Hao threw heavy money to package the entire cruise ship; cross-Chinese New Year's Eve held hands with Luo Fat, sponsored the Internet celebrity speech "Friends of Time"; the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Tiger and Jingdong cooperated to give away the right to use the car... Less than a year after the release of the first model, the second model has been launched, and the houlang Lantu on the new energy track has adhered to the old routine of high-profile marketing by the predecessors.
As a new energy brand under Dongfeng Motor Group, it announced its entry into the automotive market in 2020, released its first model Lantu FREE last year, and the design of the extended range is also regarded as a direct competitor of the ideal ONE.
However, compared with the enthusiasm of its marketing publicity, the sales volume of Lantu Automobile is slightly bleak. After experiencing a sharp increase in sales in the second half of last year, the stamina performance was weak, and it suffered Waterloo in the first quarter of this year, and FREE sales were less than a fraction of the ideal ONE.
As the vanguard of Dongfeng Group's exploration of new markets, Lantu quickly played the second card after the fries of FREE, Lantu Dreamer, intending to rely on MPV to stabilize the market.
However, after seeing lantu FREE running unsuccessfully, the brand is weak, the market competition pressure is too large, the personnel instability, the system constraints, etc. have become the main points of doubt for the outside world.
01 High open low go circle
Although the market is not a one-model success or failure, Landu's first car failed to become a hit, making it controversial.
In 2018, Dongfeng Group was in the stage of brand upward and exploring a new model of independent development, and the Lantu formed within the system was placed high hopes.
Backed by Dongfeng Group, Lantu took less than 3 years to complete the one-stop car building of brand release, channel laying and product delivery.
At the end of July 2021, Landu's first model, the FREE, began to be delivered. Riding on the east wind, sales have risen all the way. From 408 in August to 3,330 in December, Landu FREE became the fastest ever electric vehicle brand to sell more than 3,000 units in a single month.
But just when the market thought that Lantu had taken off, FREE sales fell off a cliff. Deliveries in January 2022 were 1,553 units, compared with 3,435 units in the month, significantly less than expected; in February, sales were cut again, with sales of only 604 units; and although there was a pick-up in March, it only remained at about 1,000 units.
Since entering 2022, the entire automotive industry has faced negative factors such as chip shortages, repeated epidemics, and many holidays. However, compared with other new car-making forces, the decline in lantu sales is the most serious. It is estimated that the average sales decline of new forces such as Wei Xiaoli since January 2022 is between 30% and 40%.
Combined with the size of Dongfeng Group and its strong system strength and anti-risk ability, the impact of supply chain problems on Lantu should be controlled to the minimum, and will not bring such a large fluctuation to sales. Therefore, it seems that the performance of FREE is more caused by its own reasons.
It is reported that Landu FREE provides pure electric and extended range electric two different drive modes of the model, but the pure electric version is significantly weaker than similar products in terms of endurance, which also leads to its sales mostly supported by the extender version, and its main target competitor is the ideal ONE.
Just compared to the ideal ONE, FREE's product strength is not outstanding. First of all, in terms of endurance, the pure electric mileage of the extended-range version of the model is 140km, while the pure electric mileage of the ideal ONE is 188km; in addition, the FREE positioning is not as clear as that of similar models, the design of two rows of 5 seats, compared with the 6 seats of the ideal ONE and the 7 seats of BYD Tang DM-i, lack of a more pure family car positioning.
In addition, the delivery time of the ideal ONE is more than a year earlier than that of Lantu FREE, which is catching up with the explosive growth period of the new energy vehicle market.
"The ideal ONE pearl jade in front, Although the product strength of Landu FREE is not bad, but the 'debut' is too late, it is easy to give people the impression of a follower." Some insiders said, "As a new product and a latecomer, it is impossible to surpass the competitors in front, and consumers are willing to pay for it." ”
As we all know, the time window left by the automobile market for the transformation of various car companies is actually not long, basically there are 3-5 years, and the pattern of intelligent new energy vehicles will form a relatively stable situation.
In this case, Lantu has also made sufficient efforts in product launch. According to the previous plan, from 2021 onwards, Lantu Automobile will put at least one new car on the market every year; in the next 5 years, Lantu Automobile will cover multiple segments such as cars, SUVs, MPVs, and continue to expand the product lineup of high-end electric vehicle brands.
The Waterloo of the SUV market has forced Lantu to avoid the front and turn to the MPV market with more opportunities and greater potential.
02 The Red Sea looks like a blue ocean
On April 7, The Lantern Dreamer began pre-sale. According to official data, the order exceeded 3,000 units in the first two days, compared to FREE to reach this data took nearly 3 months, the dreamer's performance is indeed good enough.
In the eyes of industry insiders, the dreamer can burst into flames, on the one hand, because the MPV market potential is being released, especially in the high-end market; on the other hand, as the first new energy MPV, it has also attracted a lot of outside attention.
However, there are still voices in the market, and it is generally believed that Lantu dreamers will most likely open high and go low like FREE.
First of all, Dreamer does not have the brand endorsement behind the MPV overlord Alpha, Toyota, which can be said to be a fatal weakness in the high-end MPV market.
