In a blue store on Changying Tianjie Street in Beijing, the heads of people gathered around a lime gray model, and a luxury hunting coupe kryptonian 001 was parked in the store with a simple technology style design. This is the first model launched by Extreme Kr Intelligent Technology - with the advantages of the product itself and the support of the parent company behind it, it is gaining more and more people's attention in the terminal market.
In the past March, The Krypton 001 achieved a delivery record of 1795 units in the terminal market, and according to the data provided by the Krypton brand to Green Orange Automobile, as of March 31, 2022, the total number of vehicles delivered by The Kr 001 was 14,248 vehicles.
Counting the past, since its official establishment on March 23, 2021 and the official delivery of vehicles on October 23, 2021, Extreme Kr Automobile has ushered in a historical node of one year of its establishment and half a year of delivery. From the initial difficulty of finding a car to the delivery challenge brought about by the impact of the current epidemic, The krypton, who has just turned one year old, has ushered in a rather difficult but significant anniversary.
"Based on the high-end, "extreme krypton" begins"
High-end pure electric brand, independent listing, Li Shufu at the helm... In the Chinese auto market with new brands in 2021, the advent of Krypton with so many halos has attracted everyone's attention for a while.
Fundamentally, under the background of the establishment of the mainland's "3060" carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets, new energy vehicles have become the direction of more and more enterprises. Since 2018, when the mainland auto market ushered in the first decline in 23 years and the luxury car market showed strong pressure resistance, many car companies accelerated to lay out new high-end brands/sequences to seize market share.
Geely Automobile has won the sales championship of China's own car brands for many times and has been optimistic by many people. In 2017, the Group released the Lynk & Co brand to attack the high-end market, and as of now, the cumulative sales of the brand have reached 700,000 vehicles, which has significant development advantages compared with the Weipai, Xingtu and other brands launched in the same period.
In fact, in Geely's initial planning, the concept version of the Extreme Kr 001 was first unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in September 2020 and was called the Lynk & Co ZERO model. However, under the strategic deployment of the group, based on the rapid development of the pure electric track, the sea vast architecture has just been released, and the continuous promotion of the "Blue Geely Action", Geely Automobile finally decided to operate the Krypton brand independently.
An Huicong, CEO of Extreme Kr Intelligent Technology, has publicly stated that the split of Extreme Kr from Geely Automobile is a matter of course, "Extreme Kr is not a PPT car, not a cake, as soon as it is on the field, it will do 'spot' instead of 'futures'." From the perspective of product positioning, geometric positioning is popular, and extreme krypton is a high-end route, which will form differentiated competition and create value for users in their respective market segments." ”
The first model of Extreme Krypton, the Extreme Krypton 001, was developed based on the SEA Haohan Intelligent Evolution Experience Architecture that took many years and invested more than 20 billion yuan to build. "Compared with the new forces of car manufacturing, our advantage is that, first of all, we have technical advantages, and the SEA vast architecture launched last year represents the technological leadership of pure electric platforms to a considerable extent; second, we have group combat advantages; in addition, we continue to cooperate with Baidu, Foxconn and so on, so as to form a scale advantage." Gui Shengyue, chief executive officer and executive director of Geely Automobile Holdings Limited, said.
"Under the vast framework, the extreme krypton 001 line is stable and far-reaching"
The scene of the first order launch of The Krypton 001 is "crazy". From the debut of the Zero concept car to the official launch of the Kr 001, it was only half a year; from the brand release to the official delivery of the product, It took 192 days for The Extreme Kr to deliver the 10,000- and the delivery of the Extreme Kr exceeded 10,000 in only 110 days.
At the time of the initial pre-sale of new products, a consumer once complained to Green Orange Automobile: "In addition to the slow delivery of Extreme Kr, other products and brands are my best choice." I asked if I could book the car in full shortly after the car was booked, and as a result, I went to the consultation in June and learned that I could not catch up with the first wave of people picking up the car in October this year. No way, too hot. ”
Earlier, due to the hot sales trend of Extreme Kr 001 in the terminal market, the brand side issued an announcement on June 15 last year that "due to the enthusiastic response of market orders, stop receiving intention funds". At present, due to the surge in orders in March, the epidemic and the supply of raw materials, the delivery time of the Krypton 001 model has been slightly extended.
