Don't let GAC Aean fool you

The author | Mr. Dongguan Da

| Electric Guild

After operating independently, GAC Aean is more and more daring to tell stories.

From the establishment of the factory in 2017, to the renaming of independence, mixed reform financing, and preparation for listing, in the past two years, GAC Aean's steps have become bigger and bigger, and the slogans have become louder and louder.

In the past year, GAC Ae-an was hit in the face by academicians for over-publicizing graphene batteries that "can be charged in 8 minutes and have a cruising range of 1,000 kilometers"; and then announced that it had developed a "non-fire, non-explosive" magazine battery, which was also considered to be the commercial hype of Dong Shi Xiao.

A few days ago, at the annual report conference of GAC Group, Feng Xingya, general manager of GAC Group, set up three flags for Aean:

First, EIAN should become a leading brand in the field of new energy;

The second is to change the current pattern of "Wei Xiaoli" to "Ai Xiaowei";

The third is to challenge the sales target of 240,000 units in 2022.

As an annual report conference, around GAC E-Ann is full of cannon words. Leading the industry, killing "Wei Xiaoli", and selling more than 200,000 yuan a year, this is almost every ambitious electric vehicle manufacturer has set a flag.

But so far, "Wei Xiaoli" is still strong, and the flag is not falling.

A good artillery battle consists of two layers. One is that the slogan itself should be loud and sharp, and E'an did it. But the other is that the slogan itself needs to properly express the essence of something, or debunk some major contradiction, or lead to some upcoming shocking trend. From this point of view, this cannon was not successful enough.

Before and after these slogans, the old routine is still discussed. GAC Aean to do the leading brand, to do the leading brand is like catching up with Wei Xiaoli, just like "super Britain catching up with the United States", this is just an empty slogan, GAC does not have the mobilization ability of every household to smelt steel, put satellites this kind of thing or to see how their own family base.

In the past, WHEN BYD advertised that it was the leader of new energy, it was said to violate the advertising law, and later changed to a leader. Now look at the March sales report card, directly broke 100,000 +, and also announced the complete suspension of fuel vehicles, all in new energy. BYD relies on the e-platform, blade battery, DM hybrid, the bull that was blown in the past to slowly realize, and really become a leader.

In contrast, GAC Aeon, others make a blade battery, it makes a magazine battery. Others piled up the endurance, it has produced a 1000km long endurance model, and now it is Ai Xiaowei. Want to kill Wei Xiaoli, others are taking the differentiated route of user operation, intelligent technology, and family dad, and have lived well in their own market segments, which requires GAC Aean to spend more time on products.

But I don't know what Feng refers to when GAC Aeon wants to reorganize Wei Xiaoli's seat and be the boss himself, in the end, does it mean that the brand, user experience and business model innovation are more than Weilai? Or is software development more than Xiaopeng? Or is product and retail efficiency greater than ideal?

Obviously not, what makes Aehan proud is the volume, the sales.

After 5 years of entrepreneurship, GAC Aeon's product matrix has expanded wider and wider, and the models currently on sale include AION S, AION S Plus, AION Y, AION LX Plus, AION V Plus, of which AION S and AION Y models have the most outstanding sales performance, becoming the leader in the 150,000 to 200,000 market segments.

The enrichment and perfection of the product matrix has also allowed GAC Aean to usher in rapid development in the past two years. We checked, in 2021, GAC Aeon has accumulated sales of 127,000 vehicles, a year-on-year growth rate of 100%; in the first quarter of 2022, GAC Aean has delivered 44,874 vehicles, an increase of 154.26% year-on-year.

Judging from the sales volume of GAC Aean in the past year, the overall sales volume is constantly improving, with sales exceeding 10,000 vehicles in a total of 8 months, and from July last year to January this year, GAC Aean's sales have exceeded 10,000. In March this year, the delivery volume was as high as 20,317 units, achieving a new high. This shows that the market performance of GAC Aean in the past year has been stable and upward.

Feng said that this year to sell 240,000 vehicles, the current Guangzhou area of a single store can break 3,000 sales, the whole year to double the year-on-year growth, the completion may have a relatively large probability. After doing so, it is indeed possible to be higher than the amount of Wei Xiaoli this year. Therefore, to become the so-called leader of new energy, translating the marketing term is just that sales are king and become mainstream.

However, in-depth research found that in the sales volume of 127,000 units of GAC Aion last year, AION S sold 69,219 units, accounting for nearly 60%, which is the company's uncompromising "sales responsibility", and only the low-priced AION S can compete with Xiaopeng in Wei Xiaoli, and the high-priced Aion LX only has more than 100 sales per month, even if it doubles, it is far from Weilai and the ideal.

However, behind the seemingly gratifying sales of AION S, it is actually more supported by the "B-end" market of operating vehicles such as online ride-hailing and taxis, and the proportion of "C-end" individual consumer customers with a larger market space and more sustainability is relatively small.

The high dependence on the B-end market is not good news for GAC E-AN from the perspective of brand positioning and sales sustainability. After all, for high-end consumers with a budget of hundreds of thousands of yuan, who would be willing to pay for a ride-hailing car that runs all over the street?

If you have to talk about the amount, then the Wuling Hongguang MINI EV has long been killed by the power of a small car, but so what? Can brand and user reputation be pulled up? Has the company's sustainable R&D hematopoietic capacity been cultivated?

The feedback from users is the most real, if you really go to the people, you know that this slogan shouted by GAC Aean is as far away as three years of catching up with the Uk and five years of super beauty. Word games cannot save brands, and brands without users and core competitiveness will disappear with time.

Of course, the reason why GAC Aean is keen on telling stories and shouting slogans has a lot to do with its planning for listing. At the annual report press conference, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, revealed that after the completion of the Aeon mixed reform, the next step will be to introduce strategic investors, and it is planned to carry out an IPO next year.

Therefore, GAC E-An may not be to pursue the product, brand, price positioning to reach the height of Wei Xiaoli, but to try to convey to the capital market that E-An's valuation should reach the level of Wei Xiaoli, that is, the valuation should be around 200 billion, so all the slogans are highly focused on attracting the attention of capital.

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