Lan Tu depicts poetry and distant places, but the current life is not easy.
On April 15, Lantu Automobile and Baidu signed a strategic cooperation agreement, and the two sides announced that they would cooperate around the intelligence of automobiles. Baidu can say that Apollo partners have added another member in the external publicity words, and Lantu can also show the outside world that it has paved the way for the intelligence of the car, but the market sales often reflect the situation of a car company the most, and the choices made by rational consumers will not deceive people.
Since the beginning of this year, the sales of Lantu's only model currently on sale, Lantu FREE, has fallen sharply, from 3330 units in December last year to 1553 units in January this year, and it fell to 740 units in February.
Change comes too quickly, like a tornado.
Objectively speaking, under the influence of various factors, the sales of many domestic new energy vehicle companies this year are not as good as last year, but the decline of Lantu is the largest number of new energy vehicle companies. December 2021 sales also made Lantu the fourth high-end electric SUV market sales list that month, and a month later sales made Lantu quickly fall silent.
From the sales point of view, Lantu FREE is indeed "free". Following Landu FREE, Landu has launched the Landu Dreamer, which is positioned in high-end electric MPV, and the model has opened pre-sale on April 7 this year. In the high-end electric SUV market is unstable, and then enter the field of high-end electric MPV, for Lantu, is it a thick accumulation or a struggle in the predicament?
01
Sales roller coaster
Landu FREE was officially delivered in August 2021. In the month of delivery, Landu FREE sold 408 vehicles, followed by 908, 798 and 990 vehicles in September and November, with an average sales of 899 vehicles in three months.
Frankly speaking, the sales performance in these months was flat, until December 2021, Lantu FREE delivered 3330 vehicles, a sharp increase of 236% year-on-year, jumping into the relevant sales list, which attracted the attention of many people. After experiencing the highlights of December last year, Landu's sales performance has gradually returned to normal, with 1553 vehicles, 740 vehicles and 1385 vehicles delivered in a single month from January to March this year, with an average sales volume of 1226 vehicles in only three months.
Therefore, excluding the "outliers" brought about by the first month of introduction to the market and the last month of the year-end of the sprint sales, at present, the average sales performance of Lantu FREE this year is better than last year.
▲Picture: Lan Tu Guan Wei
As we all know, Lantu was founded by Dongfeng Group, but it is also independent of any company under Dongfeng Group, achieving comprehensive market-oriented operation and management. If you trace the history of Lantu, you have to talk about the project code-named "Dongfeng 56" that was established within Dongfeng.
In 2018, the "Dongfeng No. 56" project was established, which is known as the "h division" within the Dongfeng Group, focusing on building a high-end electric vehicle brand; on June 16, 2020, the mystery of the "h division" was officially unveiled, and Dongfeng established the Lantu Automobile Technology Branch of Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. On July 17 of the same year, Dongfeng Group officially released the Lantu brand.
Lantu's senior management configuration undoubtedly highlights Dongfeng's determination to enter and base itself on the high-end electric vehicle market: the new company is managed by You Zheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and deputy general manager of Dongfeng Group, Lu Fang, former chief technical director of the strategic planning department of Dongfeng Group, and Lei Xin, former executive deputy general manager of Dongfeng Infiniti, as the chief brand officer of the new company.
However, the fast pace of Lantu's car-making highlights Dongfeng's eagerness to miss the outlet of new energy vehicles: in less than three years, it has completed the entire car-making process from brand release to channel laying and then to product delivery. Although there is resource support from Dongfeng Group, compared with last year, the sales performance in recent months is not bad, but this "Lantu speed" has also laid hidden dangers for itself.
02
"Low-end" Dongfeng is difficult to cultivate high-end "Lantu"
Dongfeng wants to enter the high-end electric vehicle market with the help of Lantu, in fact, this is not the first time that Dongfeng has impacted the high-end.
As early as April 2016, the "Dongfeng No. 1" project, which has been brewing for many years, launched a model positioned as a high-end passenger car of the national brand - dongfeng A9, and the official price at that time was 179,700 to 219,700 yuan.
A is the first letter of the Latin alphabet, 9 is the largest of the natural numbers, and the name of the "Dongfeng A9" is more similar to the name of the missile, which indicates that this is a model that was once highly expected. However, the final market sales were dismal, with 148 units sold in April, 58 in May, 48 in June, and even in a month when the Internet rumored that not only 1 unit was not sold, but also 4 units were returned by dealers.
In terms of appearance design, the front face and tail of Dongfeng A9 are more similar to Zotye Z700, the body side is very similar to Dongfeng Citroen C5, and the appearance is not much unique and recognizable; in terms of body structure, Dongfeng A9 is also flat in terms of gearbox, chassis tuning or engine performance, and finally combined with the price that is not low, Dongfeng A9 has thus caused a "sales accident".
Open the official website of Dongfeng Group to know that the current independent passenger car brands under Dongfeng include Fengshen, Fengxing and Fengguang, and the rest are joint venture brands: such as Dongfeng Nissan, Dongfeng Honda, Dongfeng Peugeot and so on. Dongfeng's independent passenger car brands take the civilian route, and most of the models on sale do not exceed 150,000 yuan, and the sales performance of these models is flat, and the sense of market presence is not high.