Extreme Kr 001 now has a total of 3 models, the guidance price is 299-368,000 yuan, from the feedback of the terminal market, the consultation is more is the Krypton 001 ultra-long endurance single motor WE version of the model, to the Performance of Beijing Urban Road, its working condition endurance of 712km in the winter city can reach at least about 560km.
Due to issues such as rising raw materials, the price of the Krypton 001 model will be raised in a round on May 1. At present, the guidance price of Extreme Kr 001 is 299,000 yuan, which is in line with the policy of subsidizing new energy models below 300,000 yuan in China, so after the price increase, the guidance price and the adjusted price are still combined with the current gap. According to the latest news, the Extreme Kr 001 WE version model cancels the deposit expansion rights of 5,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan, and comprehensively calculates the price of the WE version model by 5,000 yuan; the price of the YOU version model is raised by 18,000 yuan, and the deposit of 5,000 yuan to 7,500 yuan is canceled, and the price of the YOU version model is increased by 20,500 yuan.
The raw material crisis caused by the Russo-Ukrainian war and the supply chain crisis caused by the Shanghai epidemic have had a significant impact on the global automotive market. Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of Smart Car BU, has previously publicly stated that since mid-April, some companies have begun to cut off supply and production due to the closure of Shanghai and other factors, "If Shanghai cannot resume work and production, after May, all technology/industrial industries involving the Shanghai supply chain will be completely stopped, especially in the automobile industry, and the industrial economic losses/costs will be very large." ”
In this situation, many car brands have raised the price of electric vehicles to meet the challenge. Up to now, GAC Aean, WM, Nezha, Tesla and other car brands have successively raised the guidance price, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands. Compared with the above-mentioned brands, the Extreme Krypton brand, although announcing that it will increase prices earlier this month, still reserves a nearly one-month period of relaxation for consumers. "In the pure electricity market in the range of 300,000 yuan, Extreme Kr 001 has quite obvious product advantages," relevant analysts said, "taking the Weilai ET5 100kwh version as an example, the Extreme Kr 001 YOU version has obvious advantages in terms of price nearly 20,000 low in the case of a price of nearly 20,000." The top of the extreme krypton 001 is also equipped with air suspension, and the new car can accelerate to 3.8S per 100 kilometers, compared with the performance of Weilai 4.3S. ”
Based on Geely's new SEA Haohan Intelligent Evolution Experience Architecture, the car is equipped with the world's first Mobileye EyeQ5H autonomous driving chip using the 7nm process, and has an 8 million pixel resolution capability, a 250-meter ultra-long detection distance and a centimeter-level high-precision map of the Eagle Eye Vision Fusion Perception System. It can be said that Extreme Kr 001 has redefined Geely's level of electrification, "Geely hopes to participate in the competition of the intelligent pure electric vehicle market through the new electric vehicle company and brand of (Extreme Krypton)," said Li Shufu, chairman of Geely.
It is understood that Extreme Kr Automobile has set the delivery target of Extreme Kr 001 this year at 70,000 units, and as of now the brand has completed 20.4% of the annual cumulative sales. At present, Extreme Kr 001 is still facing many challenges in the scheduling and delivery process, and the relevant person in charge of Extreme Kr Automobile told Qing orange Automobile: "At present, the epidemic has had a greater impact on the overall operation of the automotive industry. Extreme Kr 001 has more parts from overseas, and it will be affected by the epidemic prevention policy in the transportation and transit links. However, Extreme Kr is still going all out to mobilize resources from all sides to ensure production. ”
"The Same Law"
The Parthenon in the ancient Greek city of Delphi is engraved with a famous quote from Socrates: Know yourself. It is the only inscription in this temple. Looking back at the anniversary of its founding, What has Krypton created in the last 300 days or so as a fledgling brand of new cars?
