On April 20, AITO Auto officially issued an announcement that due to the increase in the cost of upstream raw materials, the price adjustment of the M5 will be made. Among them, the starting price of the rear-drive standard version was adjusted to 259,800 yuan, an increase of 10,000 yuan compared with the previously announced price, and will be officially launched at 16:08 on April 20, 2022. In addition, the Q&I M5 four-wheel drive version will be adjusted at 24:00 on May 5, 2022, and the specific adjustment plan will be announced before May 5.
For this AITO price adjustment, many voices in the outside world said that the price increase was only two months after listing, ANDO was not timely, but more feedback was more than a few ridicules, "I have not come to buy, I am going to increase the price." ”
It is understood that the current rapid layout of AITO's user center, including more than 500 experience centers and 150 user centers, has been laid. In 2022, AITO will also achieve a total of 1,000 experience centers and about 300 user centers.
In fact, before the price increase, AITO had already been controversial due to some recent remarks by Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of Smart Car BU. Last week, Yu Chengdong said in an interview with the media: "Because of the overall chip supply problem in the automotive industry, it is unrealistic for the new car brand AITO to reach a sales target of 300,000 vehicles this year."
At the same time, he also said that although 300,000 vehicles cannot be completed this year, Huawei's car to be the first is both a vision and a belief, because "no one remembers who the second is"; in addition, when talking about the title of "Yu Dazui" in the interview, he also did not shy away from saying that "the bulls that have been bragged have been realized".
It can be said that this is the first time that Yu Chengdong has had a face-to-face communication with the automotive media, and after the video was broadcast, many topics were set off in the industry. Among them, the most concerned is the problem of "300,000 vehicles", and the first reaction of the outside world is: If there is no chip shortage, can AITO achieve annual sales of 300,000 vehicles?
According to Yu Chengdong, 1,000 stores, selling 30 vehicles a month, can sell 300,000 vehicles a year, which seems to be a very problem. But the car is not a mobile phone, the cost of trial and error given by consumers is high, and the complexity of the car's after-sales service is much higher than that of the mobile phone. Huawei's R&D capabilities, market reputation and user visibility in the field of communications and mobile phones do not need to be debated, but in the automotive market, these capabilities have yet to be proven.
In addition, looking at the development of new energy vehicle enterprises, AITO's target of 300,000 vehicles does exaggerate the cost, which can be concluded by horizontal comparison with other brands, taking Wei Xiaoli, which ranks in the top three in terms of development momentum, as an example: the cumulative sales of Weilai Automobile in 2021 reached 91429 vehicles; the cumulative sales of Xiaopeng Automobile in the whole year reached 98155 vehicles; and the cumulative sales of ideal cars reached 90491 vehicles in the whole year. Compared with Huawei, which has just entered the field of electric vehicles, the annual sales of these first brands in the field of electric vehicles in China have not yet exceeded 100,000. Not to mention how can AITO, as a new entrant, achieve annual sales of 300,000 vehicles?
The shortage of chips in the automotive industry is an unavoidable problem. According to the AFS report, due to chip shortages, the global automotive market will reduce production by about 10.2 million units in 2021. However, the shortage of chips is only one of the problems facing the automotive industry, and the spread of the epidemic has brought about shutdowns, rising raw materials, imbalances in the supply chain, the Russian-Ukrainian war, etc., which have become several mountains on the head of the automotive industry, resulting in a serious impact on the production of new cars.
Yu Chengdong said in an interview, "When I first entered this industry, I didn't know that the lack of cores in the automotive industry was so serious, a chip of 10 yuan and 20 yuan was speculated to 2500 yuan, and 9 chips were also needed on a car, which was too expensive." I can't accept this kind of high price of buying chips, I would rather sell less, and I can't get used to everyone. Such a response is more like "a candidate who plays without being fully prepared", in a hurry with a bit of embarrassment.
It is undeniable that for the annual sales of 300,000 vehicles, Huawei has indeed made many deployments and cooperated with many domestic auto companies, but in the process of promotion, it has encountered problems of one kind or another. Taking Cylis before the AITO upgrade as an example, because of its entry into Huawei's smart selection channel, although the price was as high as 250,000 or so, although the order volume of the new car reached 3,000 units in two days after the release, and the weekly order volume reached 6,000 vehicles, but the follow-up was increasingly insufficient, and the monthly sales were only a few hundred, which failed to reverse the decline in sales. From January to November 2021, the total sales of the Cyris SF5 were only 7,080 units.
At the same time, in December of that year, the birth of the upgraded brand AITO directly led to the rapid depreciation of the SF5 in a short period of time. Some car owners believe that the shortcomings of the Cyrus SF5 have been basically comprehensively solved in the M5 model of the questioning world, and the old owners have become "victims". After the release of the M5, manufacturers began to clear the inventory of the Cyrus SF5, the exhibition car and the test drive were treated as used cars "processed", the original price of 240,000-250,000 cars, all at a price of 160,000-170,000 sales. Just after Huawei and Cyrus released the AITO brand, Huawei's Smart SF5 "disappeared" overnight, and the offline Cyrus store was replaced by the AITO Logo.
Another "Huawei concept" car brand, BEIQI Jihu, was rumored to have withdrawn from Huawei today (April 22), and the new Model of Extreme Fox, Huawei INSIDE, may not be available. As early as September 26, 2021, Beiqi Blue Valley issued an announcement that the Polar Fox Alpha S HI version will enter the Huawei channel before the end of the year, and once again confirmed that mass production delivery will be achieved at the beginning of the Guangzhou Auto Show. Unfortunately, until the end of 2021, even deliveries have not begun to materialize. So far, Jihu Automobile has still not announced the specific delivery time, and the "Jihu Alpha S New HI Edition Large-scale Delivery Tasting" scheduled to be held in Shenzhen on December 25, 2021 has also been cancelled. Subsequently, it is still impossible to deliver at multiple points in March and April this year, and the latest delivery date is suspected to be set for June this year. Although Beiqi Blue Valley responded that the rumors were untrue, the new car has not made progress since its debut last year, bringing a lot of imagination to the outside world.