zero anxiety high-end intelligent electric brand", and the first model, Lantu FREE, was officially delivered in August 2021.

What is "zero anxiety"? Lu Fang once said in an interview that an electric vehicle brand should achieve "zero anxiety", and the mileage is an important parameter. But Landu FREE solved the endurance anxiety, but failed to solve its own sales anxiety.

According to the data, in 2021, the sales volume of Landu FREE has risen all the way, from 408 vehicles in August to 3330 vehicles in December, becoming the fastest electric vehicle brand to achieve more than 3,000 deliveries in a single month. Although by the end of 2021, Lantu Automobile failed to reach the company's original target of 13,000 vehicles, but in the first year, the cumulative delivery also achieved 6,791 units, with an average transaction price of more than 338,000 yuan.

However, just when Lantu Automobile was still immersed in five consecutive monthly sales and the joy of the 10,000th Lantu FREE off the production line, its sales were "cut off", and in February this year, it directly fell below the 1,000 mark, leading a number of new power brands.

Faced with a roller coaster-like sales performance, Landu Automobile did not make an official explanation. "Car Circle Visibility" believes that external factors such as the general "lack of core and less electricity" and the epidemic holiday are not the root causes. According to the production and sales data released by Dongfeng Group, Lantu produced 3579 vehicles in January and 1083 vehicles in February, which was 2.3 times and 1.46 times the sales volume of the month, respectively. Obviously, building a good car is enough, the question is where the consumer is.

Some new forces often face demand-side problems. After all, brands need to be recognized for consumers to pay for it.

Lantu, which was born for more than 1,000 days, quickly completed the whole process from brand release, product listing and delivery, to the laying of direct channels nationwide. However, Lantu's popularity is still far less than that of other new car companies.

Although, for a "national team", Lantu has made many efforts and changes.

At the beginning of the brand release, the strong Dongfeng Group gave Lantu enough face, and a number of leaders from Hubei Province and Wuhan City attended the meeting. The release of Lantu was regarded as a milestone event in the development history of Dongfeng Company, and also a happy event in the economic and social development of Wuhan.

For example, learning Weilai, Lantu Automobile held the first user night on the Wuhan "Zhiyin" cruise ship last October, inviting a group of stars, high-end friends, and consumers to the scene to help and earn enough eyeballs; on December 31 last year, Luo Zhenyu's 2022 "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speech was held in Chengdu, and Lantu high-profile sponsorship put the names of more than 1,700 Lantu FREE users on the speech screen.

In the new energy team, Musk, who dances when he is happy, and Li Bin, who likes to communicate with users, the slightly stereotyped state-owned enterprise image is no longer suitable. Lu Fang also broke the impression of the leaders of state-owned enterprises, went to the front of the stage as the "no. 1 anchor" of Lantu, actively participated in activities, and strived to be close to users. At present, from the perspective of sales, the anchor needs to make further efforts.

The successful experience of the enterprise may be copied, but Lu Fang is difficult to copy the next Li Bin. Nowadays, with the amplification of personal IP, compared with Li Bin's ability to tell stories and the IP of "the most miserable person in 2019", Lu Fang needs to make more explorations if he wants to go out of the circle to promote Lantu to establish a high-end image.

02 The positioning is not clear

In the stock era, the unique "memory point" of the product is particularly important, such as mentioning service to think of Weilai, mentioning fast charging to think of Xiaopeng.

When mentioning Lantu, it seems that it is difficult to think of one of its highlights at the first time, but it is always impossible to avoid comparing it with the ideal ONE. The reason is that Landu FREE mainly promotes the extended range version of the model, and the two prices are comparable.

As the first product of Lando, Lando FREE offers models with two different drive modes: pure electric and extended range electric. Among them, the extended-range electric version is the main model. The extended range route avoids the problem of range anxiety for users, but compared with pure electric vehicles, the cost of the extended range power system is lower, and it is criticized as only the transition before the arrival of pure trams, which is also the "slot point" that the ideal ONE has always had.

In addition, the positioning of the ideal ONE is very clear - the daddy model that meets the needs of the people is a family car, especially the new model has a standard 6-seat layout, which has a certain market demand. And Lan Tu is two rows of 5 seats, and does not take care of the needs of the grandfather.