At the second season of "Today@ZEEKR Live Face to Face" held on March 25, Extreme Krypton had a frank communication with users. Putting aside the support of product advantages, brand value and other content, the problems of "allocation reduction" and delivery difficulties that have stirred up waves in the terminal market, Extreme Krypton has chosen a positive answer.
The "de-allocation gate" incident of Extreme Kr 001 has been hotly discussed in 2021. At that time, at the beginning of delivery, the model was complained about by the relevant owners due to the suspension of some configurations. On the "Today@ZEEKR Live Face-to-Face", Extreme Kr officially introduced the ZEEKR OS 2.0 official system launched on March 23, which involves 33 ECU units and adds 5 new functions; and has optimized 59 functions for the user feedback of ZEEKR OS 1.1.1. At the same time, in view of the shortcomings of the brand model in the previous auxiliary driving function, Extreme Kr covered the adaptive cruise of ACCQA with queuing function, AEB forward collision mitigation, LDW lane departure warning, FCTA front intersection traffic warning and other configurations in the first batch of functions pushed by zad krypton intelligent driver assistance system.
In the current situation of difficult delivery, Extreme Kr said that because some parts are imported parts, they are generally transiting in Hong Kong, and now the epidemic in Hong Kong has also affected the progress to some extent. But Kr said that as long as the parts come, they will ensure overtime production and hand over the product to the user.
In terms of supply chain, after many communications between Extreme Kr and Wybaker, the exclusive production line of Extreme Kr 001 air suspension components has also been put into operation, which can gradually meet the production capacity needs of Extreme Kr 001.
Finally, and most important user service links, in order to better meet the needs of users, Extreme Kr announced that it will accelerate the expansion of supporting facilities such as stores and charging service outlets. According to the reply given by the person in charge of Kr, the brand expects to build more than 300 Krypton stores nationwide by the end of 2022, including Kr Center, Kr Space, Krypton Delivery Center and so on. "The increasing abundance of offline contacts can not only allow users to have a deeper understanding of the brands and products of Extreme Kr, but also allow users to feel a more extreme travel life experience."
At present, With only one of its Krypton 001 models, it has achieved cumulative sales of 14,248 units in the first quarter. In the next three years, Extreme Kr plans to launch at least six new cars to the market, and has set an ambitious goal of sprinting to "650,000 units per year and the top three in the world in the market share of high-end electric vehicles" in 2025.
"Kr is creating an open and new management model and corporate culture; it can maximize the release of team creativity, drive the rapid development of enterprises, and firmly co-create with users." An Conghui, chairman of Geely Automobile Group and CEO of Extreme Kr Intelligent Technology, said that in terms of user experience, product delivery and software, Extreme Kr does need to be improved, but this may be the charm of "competitive fighting" - knowing yourself is not just staying in data.
If you enlarge the perspective a little, the Chinese auto market such as SAIC, BAIC and other independent brands have launched high-end pure electric brands such as Zhiji and Jihu, such as Cadillac, Lexus and other joint venture/foreign brands to accelerate the transformation to the direction of hybridization and electrification, and then such as the new forces of car manufacturing to seize the pure electricity market share, As a high-end electric brand born in 2021, although it is in the new energy vehicle market with huge potential growth, it is also facing the risk of being squeezed out and swallowed by competitors.
This requires a strong introspective ability of the brand. Looking at the development history of Geely Automobile, from the initial "four wheels + two rows of sofas", to the acquisition of Volvo to achieve a beautiful story, and then to the exploration of geometry and Lynk & Co brand, it can be said that before the extreme krypton, Geely Automobile has completed the role transformation from a local enterprise to an international enterprise in the automobile market.
The birth of the brand of Extreme Kr responds to the goal of Geely Automobile's "Two Blue Geely Plans". If It is said that What JiKr now looks down to see is the "gray picture frame" of a single brand production line, difficult delivery and many competitors, then in Geely's eyes, what we see is the green prospect of the group's future high-end electrification.