Previously, when Alpha was introduced to China, with the aura of "Hong Kong and Taiwan star nanny car", it was sought after by domestic business people, coupled with Toyota's marketing control of the high-end market, Alpha has become a symbol of status in the domestic market, and consumers are willing to pay for it.
In contrast, although Lantu was born from the veteran car company Dongfeng Group, the entire Dongfeng business development has been flat, and compared with FAW, SAIC and other brother central enterprises have many high-end joint venture brands, Dongfeng does not have the strength to endorse Lantu. This is especially true in the field of MPV, and the Fengxing Lingzhi and Fengxing M7 under dongfeng motor's autonomous plate are all low-end MPV products.
In the case of almost zero high-end market foundation and word-of-mouth accumulation, the dreamer will benchmark Alpha as soon as it appears, which is obviously a big challenge for Lantu.
Secondly, alpha is not the only one in the high-end MPV field, and there is more than one car company that covets this blue ocean market.
According to the data, in March this year, buick GL8 sales of 7839 vehicles, ranking first in the high-end MPV market, followed by Xena, Trumpchi M8, Odyssey sales of 6444 vehicles, 4400 vehicles, 3793 vehicles that month, respectively. These are direct competitors of Dreamers.
In addition, the extreme krypton luxury intelligent pure electric MPV will be released within the year; Weipai will also be listed this year with two hybrid MPV codenamed M81 and M83; BAIC M7 has also recently released an official map; Denza official also officially released its first medium-sized high-end luxury MPV model official map and so on.
It is foreseeable that the road of the dreamer will not be a smooth road, and it remains to be seen whether it can achieve the expected results in the high-end MPV market that seems to be in the blue ocean market. However, at the moment of the MPV market transformation, the dreamers who have entered the market have at least not lost at the starting line.
The aroma of wine is also afraid of the deep alley. In the past two decades, there has been no shortage of brands or models in the Chinese auto market that have excellent product strength, but have lost their market due to inaccurate positioning and lack of characteristics. On the other hand, the new forces of head car manufacturing now have their own unique labels.
Lantu is a model for Dongfeng to build intelligent electric vehicles through incubation outside the system. However, judging from the current operating results, this approach does not seem to be very smooth. Therefore, if Lantu wants to successfully complete the heavy responsibility entrusted by the group, it also needs to aim faster, accurately position, and enhance the overall brand power.
03 Outside must first be inside
Within the Dongfeng Group, Lantu is defined as a vanguard, actively exploring the system, mechanism and intelligent electric vehicle track. However, in the eyes of industry insiders, Lantu is still in the middle of technology companies and traditional car companies, and at present, it cannot freely define its own track like private enterprises, and must move forward under the constraints of the overall business goals of state-owned assets.
Within state-owned car companies, the organizational structure and business model of the original fuel vehicles cannot support the future of the intelligent electric vehicle business, and incubating a project outside the system can not only take into account the flexibility of entrepreneurship, but also reduce the systemic risk of the parent company.
From the organizational mechanism, business model and financing method, Lantu is in line with the new forces of car manufacturing and the new brands incubated by traditional car companies, and has the characteristics of market-oriented operation, independent operation, user co-creation, and channel direct operation.
However, from the current market feedback, the sales scale of electric vehicles produced under such an incubation background is low, there are more product software problems, and there are also unstable situations in personnel.
According to informed sources, at the end of March this year, Lei Xin, the CBO who is considered to be the "number three person" of Lantu, has been transferred, and his position is temporarily taken over by Lu Fang, CEO and CTO of Lantu.
According to the data of Tianyancha, Lei Xin has successively withdrawn from the position of head of 9 companies, including "Lantu Sales Service Co., Ltd. Chengdu Branch".
The management of Lantu, except for Lu Fang, other core executives are from the defeated high-end brand Dongfeng Infiniti, coincidentally, they once again embarked on the pursuit of high-end road of Dongfeng Motor. In addition, Lufang is also transferring from the technical post of traditional car companies to the overall operation of the new brand of Lantu. This practice of relying on traditional elderly people to switch to new brands is also facing a great test.
Lantu's corporate structure, more like catching ducks on the shelves, and the native structure of the new forces, is not a concept at all. "From the perspective of the senior management team, the first is very traditional, there is no talent from Internet companies and technology companies. Second, most of them are back-office managers with no experience as traders. A securities company analyst said, "Lantu is more like a superficial technology company." ”
The facts also seem to be confirmed, an internal employee of Lantu said that the responsibilities of many positions are still relatively vague, and what personnel should do and how to do it is still in the process of exploration. Compared with new forces such as Wei Xiaoli, Lantu is still slightly old-fashioned in terms of leading and functional innovation in the core development business.
In the era of new energy, the competition is innovation, is the core technology, but also the use of talents, it is too early to make up the conclusion about the success of Lantu's transformation, and the problems that occur within Lantu in the transformation process, the solutions and the future development path, how to transform from a traditional car company to a real technology enterprise, is the future is really worth paying attention to.
This article comes from: Financial New Knowledge, Author: Wang Siyuan, Editor: Yi Page