Also according to the official website of Dongfeng Group, in addition to Lantu FREE, its new energy vehicles include Dongfeng Fengshen-E70 500, Dongfeng Fengxing Jingyi S50EV, Dongfeng Fengxing Lingzhi M5EV, etc., with only a few passenger cars, most of which are vans or commercial vehicles.
▲Picture: Lan Tu Guan Wei
Among these models, Landu FREE is placed in the first place on the official website, although it seems to be thriving, but it also has some sense of separation. Dongfeng, whose independent plate business is generally doing so, has been focusing on a more extreme market all year round, and hastily launching Lantu, which debuts with a high-end appearance, is not too convincing in terms of brand heritage or technology accumulation.
There are some sound analysis in the market Lantu FREE is in the benchmark ideal ONE, but objectively speaking, the two are only in the use of the car power source and the market price overlap, most of the places are not similar, such as in the number of seats this important dimension is not the same, that is, this is two different positioning models, and Lantu FREE strictly speaking there is no direct competitor.
However, because the price is very close and the drive method of the small range extender electric on the market is adopted, the ideal ONE is bound to become a car that many people will refer to when making consumer decisions about Lantu FREE. Since the launch of the Ideal ONE in October 2018, sales are now one level higher than Lantu FREE, and even in December 2021, the best sales performance after Lantu was listed, the Ideal ONE also sold 14,087 vehicles, which is more than 4 times the sales volume of Lantu in the same period.
03
"FREE" was hard to beat expectations
In fact, whether from the evaluation made by some professional car critics or the evaluation given by some car owners, Lantu FREE is not bad in terms of product strength, and even exceeds people's expectations in terms of zero hundred acceleration, braking distance, track performance, car handling, power output and the creation of interior atmosphere.
However, compared with the six seats of the ideal ONE and the seven seats of BYD Tang DM, the five-seat design of Lantu FREE makes it fall into the inferior position at home use such as the interior space of the car, and the pure electric mileage of 140km is not as good as the ideal ONE's 188km, in addition, if the driving computer display is inaccurate, the driving software operation is complicated, the system logic needs to be optimized, and there is no reason for people to choose FREE. Therefore, whether from the brand or product point of view, the sales performance of Lantu FREE is also reasonable.
However, when the "FREE" foothold was unstable, Landu launched another model that was also positioned as a high-end - the ideal. Interestingly, just as Lantu FREE has no direct competitors, Lu Fang, CEO and CTO of Lantu Automobile, has declared that "Lantu dreamers as a new category have no competitors."
The Lantu Dreamer is a medium-sized MPV model, divided into a seven-seat version and a four-seat version, with a pre-price of between 380,000 yuan and 600,000 yuan. The beginning seems to be good, april 7 this year to open the pre-sale, according to official data, Lantu Dreamer's order volume in the first two days has exceeded 3000, this performance is better than Lantu FREE.
The high-end new energy MPV market does have the potential to tap, and Lantu dreamers have taken advantage of the trend to eat a wave of dividends, but how long this situation can last has some doubts.
▲Picture: Lan Tu Guan Wei
First of all, just like the embarrassment encountered by Lantu FREE, Lantu Dreamers will still face problems such as lack of endorsement of car companies and insufficient brand heritage after they really go to the market. Lantu Dreamer is called "domestic Alpha" by some people, but behind Alpha stands a century-old car company Toyota, and behind Lantu stands - Dongfeng. Secondly, the high-end electric MPV market players will soon increase, Lantu Dreamers will usher in fierce competition, Geely Kr's main high-end market, positioned in the pure electric large MPV of the Extreme Kr 002 will be officially launched this year, the starting price or 450,000 yuan BYD Denza's new MPV is expected to debut soon.
Therefore, some people are worried that Lantu Dreamers may go high and low like Lantu FREE.
Back to Lantu, a car company, as mentioned above, it is a company that operates independently although it is backed by Dongfeng Group, but we cannot classify it with "new car-making forces". There is uncertainty as to what extent the management from traditional car companies that must be deeply influenced by the corresponding corporate culture and management model can practice what they call "in terms of mechanism, Lantu AutoMotive Technology Company will explore an innovative integration development model of 'mature car companies + new car manufacturing forces', adopt the Internet OKR (goal and key achievement) target management form, and project development will also adopt a matrix parallel development method" There is uncertainty.
In addition to the sluggish sales, the latest news about the personnel of Lantu organization is not very good: Some insiders broke the news that at the end of March this year, Lei Xin had been transferred from the post of chief brand officer of Lantu, and his position was temporarily taken over by Lu Fang.
Lantu is a high-end electric vehicle brand that traditional domestic car companies try to create, and although the products launched are remarkable, there are also many problems. Although the overall pace of car manufacturing is relatively fast, in the case of new energy vehicle manufacturing in the market window period and backed by Dongfeng Group, Lantu's urgency and "rush work" have a certain objectivity.
Lantu gives people a feeling of entering the game late but hoping to catch up and surpass quickly, but in the absence of brand support and products without strong advantages, this high-end road will be particularly difficult, and it is difficult to talk about a greater "ideal" without realizing "FREE".
The author | Yu Kun
Editor| Hu Zhanjia
The inscription is | Lan Tu Guan Wei
Produced| Zero-State LT(ID:LingTai_LT)