Therefore, feedback to sales, ideal car in 2021 to achieve the delivery of 90491 units, January this year delivered 12268 vehicles, February delivery of 8414 new cars, although there is also a decline, but still several times the Landu. Moreover, The ideal founder Li Xiang is also good at Internet marketing, and from time to time he pops out some amazing words and repeatedly captures the melon-eating masses. Lu put the presence of the Internet, but it is much weaker.

In April this year, Lantu Automobile will officially launch its second model, the Dreamer. This is a large luxury electric MPV model, offering 4-seater and 7-seater models for consumers to choose from, and 7-seater is the main sales model, making up for the regret that Landu does not have a family car.

However, Lantu Dreamer still launched the first extender hybrid version, and the pure electric version will be released later. A noteworthy point is that in February last year, Shanghai issued the "Shanghai Municipal Implementation Measures for Encouraging the Purchase and Use of New Energy Vehicles". As mentioned in the Measures, from 1 January 2023, whether individuals or units purchase plug-in hybrid models and extended range models, special license quotas will no longer be issued.

This means that from New Year's Day 2023, the purchase of range extended models will no longer enjoy the free special license in Shanghai. Whether other cities will follow suit is not known for the time being, but the transformation of pure electric or the trend of the main range extender car companies. At that time, what should Lan Tu take to break out of the siege?

In front of Lu Fang, who is sent by technology, it may not be just positioning, but whether more resources can be bet on pure electric routes.

In 2021, China's pure electric vehicle sales reached 2.91 million, accounting for more than 60% of the world's total. It is expected that in 2022, global pure electric sales will reach 7 million units. From January to February this year, China's new energy vehicle production and sales reached 820,000 units and 765,000 units, respectively, of which the cumulative production and sales of pure electric vehicles totaled 652,000 units and 605,000 units, respectively, an increase of 1.4 times year-on-year. Obviously, in the case that pure electric has become the mainstream of the market, Lantu needs to weigh it well.

03 Gene "defect"

As a high-end electric brand created by Dongfeng with the strength of the whole group, Lantu undertakes the dual responsibility of new energy and high-end of the group, just like Hongqi to FAW Group.

But in fact, this is not the first time that Dongfeng has launched an impact on high-end brands. As early as May 2012, Dongfeng Motor secretly launched the independent high-end car project codenamed "Dongfeng No. 1", but the project lasted a long time, and it was not until 2015 that a new car was officially released, that is, the Dongfeng A9, priced at 179,700 yuan to 219,700 yuan, and the benchmark products included Passat, Hongqi H7 and so on.

According to the official introduction, Dongfeng A9 is the integrator of Dongfeng Motor's half-century of car-making experience, which will help Dongfeng's "great autonomy" cause to a new height.

However, the Dongfeng A9, which is located at the top of Dongfeng's "big autonomy" product line, has not paved the way for Dongfeng Group's independent high-end. After the release, it spanned another year, and in 2016, the Dongfeng A9 was officially listed. In the year of its listing, the Sales volume of the Dongfeng A9 was only 1768 units, compared with 1651 units in 2017. Since then, the annual sales volume has even been only about 100 vehicles, and finally it naturally disappeared from the consumer's field of vision.

The market generally believes that Dongfeng's independent strength has always been weak, not to mention the impact on the high-end, there is no high-end "gene", its independent passenger car brand Fengshen, Fengxing, scenery, demeanor and Venucia, most of the models are priced within 100,000 yuan, and the sales volume is flat.

In 2021, Dongfeng Fengshen sold 121,570 vehicles for the whole year, and Dongfeng Fengxing had 122,200 vehicles. Including Lantu, Dongfeng's own brand passenger car sales totaled 542,000 units.

In contrast, Geely Automobile's main sales force, the Geely brand, will sell 1.101 million units in 2021, and the Haval H6 model alone under great wall will sell 370,400 units in the whole year.

Looking at the FAW Group, which is also the national team, its Hongqi brand has become one of the representatives of China's national automobile high-end brands, with sales exceeding 300,000 vehicles in 2021, an increase of more than 60 times in 4 years. In the first two months of this year, the sales volume of the red brand has reached 63,800 vehicles.

Therefore, the launch of LanTu is somewhat unwilling and does not accept defeat. Zhu Yanfeng, the head of Dongfeng Group, once said when releasing the Lantu brand: "The beginning is to run, and the beginning is to sprint." ”

The blueprint is grand and full of ambition, but in the crowded new energy vehicle track, how far is the latecomer Lantu running from the blueprint to reality?

There is not much time left for Lu Fang!

EDN